Hike #922; Southfields Area Loop

Hike #922; Southfields Area Loop

3/12/16 Sterling Forest/Harriman/Southfields Loop with Justin Gurbisz, Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Terri Allen, Brad Anesi, Julia Vogelsang, Natalia Gokhman, Monika Kwiecinska, Michele Valerio, Charles ?, Vicki ?, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Marissa Panton, Jenny Tull, Tim B., Edward DiSalvo, Gail Ingham, and Dan Asnis

Our next hike would be a very odd loop, put together using trails in both Sterling Forest State Park and Harriman State Park in NJ. It had been a while since I’d posted a hike in the area, and I wanted to do something no one else would typically do, like most of my hikes.
I came up with a very strainge loop that would incorporate trails in both parks, as well as old roadways all in the vicinity of the village of Southfields. The route would have lots of views and interesting terrain, and be something no one would bother putting together because it meant utilizing three different NY/NJ Trail Conference maps. To most, this would be too much a pain to put together.

View on Wildcat Mountain Trail

We met at a parking area at the corner of where Rt 17 and 17A separate, not too far over the NY state line. I got there pretty quickly and easily, and wore my tan suit. Justin also showed up in his shirt and tie. I love when other people get in on the off the wall hiking attire.

View of the cars below. Jenny, Carolyn, and Marissa are at the last car!

We had to wait a while at the start for people running late. Several were late this time. Unfortunately, Marissa had a problem with her car when it locked her keys in. It was something that wasn’t supposed to be able to happen with the new car, but it kept her, Jenny, and Carolyn from joining us right away.
We started hiking from the lot up to the parking lot at the trail head. Charles was there waiting for us, thinking that was the lot I had had in mind. I probably should have used that one, but the one we used was much closer to the highway and more visible. Wildcat Mountain Trail led from the lot up hill, first following an old road alignment parallel with present Rt 17. It then began gradually climbing, with a couple of cascading streams around.

Pond on Townsend Trail

We continued to climb, and I got up to the very front, far ahead of everyone else. The trail went up and down along the topography, and there were some pretty nice glacial erratics. I was happy to be back up in the mountains. This was a part of Sterling Forest I had never been to before. This didn’t connect at all with anything I’d done yet, but it would in short order. The trail descended into a small valley between two sections of the ridge, then ascended again to a sweeping panorama of the valley to the south. We could see all of 17 and the intersection with 17A. We could even see Carolyn, Jenny, and Marissa in the parking lot below, with all of our cars. Unfortunately, during our entire time there, we didn’t see anyone else show up to open the car up for them. When we were in the lot, I tried using the Katana blade I had in my trunk to get into it, but it just wouldn’t work.
Some were falling far behind, but everyone caught up at the overlook. We could also see a bit to the north, up the Ramapo River valley, to the east to a couple of lakes, and to the west toward Green Pond Mountain in Harriman.

View on Townsend Trail

We continued on along Wildcat Mountain Trail, which ascended a bit more from the view, then started a gradual descend through rolling hills of the Highlands. We descended a bit more until we came to a small pond with an old masonry dam. It was a lovely little spot. Justin and I got there first, followed by Charles and then I think Brad and Julia. The rest of the group soon followed, except for Ed, Gail, and Dan. We hung out here for a bit, and Ed called me because Gail was feeling sick. They’d have to go back. There’s been a bug going around, she she’d handled tougher hikes than this before, so it was probably a good idea to bow out so it didn’t get worse. Dan also had not caught up. I texted him to turn left when he got to the next trail intersection, onto Townsend Trail. I didn’t get a response.

View on Townsend Trail

After a bit, I got another call from Ed, and he told me that Dan had passed him, but that he’d lost his phone. He was walking around looking for it, so I figured he was out for the day. Dan couldn’t find it, so at some point he tried to continue following the route, but he never caught up with us.
We continued on Townsend Trail, which followed foot paths as well as some sections of very old woods roads climbing gradually to the south. A lot of these roads were probably old charcoal or logging roads. The entire area is part of Tuxedo NY. Tuxedo gets it’s name from the Native American word “tucseto” meaning either “place of bear” or “place of water”. In 1779 the early American government created the Continental Road between present day Tuxedo Park to present day Rt 17. A lot of these old roads could date back to around that time. The formal Tuxedo jacket derives it’s name from the area of Tuxedo Park because NY City’s social elite would hang around the area with the expensive dinner jackets.

