Hike #1146; Prompton Lake to Honesdale

Hike #1146; Prompton Lake to Honesdale

7/28/18 Prompton State Park to Honesdale with Matthew Davis, Russ Nelson, Ewa Wdzieczak-Smering, Jennifer Berndt, Daniel Trump, Kralc Leahcim (Lerch), Ellie Zabeth, Mike Piersa, James Quinn, Stephen Argentina, Christian Alexander, Mike Guzzi, Brandan Jermyn, Ann, and ? (Having trouble remembering names!)

This would be the fourth in our Delaware and Hudson series, tracing the historic gravity railroad to the Delaware and Hudson Canal. We’d finally reach the canal here.

The group at the start

We had then finished the last hike at Prompton State Park, where we followed the west side of the lake in the state park up from the former route of the light track on the Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad.
By the time of the previous hike, I was already a gravity railroad junkie.
This historic rail line, the second really in the nation, had so many re-alignments it’s just staggering to try to figure it all out. Our route has become the circa 1860 alignment, which was longest lived of them.

Lackawaxen River

The railroad started it’s life in 1829. At that time, it was just a single track taking full and empty five ton coal cars between Honesdale and Carbondale. It was extended upon, and an “unloaded” or light track was devised to carry empty or lightly loaded (farm goods and such) cars back.
By 1866, there was a loaded and unloaded track connecting Honesdale and the Delaware and Hudson Canal with Olyphant PA. Other rail lines made connections to there, which we will likely do later in this particular series.

Lackawaxen River

Our main route we will walk is the D&H Gravity line to the D&H Canal all the way to Kingston. I hope to build upon this series with others. When the D&H is done, I will continue onto other coal themed routes I’ve not finished yet and button all of those up.
Matt suggested this series years ago, because we both love these routes and have our family histories connected with them. We’d follow the same route taken by a single piece of coal from mines to market. So far, it’s been an absolutely outstanding experience.

Abandoned road

For this hike, we would finally reach the town of Honesdale.
This one took a bit more planning. We did not have a fifteen mile stretch remaining in order to get into Honesdale on the railroad grades. I figured we could start this hike off at the same place we finished the previous one, in Prompton State Park, and we’d just follow down the east shore instead of the west. It was looking like this one was going to involve a lot of road walking, so I figured it would be a good chance to get some back woods stuff in as well as the roads.

Abandoned road

We would follow as closely as we could the old railroad line, and then get off of it in Honesdale to explore some other historic points. There is a cliff overlook Matt knew of, and other little points of interest from his own experiences up there, there were two inclined planes from the gravity line, loop on the light track right of way, the start of the canal, restaurants, and a museum with a replica of the Stourbridge Lion. We would have plenty to take up the remaining mileage necessary to hit fifteen miles there.

Prompton Lake

This was an interesting time to be out, because it was ironically nearly the anniversary of the run of the Stourbridge Lion.
The Stourbridge Lion was the first locomotive (probably the first self propelled vehicle) to operate in the Western Hemisphere. It was also one of the first locomotives to operate outside of Britain at all.
It was named the Stourbridge Lion because it was made in Stourbridge, England, and had a lion’s head on the front of the boiler. The engine was hauled to New York where it was first tested on blocks.

First run of the Stourbridge Lion depiction by Clyde Osmer DeLand in 1916

It was then hauled to Honesdale to be tested on the Delaware and Hudson’s recently built new track.
It fared well, but proved to be too heavy for the rails of the time. Probably something to do with the difference between standard and metric measures.

Stourbridge Lion

It did a test run from Honesdale to Seelyville, where the stack was too high to fit beneath a bridge, so the run had to end there. This was on August 8th, 1829.

Upper end of Prompton Lake

We would be a week earlier than the date the locomotive was run, but that’s alright. It arrived in Honesdale on July 25th, and we’d still be there on the anniversary of it’s display.
This hike didn’t go as planned, but it actually went much better. We found so much interesting stuff, and it was just a blast. At least for Matt and I I’m sure it was. I think everyone else enjoyed it overall as well. It was a little more madcap than some of the previous ones, but it also felt like a bit of a celebration, because we kind of finished the route of the loaded gravity railroad.

