Hike #1163; Stockton to Flemington

Hike #1163; Stockton to Flemington

9/25/18 Stockton to Flemington with Shane Blische, Sarah Jones, and Red Sean Reardon

This next hike would be a point to point, between Stockton and Flemington NJ. I posted it somewhat last minute. My plan had been to go on vacation the night I did this one, but things fell through with the timing, so I still wanted to get out.

The Wickecheoke

I’ve loved the Wickecheoke Creek for years, and there was still some more stuff I wanted to see out there along it. There are also some great back roads into Flemington I wanted to use, so I figured for a last minute hike, putting a hike out there covering that would work out fine. It was also in Shane’s area, so he’d have less probably getting to it.

Wickecheoke Creek

After meeting at the end point at the Taco Bell in Flemington, we shuttled to the start point in Stockton. This was a great spot, I realized, which was why we’d used it so much lately.
From here, we started walking along the old Bel Del Railroad bed to the north toward Prallsville. Shane gave us a little more history again, which is presented here in this journal entry in italics:
Old photo taken by Frank Barry in 1950, from Hunterdon County Historical Society collection. Pennsylvania Railroad L1 locomotive #1537 with freight train BL5 heads south for Wilmington, D.E. coming from Phillipsburg, N.J. near the Prallsville Mills in Stockton.

The track to the right is the siding for the Prallsville Mills, then operating as J. W. Smith Son's Co. hardware store. Milling operations ceased after World War Two. The hardware store business closed in 1968. The siding was then leased for storage of private passenger cars into the 1970s.

New photo by Shane Blische, 2018.
Below: Old photo taken by Karl Geffchen in July 1975. After rail service to Prallsville Mills ceased in the late 1960s, the railroad siding was leased for the storage of two privately owned passenger cars.

One of the cars was former Pennsylvania Railroad sleeping car "Herald Square".

It was built in 1929 by Pullman Standard, later reconfigured as an office car in 1948 and numbered #8556. By 1967, the car was retired. A Pennsylvania Railroad signalman named Ed Joyselin purchased the car and leased the Prallsville Mills siding to house car. He kept it there for a decade and restored it as the "New York Ontario & Western" Chenango. In summer 1978, Conrail began voicing their plans to abandon track through Stockton, so a deal was made with Black River & Western Railroad in moving the car from Prallsville Mills to Ringoes, N.J. where the car still resides to this day. The other car reportedly was moved a few years earlier and ended up in the New York Adirondacks.
New photo by Shane Blische 2018.

Old photo taken by Frank Barry sometime in the 1950s, from Hunterdon County Historical Society collection. A Pullman Standard built Pennsylvania Railroad doodlebug is seen crossing the Wickecheoke Creek trestle bridge heading north for Phillipsburg.

The Prallsville Mills can be seen in the background. The first grist mill was built in this immediate vicinity in 1794 by John Prall Jr. The arrival of the Bel-Del in 1852 greatly increased profitability for the milling business. A sawmill was built the same year. On August 21st, 1874, the original John Prall Jr. mill as well as the original Bel-Del wooden covered bridge over the Wickecheoke Creek were destroyed by fire. The cause were embers spewed out by a wood burning locomotive. A large group of railroad laborers were put together to quickly rebuild the bridge, which they completed in two days. The mill however was not rebuild until 1877. Metal sheeting was put over the mill roof to prevent fire from destroying the roof. A grain silo was built in 1891. By the 1930s, the Prallsville Mills were run by J. W. Smith's Sons Co. The grist mill ceased operating in 1946, reconfigured as a hardware store. The sawmill continued to run as late as 1955! The Smith Sons ran the hardware store until 1968. The very last train crossed the current bridge, built by the American Bridge Co. of New York in 1913, on November 12th, 1978. The right of way became the D&R State Park rail-trail in 1984. The Prallsville Mills complex was purchased by the state in 1976 and became a preserved historic site, now run by the Delaware River Mills Society. New photo and history by Shane Blische, July 2018.
Once we got to Prallsville, we turned off to the right past the Delaware River Mills association properties. We turned left on Rt 20 and crossed the Wickecheoke on the road bridge.

Wickecheoke Trail

We turned right briefly on Kingwood-Stockton Road, and then there was a trail blaze, kind of vague, off to the right. We turned here, and there was little undergrowth along the creek, so we were able to follow it up stream. There is a good deep hole in it here, but I held off from swimming at this point.
We continued along the creek, then headed inland out to Lower Creek Road. At that point, the Wickecheoke Trail follows Lower Creek Road to the north. There are some lovely views of the creek to the right.