View on Townsend Trail

We followed the Townsend Trail gradually up hill switching between woods roads and foot paths. There was a lady when we were down by the pond with her dog, and she moved up the Townsend Trail as well. I was ahead of the group and passed her. She passed me again when we got to the next overlook, facing to the south. The group caught up with me again, and we moved on along the top of the ridge to another spot with a view of the Indian Kill Reservoir. There was a pile of rocks with a stick out the top, a view to the south, to the west to the hills north of the Indian Kill. It was a pretty nice spot. I commented to the lady as we caught back up with her again that it was a great spot, but her dog, I think a yellow lab, was happier to see us than she was. We kept catching up with her, and she was looking like she hated us at this point.
I decided we’d take a longer break and let her try to get a good distance ahead of us.
As we were leaving this overlook, I got a call from the three girls that they were now trying to catch us. They were along the Wildcat Mountain Trail, and I told them to turn right to try to cut us off near Southfields Furnace, which was where we were heading. They had gotten to near that area, but somehow turned around and ended up walking the exact same route that we were walking, only about an hour behind us. They said they had seen Dan walking on the trail looking for his phone.
We descended to a woods road that accesses a communications tower on the top of the hill. We walked along it opposite the trail briefly to see if there might be anything abandoned up there. I had found an abandoned house on the aerial images of the area, but we couldn’t get to it very easily, so we just remained on the trail, which followed the woods road down hill at this point.
The trail continued on the road down hill, past an occupied home, and out to another abandoned road. This is now the route of the Beaver Meadow Extension Trail, actually just a woods road and the extension of Beaver Meadow Road from the south. This trail followed that road to the east pretty easily. We continued over the crest of a smaller hill, then down the other side without too much problem. I talked to the girls again on the phone and told them the turns they would need to make to get caught up with us.
I had actually walked the Beaver Meadow Extension before, with Jillane back in the Fall of 2010. The hiking group was in a lull at that time, and no one but the two of us showed up, so we did the hike. That route included this old road, so from this point the hike connected with the rest that I’d done.
We contined to the end of the trail, at a bend in the dirt road where it meets up with Orange Turnpike, at the intersection with the Wildcat Mountain Trail, which continued from the first trail to the right of the pond to reach this point. We turned on this and crossed Orange Turnpike where there was a great footbridge.

Old am

There was the ruin of an old dam to the left, and the lady we had seen earlier was with her dog at the stream. We had seen her once before, but I held everyone up so we didn’t have to be too close to her.
We took a break here at this point, on the creek in front of the Southfields Furnace. There was a prefabricated footbridge here over the creek for the trail to cross. I know the girls were catching up with us, and that they’d taken the Townsend Trail and were heading to the Beaver Meadow Extension. Justin walked across the top of the old dam on a piece of railroad rail that sat in the top of it, but even he didn’t bother to go across the thing. Charles did take the chance and made it over though.
I didn’t bother getting too close to the old furnace ruin yet, because we would be coming back to this very point. We were about to do the Indian Hill Loop route, which is just to the north and connects with the Appalachian Trail.
I took my shoes off and decided to wade around in the water a little bit. It wasn’t too terribly cold out, and looked like some fun. I was wearing the rather newer Merrill hiking shoes that Annika had given me, and I wasn’t ready to get them wet and ruin them quite yet.
After a bit, we were on our way, on the red blazed Furnace Loop Trail to the left. We began climbing steeply at times to the top of Indian Hill on this trail.
I got a call from Dan somewhere along the way a bit further back, confirming he’d lost his phone and went out to purchase a new one. I had periodically been calling it in case anyone was walking by and could find it, but no such luck.