Old roadway at the northeast side of Prompton SP

We met at our end point in Honesdale PA. We used a grocery store in town for convenience, and we’d then shuttle with as few vehicles as possible to the “model airplane lot” at the northwest corner of Prompton State Park where we’d finished the previous one.
We had a really good showing. Lerch had an event with camping he was planning for Brandan’s birthday, and they were in the area for it, so it worked out pretty well. Also, apart from Russ and Ewa, who moderate the Abandoned Rails facebook page, we also had some other heavy hitters with regards to rail history.

Abandoned road at the northeast side

Mike Piersa is one of the tour guides and experts associated with the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, and a volunteer who dedicated countless hours to it’s development, as well as countless other projects as well.
Also, we had Mike Guzzi back out with us, who runs the NEPA View website, and is a historian with great local railroad knowledge. It was his website we used for reference when scouting several old anthracite railroads long before we ever met in person.

Ruins on East Shore Trail

We started our walk by heading out of the parking lot and onto Route 170, Creek Drive, north across the Lackawaxen River, which feeds Prompton Lake.
“Lackawaxen” is a Native American word that means “Swift Water”.
We had first seen the upper Lackawaxen on these hikes while in the villages of Poyntelle and Orson, while hiking the old NY, Ontario, and Western Railroad grade. We continued ahead a short distance and made the first right turn onto Beech Grove Road.

Nice old stone wall

A short distance ahead, we turned right on another road heading into the park further. This was the original main road, the predecessor to today’s Route 170 from before the reservoir.
Prompton Lake was created in 1960 as a flood prevention measure to protect the towns of Honesdale, Hawley, and Prompton. There were terrible floods that hit the area in 1936, 42, and 55, and it was felt the lake could help prevent more.

East Shore Trail

The lands around the reservoir became Prompton State Park in 1962.
We continued following the abandoned road beyond the gate. Originally, this road continued down stream along the east side of the Lackawaxen River.
The pavement of the old road kept getting more covered over with weeds and such as we walked. Eventually, the trail, known as East Shore Trail, turned away from the road up hill to the left.

East Shore Trail

The trail climbed much higher up the slope than the West Shore Trail on the other side did.
There were some old foundation ruins along the way, but I’m not sure for what. An old road used to connect with the main road and continued to the east. I’m not sure which one it was, but we saw some old woods roads.
There were also some impressive old stone walls back in the middle of nowhere there. We also passed other old foundations as well as the ruins of an old dam on a small tributary.
Mike Guzzi had a family obligation and had to leave us early. He wasn’t going to come along on any of it, but we worked it out that he could do a couple of miles with us at the start.
Another new girl who came out for the first time on this one also cut out early with him.

The trail meandered and had several other connections with other trails (there’s a big system over there) and eventually started to descend toward the main dam for the lake.

There was a great view of both the reservoir as well as down the Lackawaxen River. We continued across the dam to the eastern side where a service road went down to the bottom.

Jumping fun

The water at the base lookead very inviting. We put our packs down and jumped in. Lerch went over to close to the spillway to test the depth. It looked like it’d be a fun thing to jump off of.
He checked to see, and it looked like it would be fine. If he’s six foot seven and can’t tough, it’s pretty damn deep.
Lerch went first and never even touched bottom. I went up and jumped right after him, and then the two of us jumped off together at least two, probably three more times. James also went up and jumped off of the thing.
I also tried to swim up against the current into the spillway, but then there was an undercurrent that starts pulling down. It was really hard to swim up it, and I really needed the workout, but I definitely didn’t need to get sucked under, so I floated on back. The others who didn’t jump off enjoyed some more tame dipping along the rocks below the exit of the spillway for a while.

Raceway

A couple we met there when we first got to the bottom of the dam told us a good path led out to the settlement of Prompton itself along the Lackawanna River.

Power house ruins

I walked with Russ and Matt rather closely as we followed this bit of path, which started looking almost like a railroad grade. It was wide enough, but then it looked like a canal. It had a wide waterway, somewhat silted in, to the right of where we were walking.

