Hike #1139; Stockton to Ottsville

Hike #1139; Stockton NJ to Ottsville PA

7/3/18 Stockton NJ to Ottsville PA with Daniel Trump, Red Sean Reardon, Ken Zaruni, and Annika Krystyna.

This hike would be one that served to remind me that things just don’t always go as planned. Sometimes it’s out of my control, sometimes it’s my own stupid fault, but we have to roll with the punches and make things work out as best we can.

D&R Canal dam

I’d recently become enamored with Bucks County PA again; I’d done the Neshaminy series, and still have plenty to do on those, but even the stuff up closer to home was really great. I really enjoy the pleasant back roads, and found some that would work great for the hikes.
I found a back road route that I really liked, and figured I could put it together with some other stuff I was more familiar with for a great point to point hike. I posted the meeting point as Ottsville PA, at the post office, and we’d do an afternoon/night hike ending there, starting at Bulls Island in NJ.

Prallsville

Usually, I drive to the start points of the hikes, and I have everything I need in my van. Red Sean was still messing with something with his SUV, and so I decided we’d just jump in with him rather than use my van, and I’d get him back.
Unfortunately, I realized at the last minute that I was wearing garbage shoes that were about ready to fall apart, and my good ones I’d intended to wear were still in my van. I only realized this when we got to the Lumberville General Store, where we were going to start on the PA side.

Prallsville

I felt panicked right away. I knew the shoes were not going to last at all, and I didn’t know where I could get duct tape to take care of it. This was going to take some quick thinking to figure out.
My hike, as I had planned it, had a circuitous road walk at the end point, which could be pretty easily shortened. Also, I was planning on following the bottom of the Tohickon Gorge, which could be shortened by coming back up the cliff earlier. I thought over the route quickly, and figured we would have to shorten accordingly and drive toward New Hope in search of duct tape. Going back to the car was too far, so that was not at all an option.
We arrived in the town of Stockton, and Sean pulled over so I could check to see if the general store in the old station had some duct tape. As if by some miracle, they did.

Thermos Sean

I was ecstatic. I purchased two rolls, and then in my joy I purchased chocolate milk and drinks.
While waiting to pay, I figured out that we could leave Red Sean’s car right where it was, and walk the Bel Del Railroad bed to the north, to Bulls Island in Raven Rock NJ, cross the bridge into Pennsylvania at Lumberville, follow the Delaware Canal north to Point Pleasant, and then follow the Tohickon Gorge as planned to a point where we’d go up hill through the county park to Ralph Stover State Park’s High Rocks. From there, we could follow a more direct road walk route back to Ottsville to finish up. It seemed like a winner, and would add a swim spot.
We started walking the old railroad grade to the north. Many seem to think this is the canal, because it’s Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park, but north of Lambertville especially it’s almost completely different.

Delaware at Lumberville

The canal remains further west of the railroad bed, and we returned to it at Prallsville. There, I took the opportunity to head down and compose two then and now photo compilations I had wanted to improve upon for some time.
Prallsville is where there are historic mills on the Wickecheoke Creek. The Bel Del crossed the creek on a deck girder bridge, now the trail, and there were some young guys on top jumping off and into the creek. I kind of wanted to try what they were doing, because it looked cool, but I knew my shoes might give me a major problem if I knocked them on the water.

Delaware Canal

The Delaware and Raritan Canal feeder was just below, and the Wickecheoke spills over it into the Delaware. It then moves further away from the rail bed, and the rail bed remains the trail ahead.
We continued the pleasant walk to the north, and I mentioned to Dan that we should contact Shane about the hike, since the plan changed entirely where we were going. Dan sent him a photo of something, I think a section of rail, and Shane was very upset that we didn’t personally invite him, although we had it on the meetup page as well as on a facebook status that I’d posted.

Wing dams in the Delaware

Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing we’d end up in Stockton. It wasn’t part of my original plan at all.
We continued to walk the line north, and paused when we got to where the Lockatong Creek flows beneath the Bel Del grade.
The Lockatong went direct into the D&R Canal, and then flowed over a spillway in the canal and into the Delaware River.
I found out years ago that this was an epic swim spot, so we stopped to take a dip. Unfortunately, this was short lived because thunder and lightning became to come on heavily. We got out of the water, and pretty soon it started pouring rain on us for a while.