Wickechoeoke Trail

Shane climbed into a nice little old quarry to the left along the road. I also pointed out some abandoned old steps that lead up to a private house on the left.
Soon, the trail turned away from the creek through fields to the left. It was well mowed and pleasant. At this point, the road separates the trail from the creek a bit.
We continued along the trail through the fields heading north, until it came out at Lower Creek Road again, at the opening to the old through style pony truss bridge spanning it. We took a break here, because it’s an excellent swim spot. In the past, the water I recall as over my head, but it seemed shallower.

Wickechoeoke Dip

Sarah talked to the ducks a lot while Shane and I cooled off. I was going to jump off of the bridge, but it just didn’t seem deep enough at this point, so I didn’t bother.
Once we were cooled off, we headed up across the bridge and followed Lower Creek Road to the north.
Soon, the trail turned off of the road into the woods on the left. It was a nice section, but something seemed different from the last few times I had done the trail. I soon realized it was rerouted.

Washout

A spot I had taken photos of with a picnic bench had completely washed off into the creek was now washed out even more. The trail through this and one other area were completely gone. It turns out it had been rerouted away from the edge of the creek because it looks like other sections are going to wash out in the near future.
The trail did continue along one of the washouts which looked really interesting and provided a better view of the creek.

Wickecheoke washout

The trail passed a giant cairn, and then headed back out to Lower Creek Road. From there, the trail officially follows the road for a bit. There’s another trail on the other side that requires fording the creek, but we weren’t going to do that this time.
We continued on, and there were still lots of signs against the Penn East pipeline expansion that is supposed to go across the Wickecheoke Creek in this area on Lower Creek Road.
The pipeline issues are big, that much is for certain. I can’t even find the amount of info on Penn East that I’m looking for, but I learned a lot while fighting Tennessee Gaps when I worked for the northern region of the state parks. They’ll pull off what they can.

A resident's sign on Lower Creek Road

In a lot of cases, they try to slip by because they say they are only expanding upon existing rights of way. In the case of Penn East, at least where we saw it on this hike, there doesn’t appear to be an existing right of way. If there is, it’s pretty obscure.

Anti Penn East art

With Tennessee Gap, they admitted that it wasn’t really even to take the gas into NJ where it would end in Mahwah; it was a conduit to just hold it. In effect, nothing more than a storage facility for the gas. Consider this: this substance is highly explosive. It certainly cannot all be stored in one spot. What a liability!
So....they take their liability and they spread it out in a long drawn out storage facility over our public and private lands where it has the ability to encroach on homes and such.

Green Sergeant Covered Bridge

Tennessee Gas tried to pull the wool over our eyes on what trails they could close and what ones they couldn’t, and I ended up blocking that through some of the meetings I attended. It was obvious they were hiding something because they left the only trail with a federal designation besides the Appalachian Trail off the list entirely, the Highlands Trail. I told them “You don’t miss something like that when you have all of these other obscure trails on your list that the average joe would miss”.
This is only on the trail aspects of things. I don’t have the expertise in other areas to see what they’re overlooking, but I know in Pennsylvania that company was fined for all sorts of damages while in New Jersey it was allowed to just slip by. It was certainly corrupt.

Green Sergeant's Covered Bridge

We continued up Lower Creek Road to the Green Sergeant’s Covered Bridge, the only remaining authentically historic covered bridge remaining in New Jersey.
The bridge was originally built in 1872, and like other covered bridges, had it’s share of damages. It was badly damaged in 1960, then dismantled and replaced with a modern bridge next to it. By 1961, public outcry called for the bridge to be repaired and put back. It was rebuilt using as much of the original wood as possible and placed back over the Wickecheoke.

Rock outcrop on the trail

I talked on the phone with Red Sean, who was coming to join us. I gave him roughly where we would be heading, and updated him along the way on how he could join us. We crossed through the covered bridge, and then turned to the right on Upper Creek Road. The trail route is on the road as it heads up hill and starts to turn away from the creek a bit, and then cuts into the woods past a former house site. We continued gradually along the shelf, and then down hill slightly toward the creek. We got to the point where the trail officially crosses over, but I decided we would stay on the west side of it for a bit to find a better spot.

A little falls

I made a bit of a goof in here. Where we stayed on the west side, the trail actually goes to the east side, the comes back to the west again. Another connection then leads back again to the east. The water of the Wickecheoke is usually pretty easy to cross without getting wet, but on this occasion it was really high, so I avoided the crossings. We should have just stayed on the west side for longer because we would have had an easier run of it.