Power house ruins

Before emerging on Route 6, there was a stone foundation along the Lackawaxen to the left. Russ and I discussed that this must have been some sort of mill, and that the waterway to the right was the raceway that powered it. It struck me that the raceway was quite larger than the old grist mill type of raceways I’m used to seeing.
We got our photos of it, and Russ and Matt found out later that this was in fact the ruins of a power house on the gravity railroad! Right where the path reaches Route 6, Plane #15 of the light track was there.

We didn’t think too much of it at the time. We crossed over Route 6 and started exploring an old cemetery directly across. We walked through and I was surprised to see that there was a trash barrel out in the place. I don’t recall ever seeing a grave yard with a trash barrel.

Foot bridge

Someone made some joke that this was Dan Lurie’s tombstone. We walked the Prompton Road ahead a bit, and there was a playground on the left side. We crossed again and checked it out. It had one of those spinning merry go round things.
There was a foot bridge across the river at this point, which we checked out, and then moved on.
The area is quite historic. It actually dates back to before the gravity railroad. Prompton takes it’s name from Promptness expected of natives to pay bills in the area.

D&H loaded track in Prompton; station site

We walked the road to the south to where the light track of the gravity railroad was shown to have crossed on my KMZ file.
We did find an obvious crossing that would have been at the base of a plane. We walked slightly further up the road and then came to a driveway that was where the loaded track went. It was now a private driveway to the west, and to the east also. Russ and Matt went up to a house where there was a girl house sitting for owners, and she said it was all private. We wouldn’t be able to walk through this section without permission. This was where Prompton Station was.

Where the light track crossed in Prompton

We moved back down the hill and had a better look at the former light track, and then returned to the foot bridge, where we would cross over the river.
The foot bridge was built on the original site of the road bridge that carried River Road.
An historic marker for the town of Prompton was sat next to a giant bit of stone. We didn’t know what it was right away, and I crossed the foot bridge and turned right on River Road with much of teh group. Matt, Russ, Dan and I’m not sure who else fell behind here.

D&H crossing near Prompton west, #16

Both the loaded and light track used to continue to the east parallel with one another, and the loaded crossed over the light somewhere in there.
In the section ahead that we would miss, they crossed in what is now a private driveway, and then again at the approach to the former site of Fortenia Station, where Plane #14 was on the light track.
While they were behind, Russ, Matt, and Dan met an old timer who came out and showed them rare photographs of the gravity railroad, and gave them a bunch of historic info. He told them that most of the power house remains were dismantled and sold off, and how the ruins we saw below Prompton Dam were actually that of the power house, which used water power, to the inclined plane.

Road bridge, alleged plane site, in view

The area of Prompton appears to be one where the tracks were rerouted a lot.
The old timer told the guys that where the road bridge is today was originally the plane. This doesn’t line up with what I have on my KMZ file, and we definitely saw what looked to be a right of way up Prompton Road further, so I’m just not sure. I’ll be looking over some books on this in the near future and hope to have several questions answered.

Old WPA highway sign

We continued walking River Road, which was the original main highway route to the east parallel with the Lackawaxen River. We came out to Rt 6, and then crossed onto the old road which moved to the north side of the present highway for a bit.
The road came back out to the highway again, where we followed it past an abandoned business on the left, and then took the old route, called Old State Road, to the right for a bit. This too came back to the bigger highway, and then we got on an abandoned section on the north side.

Old Rt 6

On the grassy swath that used to be the original highway, we saw a keystone plaque that read “WPA 1937”, which was really cool. Walking the old road, we came out to someone’s private driveway, which still had concrete slabs of the old road as part of it, and had to cut to the right back out to the current highway. His house was built right on the thing ahead.
We continued on Rt 6 ahead until we got to Bear Swamp Road which went to the right.
I found out later something that is even more interesting: this Old State Road, on both sides of the highway including the WPA project site, may have been the original 1829 rail grade.
If the maps I am reading are truly correct, there is no doubt that at least two of these sections of Old State Road are the original 1829 gravity railroad bed.