View of the bridge at Bulls Island

We started walking the railroad bed to the south more. The old canal moved off away from the rail grade a bit, and we remained closely parallel with Rt 29 out until we got to the former site of the Raven Rock train station. There’s one little section of railing left from Pennsylvania Railroad days there.
We continued walking to the left, and crossed the northern end of the Delaware and Raritan Canal at the former lock site and bridge, onto Bulls Island. We walked over to the visitor center and hung out in the bathroom to dry off and avoid the rain for a bit longer.

North end of D&R canal across

Annika met up with us at this point. She had a hell of a long drive from Albany area and ran into a lot of traffic on the way. My messing things up by not having my shoes actually worked out very favorably for her because she missed so much less of the hike, and it required her driving less distance to meet up with us.
She met up with us at the building, and we started walking across the foot bridge over the Delaware, built on the same abutments that carried the original covered bridge.

Repair work on Delaware Canal

The original bridge was built in 1835 at this site, and it had it’s share of flood issues and such. In the Pumpkin Flood of 1903, one side of the bridge washed away.

Delaware Canal

It had to be replaced by a metal structure for those sections. The bridge lasted until the late 1940s when it was deemed not to be structurally sound, and had to be dismantled. It was, however, replaced with the current Roebling foot bridge on the same site, which is well used today.
We made our way over to the old toll house and saw people eating at the restaurant on the other side. From there, we had to turn right to get down to the old Delaware Canal and start following it to the north.
It didn’t have much water in it; it too had it’s share of problems with flooding including recently. Some sections have never really come back from issues in 2004.

Historic image of the bridge at Lumberville

There used to be a lock tender’s house and more buildings at the lock below the bridge, but most of that is gone today. We continued walking to the north.

Lumberville today

As we followed the canal to the north, we saw a turtle along the path, and we had some nice views across the river at the northern terminus of the Delaware and Raritan Canal.

Delaware Canal

There are wing dams in the Delaware just down stream from the end of Bulls Island which provided slack water enough to run into the feeder canal.
The canal in the next section goes through some beautiful narrows, and we could see waterfalls on the opposite side on the cliffs. Up stream, we could see the piers of the former Byram-Point Pleasant covered bridge, which washed away in the Flood of 1955, one hundred years after the original bridge at that same site had been erected.

The Delaware

The next point of interest we came across was the old Lock #13 on the canal. Like most canal sites, it’s a lot different now than what it would have looked like historically.
We passed by here and continued a little further to the north to reach Lock #14 I think it was. This one is in really pretty good shape, with the miter gate locks looking quite impressive.
There is a house next to this one that might have at one time been the lock tender’s house, but I’m not totally sure. In the canal days, this spot was also known as “White’s Lock”.

Turtle on the canal

We continued further from here, and there were some nice views into private yards along the way. The next point of interest was the lovely Tohickon Creek Aqueduct. This one was put in severl years back. I remember when it was done, almost in a covered bridge style, which made it a sort of nice tourist spot for the village of Point Pleasant ahead.
We crossed the aqueduct, and soon came to the bridge crossing of the road that used to go across the Byram Point Pleasant Bridge.

The Delaware and old covered bridge site

This is a sort of pony truss bridge known as a “Dougal Truss” as I understand. The historic bridge over the canal was built in 1877.
We climbed up and turned to the right to check out the former site of the covered bridge.
I know I used to have some historic photos of the covered bridge that stood here, but I can’t find any of them now, and none seem to appear online. I have them in Frank Dale’s book, Bridges Over the Delaware, but I can’t find my copy of the book now currently either.

Delaware Canal Lock 13

We crossed back over the old truss bridge and walked into the little village of Point Pleasant. It’s situated in an interesting fashion at the confluence of the Tohickon Creek and the Delaware.
The Tohickon Creek takes it’s name from a Native American word, Tachan Hoking (pronounced Toc-ahn Hok Ing) which means “piece of wood area place”.
When the first settlers arrived, they noticed the swift currents of the river’s torturous course were perfect for mills.

Lock 13

The tributary is 29.5 miles long, and finds it’s headwaters in tributaries feeding to Lake Nockamixon, a flood control reservoir further up stream.

Historic image of Lock 13

The Tohickon Creek is the largest tributary entirely within Bucks County PA.
We walked through the little town, past the historic buildings and turned to the right when we got near an historic school house, and headed up hill parallel with the creek.

Historic image of Lock 13

The village of Point Pleasant is now an historic district along the creek, with Stover family mansion and inns. Some buildings date back to the early 1700s here as well.