Wickecheoke

The spot where we crossed was the likely trail crossing spot for the second location, but when we crossed, there was no official trail on the east side. We ended up kind of bushwhacking through the mess heading north. When the slopes got too steep, and it was starting to get really dark, I could see via the aerials on my google maps that we were getting really close to Pine Hill Road. The weeds were just too bad, and it would be far easier for us to just bushwhack the short distance up to the road. I felt more confident of this when I saw a car go by. I helped Sarah ford the creek and we eventually had a good place to go up.
Once on the road, I let Red Sean know where he could meet us at a parking lot a bit further down. We continued on the much more pleasant Pine Hill Road to the north. While waiting for us, apparently someone saw Red Sean standing on top of his black SUV and called the police. He was apparently up there looking for us down the trail from above.

Wickecheoke crossing site

We didn’t know this at the time, and we soon came upon him at the car and continued north.
We turned left at Old Mill Road, which is the official connecting site. We missed a lot of the trail section to the north, but wouldn’t have had an easy run of it if we’d tried. That’s a route for during the daylight hours.
We crossed over the Wickecheoke below on a pony truss bridge, then turned to the right on Upper Creek Road again. These roads were all unpaved, so they make for a great walking route. I think only two cars passed us on this entire section.
There are some nice falls on the Wickecheoke parallel with this section, but we didn’t bother to go in at this point. We wouldn’t have seen anything.
While walking Red Sean called Justin up because he wanted Justin to see a photo of his scrotum with a bowl of nuts he had sent on a previous night hike, which Justin had made the image that appears when Red Sean calls. I think he called him a couple of times saying “I just wanted you to see my nuts...”.
We continued on Upper Creek Road and seemed to lose Shane somewhere along the way. I think he was photographing old bridges or something. We turned right on Kingwood-Locktown Road and passed the historic cemetery. We then reached Lockton Sergeantsville Road. I was trying to get my maps to load to make the next move, and I had originally intended to go right. Shane started going left, so I just went that way, and at the old stone church we turned right on Locktown School Road.

Crossing

This turned out to be a bad move. It was a beautiful, narrow, little used road, but I had intended to go right briefly, and then turn left to head east on Locktown-Flemington Road. There is a field trail system out that way I had wanted to see, but we can do it on another variation of this hike in the future. I can save it for the Summer and really make something good of it I think.
I shelved the original plan and came up with another rather quickly that would put us on mostly good, little used back roads. We headed to Wiskey Lane, and turned left briefly, then right on Boar’s Head Road. This took us out to Rt 579, Croton Road. We turned right on that for a while, which was a busier, wider road, but we didn’t see all that much traffic. We then turned to the left when we got to Harmony School Road. This was a narrower, less used road again, so it was rather nice. My legs were starting to bother me from all of the pavemen though.
I shelved most of my plan to go through from this point, but I did salvage one section that worked briefly. We reached Sergeantsville-Flemington Road, and I wanted to cut through another park to the south, but instead we turned left, then right into a development on Autumn Leaf Blvd. We followed this down to a left turn on Beehive Lane, then right on Dorchester Drive. We took this to a left on Vail Lane, and then from here we came to a brief trail on an access lane, gravel surface, into the woods to the left before more homes. This took us out and around a retention pond and then emerged on Providence Drive. I had other ideas of stuff to do in this area that involved more apartment buildings and little bits of greenway behind them, but at this point we were so close and had already gone out of the way, we didn’t need any extra.
We reached South Main Street with a field straight across and some kind of car dealership.

Moon over the field

We just went straight across the field and made our way out to the edge of the dealership. We then cut to the left which brought us out to Rt 202 and 31. We headed to the north on that just a little bit and we could see the strip malls and the Taco Bell ahead, the end of our hike.

Possums are great

I was overall pretty happy with this one, and it opened my eyes to a lot more stuff I can do for Winter hikes in the area as long as there’s no snow on the ground. It’s looking like I can milk a minimum of five more miles out of those lands with the field trails, apartments, pleasant back roads, and other lands.
This hike was also another further reminder that I can’t be trying to do as much of the really ambitious stuff with the days getting shorter. It’s throwing me off because it’s still been hot enough to swim, but it’s getting to be too dark to see at even around 6:30. I’ll have to plan for no more than two hours of rugged trails on the night hikes, or less if it involves car shuttling at the start. Swimming weather will be over soon, so we can shift gears to stuff that doesn’t involve swimming but we still want to see. I’ll also have to consider hunting seasons and not be on certain trails around dusk. It makes for some limitations, but we can get by them and still have a great time.
This would be my last regular hike before my next backpacking vacation and connections further to the east. My brother would fill in for me for the regular group hike next, and Shane would fill in for me on a forthcoming night hike.

HAM