Former unloaded track at Fortenia Station site

I didn’t think we’d be able to get on the gravity line again, but I did want to see where the two sets of tracks used to cross the road, so we crossed the bridge over Lackawaxen River anyway.
The unloaded track was first here, and we crossed it where we could see it’s outline in private yards.
We went up hill just a bit, and soon reached where the loaded track went across. I wasn’t planning on walking this originally, but it looked just too inviting.

D&H loaded

This loaded track section was part of what was rehabilitated as the locomotive railroad known as the Honesdale Branch. It was therefore much wider and easier to follow because it was used after the 1899 abandonment of the gravity railroad.
As we walked on the high shelf, we could see the right of way of the light track down closer to the river below us. It at some point passed beneath the loaded track and continued a distance away on the south side of it, but I didn’t notice a particular spot where that was.

Right of way with older secondary one

A right of way just below us remained quite obvious, and I at first thought it might have been a deviation between the original gravity and the locomotive track. It still seems to be the most obvious thing that it could have been.

Beaver dam washout

Even my KMZ file shows deviations in this section betwen these two rights of way, so it’s probably an accurate assumpton.
We continued to where there must have been a bridge, and had to go down and up a bit. We then skirted some wetlands where some of the right of way is washed out. We crossed a part of a beaver dam, and eventually emerged along back yards coming into Seelyville. This was the part that had me most nervous about doing this section at all, but it turned out not to be really bad.

The grade in Seelyville

We skirted the back yard just briefly, and then the right of way moved off into the very narrow strip of trees along the Lackawanna River’s slack water behind the Seelyville dam.
We were able to walk it to the bridge where Bridge Street goes across. There were older abutments here from what I first thought was the railroad bridge, but then I realized it was likely the older road bridge. We got on the bridge to regroup, and I went over a little bit of history.
The original 1829 right of way of the D&H used to cross the river at about this point, and remained on that side until Honesdale. The bridge at Seelyville was apparently the westernmost the first run of the Stourbridge Lion reached on August 8th, 1929.

Seelyville Dam with the rail grade beyond

On the downstream side of the bridge, I was very shocked to see that what appear to be original abutments to the gravity railroad’s bridge still exist.

Old abutment for the gravity from 1829

I didn’t know if we’d be able to follow it easily here or not, but it was going to be worth it to try.
I made my way down to the old abutments and around to the right of way. The light track was just up hill from this point. We were following the circa 1868 and 1899 improved track routes for the most part. In the section ahead, some of the group would remain on either the 1899 locomotive or 1868 light track right of way while myself and some of the group remained lower to try to trace the loaded track alignment closer to the river.

Old bridge site

This was an incredibly interesting section to me. Although the 1829 route is so much older, it is mostly developed over in parking lots and such on the north side from this point.
The bridge might actually not be 1829. If maps are correct, the original 1820 track remained on the north side of the Lackawaxen River as far as Prompton where it reached the original Plane #8. Then, some time later, it was aligned to cross the river at Seelyville.

The old rail grade

The route we were following is probably 1844 but I’m not entirely certain. It was an obvious grade closer to the river where we were. The later alignment was just above us, and the unloaded track was further out. I don’t know what everyone else was walking. After we got to a point with an open field area and an old trailer, everyone split apart for a bit.
We got back together when we found a nice little spot to take a dip in the river. A bit beyond that point, we all convened on the same right of way heading out toward Honesdale.

The grade nearing Honesdale

It got narrow for a bit, but then wider as we approached the town.
Somewhere in this area, the gravity railroad loaded track used to cross over the Lackawaxen. As per the aerial images anyway.
We were all ready for a late lunch, and nearby was the Irving Cliff Brewery. This looked like the right place to stop for this one.
We wandered into town, and soon made our way to the front of the place. We ended up hanging out there for a pretty long time!

Flight!

I got a flight of beers to try with my meal, which I think was a burger. I don’t seem to recall what I ate.
I went and talked to the brewer, and we discussed coming back for a future event, when they have a beer coming out called “Coal Dust”, which is appropriate for what we’re doing.
While sitting there, the head brewer came out and gave me a glass of his special batch of stuff he doesn’t have on the menu, which was quite tasty.
When we finally headed out, things got a bit haphazard. The group split up a little.