Historic in Point Pleasant

The area here was originally known as Lower Black Eddy, as opposed to Upper Black Eddy just a bit to the north. The Black Eddy was actually named for a black family who lived in the area in the 1700s, according to the “tales from the towpath” pages.

Point Pleasant

As we headed up hill, we passed a lovely old barn that had been converted to a house, followed by a nice cemetery on the right side. About here, a trail leads down to the left.

Lock 13 today

One of the reasons I wanted to do this hike was because I’d been trying to get my girlfriend to go there with me to swim and have a look around, but we never get to spending much time there. I wanted to explore the creek and ruins to a greater degree.

Delaware Canal below Lock 13.

We had gone down the previous week and checked out the ruins of one of the old mills, but we didn’t get much further. My plan was originally to simply follow the creek as closely as possible along the base, but we were running short on time at this point. If I had done the hike as I originally intended, we’d have had plenty of time to do that, but I made the executive decision that we’d try to stay on the more prominent trails this time, and we’ll do the hike as I had intended at a later date. We turned left from the road onto the trail heading down hill toward the creek, then turned right on the first side one.

Lock 14, Whites Lock

The trail went kind of up and down, but this upper trail remained higher above the creek. We followed it as it made it’s way up hill and got very close to the road again. We had to turn onto the road briefly at one outcropping site, and then dipped back down closer to the creek again.
We made our way down hill a bit more, and eventually reached a paved access road. There, there was an abandoned road ahead that hadn’t been used probalby in decades, but still had a sign reading “NO PARKING ON THIS STREET”, which gave us a little chuckle.

Lock 14, White's Lock

We turned left on the road and followed it gradually down hill. I had never gone this way before, but figured it would work out fine. The road leads to what I guess are rental cabins in the county park lands. We remained closely along the creek, and got to a great little spot to take a dip in the stream, with a deep pool.
It had been so insanely hot out lately that the water itself was barely even refreshing. It wasn’t at all cold. I suppose this is probably because it flows out of Lake Nockamixon, and the water was heated by the sun. The past several days had been at the coolest, in the mid 80s. Even being in the water kind of felt gross, even though it wasn’t by any means dirty.
Only I went in this time as I recall. Everyone else just stayed out and sweated. Once I was out, we continued on the road past the cabin building, which was occupied. We sneaked by the right side of it, and there was another road on the other side, no longer vehicle accessible, heading further up hill. We kept following the creek.

Lock 14; White's Lock

There were trails going up hill further into the park, but my intention was to stay closer to the slope. I didn’t want to head into the main part of the park as it was closing.

Inlet to the canal

The trail became indistinct at times. There were several of them at different levels along the edge of the stream. I had never walked any of these before. Once we had cooled off in the creek, my plan was to head up to the main trail toward the High Rocks Vista of Ralph Stover State Park, but we weren’t coming across it. The trail had branches to it, and it was slightly bushwhacking to get through the lesser used routes.
We kept on going, further away from the main park area, and I tried to take the path that was most heading up hill. I didn’t want to get stuck on the rough paths in the gorge.

Delaware Canal

Eventually, we got on a good path that was taking us up hill a bit better. It took us to an intersection of a much more prominent path, which was our main route toward the High Rocks.
The trail continued to gain elevation, but much more gradually, heading to the west. Even though it was getting darker, at this point it was much easier to see where we needed to be going. We crossed over a couple of creek inlets and climbed more to the tops of cliffs above the Tohickon. At times, other trails went down, but we kept up high.

Old photo of Tohickon Aqueduct

The trail along this stretch seemed so much longer than I remembered it being from the other few times I’d done it, but it was still pretty nice. A good challenge overall.

Tohickon Aqueduct now

We eventually got to the main cliffs. There was one confusing spot with a trail going further down, closer to the cliffs, and one remaining at the top, where fortunately I saw the turn.

Dougal truss, 1877

It was pretty dark by the time we got to the part where there were hand rails along the cliff edges. We walked right along that section, which was actually pretty cool this time of night. There was still enough remaining light that we could see the water down below and how far it was.
This made me think of my former co worker Ricky Schlack, who was one of the seasonal employees at Spruce Run. He had fallen off of these cliffs two years prior, when he first started, and broke his back. I was working a Saturday when I got his call that he would be out for the season.

Byram Point Pleasant bridge site

Ricky did end up coming to work again the year later, and did really well. They referred to him as “Ricky Splat” because of the fall incident.
We continued along the edge just to where the trail turned back out to the roads.
The area around here was the Ralph Stover mills properties. The Stover family had a lot of the mills along the Tohickon, including at the state park, a bit further up at a county land, and another site in what is now Nockamixon State Park. There may have even been more, but I am uncertain.

Dougal truss bridge

Ralph Stover’s heirs donated the land of the state park in this area to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ralph Stover State Park opened to public in 1935.
We followed the trail out to Tory Road, where there is a parking area. We turned left on that dirt road and followed it out to Stover Park Road.
From there, we turned to the right. The roads all through this area are only very lightly traveled and make for a perfect night hiking route.

The Tohickon

I had originally looked at using a different series of back roads than the ones we would follow because I wanted to cover some of the dirt ones, one of which has a ford site on it, the only one remaining in Bucks County.
When we changed the route of the hike, I had to change the road walk route so that we wouldn’t go a huge amount of miles over. I am pretty sure we ended up going a distance over regardless.
We followed Stover Park Road north from woods into field areas. The lightning bugs were all out, which were quite beautiful through this area.

In the Tohickon gorge

We continued along this road until we got to East Dark Hollow Road. I was originally thinking to turn right, then left on Red Hill Road for a lightly used back road route, but Dan said that the google maps were showing that turning left would be quickest. I figured all of these roads are nice, and that would just give me another route to follow on a future hike, so we’d make the left on Dark Hollow.
Dark Hollow Road was the most busy really of the roads we’d walk on the way back. Fortunately, it wasn’t for very far, and we soon turned to the right on Ervin Road.

Plaque on the Dougal truss

uWe went up hill on Ervin Road to a peak of some farm fields, which was nice. We then started heading down hill gradually. We could have made the second left on Gruver Road, out toward Ottsville, but either way would have been fine.
I had hiked the first left on my first hike in the area, on Rantz Mill Road, back around 2006.
We continued up Ervin Road and went around a bend with some lovely historic farmsteads. We went around a couple of ninety degree bends, and soon came to the intersection with Hollow Horn Road.

Delaware Canal

We turned to the left here and followed the road down hill to the intersection with Oak Grove Road. We turned right on Oak Grove, which took us out to the little settlement of Ottsville.
Ottsville is an interesting little spot, with an old inn restaurant, and other old buildings. It’s among the oldest settlements in northern Bucks County.
The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians started the first church in Ottsville in 1738. The settlement was first known as “Red Hill” due to the red soil in the area, but it had to be changed because of the post office.

Delaware Canal

The southern part of the town remained known as Red Hill, until the post office moved further south, and then the Red Hill name faded away.
The site also had some history associated with the Walking Purchase in 1737, even before the church, as a stopping point along the way.
According to the Bucks County Planning Commission, The Villages of Bucks County: A Guidebook, 1987, page 100, it was an important stopping point, along the Durham Road.

NO parking

"A now vanished hotel once stood on top of the hill in Ottsville. During the 1700s the inn served as a stopping point for the stage coaches traveling along the Durham Road. On September 19, 1737, Edward Marshall and other participants of the Indian Walking Purchase stopped at the inn for a short rest. One of the three walkers, Solomon Jennings, dropped out from exhaustion at this point. The hotel stood vacant and in ruins for many years and eventually even the ruins disappeared."

Cemetery in Point Pleasant

The Durham Road was no longer the main road heading through after the construction of the Easton Road, present day Rt 611.
The route through the settlement now is sleepy and little traveled. We passed a few more cars in this section than in the previous sections, but it was still very pleasant.
We followed Durham Road north, headed down hill through town and across a couple of small tributaries to the Tohickon Creek. There was a bar and grill place along the way, which I’d have stopped at if anyone else was so inclined, but I think everyone was tired.

Point Pleasant school

The Durham Road soon came out close to Rt 611 after a long gradual up hill, and we cut over to the left, across a grassy field in order to reach the Ottsville post office parking area that much quicker.
From there, it was a rather easy ride back to get Red Sean and Annika to their cars.
The area of eastern Bucks County becomes more interesting to me the more I explore it. I think I’ll be doing a lot more hikes, including the back roads through the area in the near future. There’s so much more to see, and the back roads are just so pleasant to walk, any time of the year. Maybe we’ll do more Winter ones here.