Tracks

There were abandoned rails in the streets, that were part of the old Erie Railroad. I understand some of the group ended up exploring another right of way that I ended up not being a part of. Some followed me up hill on Chapel Street to Ridge Street. We followed this to Gravity Street, which was closely parallel with Plane #13 on the light track. We had a closer look here, and when not many were really following, I opted not to try to follow it further up hill. We did see some stonework between houses. I wondered if this could have been part of one of the historic images I’d seen of Plane 13.

There were definitely bridges and stuff along the way, so it could easily have been part of it.
We headed up to Prospect Ave and Broad Street and headed south a little bit.

Remnants of Union Plane

Carroll Street went to the left in this area, which was very close to the site of the Union Plane, another plane off of the light track. I’m fairly certain we found part of the remnants of it when we walked down Carroll and headed into the woods, as well as between Carroll and Ridge.
As we headed down hill through woods, we crossed over what I am just about certain was the near end of the loaded track.

Loaded track grade

We continued down hill and crossed what was the canal basin, the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. From this point, except for where we revisit the other routes of the D&H Railroad, the main part of this series will be to follow the canal route.

The canal basin and rail terminus in Honesdale

We walked across parking lots, and I just felt overwhelmed by everything I was looking at. Multiple generations of tracks and the canal, then the later Erie Railroad as well as whatever other roads and historic buildings had my head spinning. I want to know more.

Despite wanting to know more, I couldn’t possibly this time. There was just too much. The group was splitting apart, Russ had a mission he and Ewa were working on, and others had a camp party to get to. I didn’t know where everyone was heading off to.

Stourbridge Lion replica

All I knew was that I had to stick with Matt if I wanted to see anything with an explanation at this point. He pointed out where the canal basin was, and which points the interchanges were to some degree. He then took us into town and past the museum where we could look in and see the replica of the Stourbridge Lion.
The original locomotive was torn about and only the boiler remains. It’s in Baltimore.

Plane 13

We headed out along 6th Street to the east a bit, to where there was a foot bridge crossing over. We took a brief dip in the Lackawaxen River here, and then we walked along Riverside Drive on the other side heading north.
At this point, we were pretty much done with the gravity railroad and the canal for this hike. This was just one last thing to close off the day at Matt’s suggestion, and I think it was awesome.
The point is know as Irving Cliff, and no doubt countless historic photos have been taken from this location, although I was not able to identify anything enough to line up for a then and now presentation.
We reached the trail head that went ot the top, known as the Horatio Allen Trail for the former President of the Erie Railroad, and the man who assempled and drove the Stourbridge Lion out of Honesdale.
Allen was also known as the inventor of the movable wheel trucks on trains, and engineered many other railroads and even some of the Old Croton Aqueduct in New York.

Honesdale

We followed the trail up hill on a switchbacking route. On the way up, we realized that just about everyone had left us out there. I had taken my van to the start, and the only one with a car remaining at the end was Dan.

Irving Cliff view

Very fortunately, Stephen stepped up and went with Dan to pick my van up from the starting point. The rest of us would check out the view, and then make our way down on the same trail to be picked up on Riverside Drive by Stephen when he arrived.

View at Irving Cliff

The latter portion of the hike got a little crazy, and it was definitely sensory overload for me, but I really loved it. There’s so much to learn, but I was not really ready to take more in on this day. We had seen a whole lot of the gravity railroad I didn’t even think I’d ever be able to see. We finally connected with the former canal, and we’re ready to set up the next several hikes.
We have a lot of great stuff to look forward to. For the sections ahead on the canal route, we’ll be able to walk bits of it to Hawley. We’ll save some of those for the warm months only when there are not only swim spots, but places we might have no choice but to get wet (like the section north of Port Jervis along the river). On those weeks, we’ll revisit the D&H Gravity branches, as well as the Pennsylvania Coal Company Gravity line where we left off on Moosic Mountain and there are no opportunities for swimming.
I’m acquiring more maps, and Mike Guzzi has shown me a lot more from his collection, so I have a much greater understanding of what we have seen, and what we will be looking at as a group in the near future.
A lot of these first few hikes were a learning experience on what we need to explore. The canal will be more straightforward, as will be the other gravity railroad sites.
These are definitely something to look forward to.

The group