View on Indian Hill Trail

We followed the Furnace loop up hill and turned left on the Indian Hill Loop Trail. This led us to another nice overlook facing to the south. We continued north on the trail, along the top of what felt like a sort of ridge, and then descended a bit to a parking area at the end of a dirt drive. There was a kiosk there describing the history of the area. I communicated with the girls and let them know the turns we were taking as we moved onward. The parking area we were at was actually sort of the trail head, with the beginning and end of the trail separated on different levels. We walked down the dirt drive briefly to an old woods road, gated off, which was the other end of the Indian Hill Loop. We walked on that section and began to gradually climb up hill once more. Another marked side trail followed a woods road straight where Indian Hill Loop went off to the left. I figure that is probably a cutoff in the middle of the loop marked since the map I had was printed.
The route we took continued along mostly old woods roads, but also switched to foot path sections. The area had tons of old stone walls everywhere, very impressive ones delineating odd rectangles in the landscape. we crossed over one high one at a cut in the wall, and passed another couple who had just gone off trail by accident. The trail followed this wall for a bit, then a blue blazed trail went straight to the AT while the yellow blazes turned right.

Old road on Indian Hill Loop

We passed through a gap in stone walls and then walked an incredible abandoned road, which I don’t know the history of, for a time heading north. This was a well graded road, and the walls were among the widest stone walls I have ever seen. This was certainly a very special route, something to impress someone. Thinking about it now, I wondered if this was one of the colonial roads set up during the Revolution. Perhaps it was a route intended to connect the Southfields Furnace with the Clove Furnace, visible off Interstate 87 a bit to the north of where we were hiking? We walked the road for a bit, then turned hard right, heading east.
Much of this section was incredibly relaxing and beautiful. It only started getting hard again after the woods road. Then, we had to climb just a little bit more, but it paid off. There was a really nice view to the east, looking into Harriman State Park and Green Pond Mountain.

View of Elk Pen area from Indian Hill

To the east it was just mountains, but slightly to the left in the view I could see the bridge which carried the Appalachian Trail over the NY State Thru Way, at the Elk Pen Area, a meadow just off of the AT where once there was an unsuccessful attempt to establish an Elk population in Harriman.
To the north, through the trees, we had a good seasonal view of the famous Agony Grind, a rock the AT climbs up. We could see up the valley from here along the Ramapo River as well as down in the direction we were heading.
To the south in the valley, if we looked hard enough we could see the Southfields Pedestrian Bridge crossing over the Thru Way. I explained to everyone that this was the route we would be taking.

View from Indian Hill up the Ramapo valley

Unfortunately, several members of the group decided they were going to try to take a shortcut back when they got the chance.
We continued along the ridge for a bit, with some more nice views, then started descending at times steeply to the south.
When we got to the bottom of a hill, we reached the other part of the red blazed Furnace loop we had been on before, and we’d turn left to follow that section of it. Just then, we heart hollering coming from the rock outcrops above. Carolyn, Jenny, and Marissa had managed to catch up with us! After all of the time waiting with the car, they did the entire hike as we had done it, and more because they walked further on the Wildcat Mountain Trail and turned back, and then caught up with us! Quite an impressive pace they had to be holding in order to reach us at this point!

Southfields Furnace

We soon reached the historic Southfields Furnace. This furnace was build by the Mr. Townsend for which the trail we were on was named, in 1804. Three generations of Townsends were iron masters at the site. Peter Townsend was first, followed by Peter Townsend II, and then Peter Townsend III. The furnace closed only two years after the third Peter’s death in 1887.

Southfields Furnace

The trail offered us a great view of the old furnace right from the front. It was in bad disrepair. At least we could still tell what it was, although it is in bad need of stabilization. Sections of the block are separating pretty badly and look as though they are ready to collapse. A top of sorts has been erected over top of the blast furnace to keep it from further deteriorating. The south side of the furnace has a large section of stone out of it. There is a pile below it that might be some of the refuse, but there are reports that some of this stone might have been “borrowed” to build another structure later on. This makes sense, because the furnace was abandoned such a very long time ago.

Southfields Furnace

The back portion of the furnace had terrific archways heading off from it. This was probably an or car route to deliver the raw material to the top of the furnace for blast. It’s amazing that these structures have lasted more so than the furnace itself. They now had vertical braces under them to keep them from collapsing.
Around the outside of the furnace were building foundations for what was probably once quite an extensive iron works. There was chain link fence all the way around the outside of the remaining structures, certainly for people’s safety; any of these blocks look as though they can fall at just about any time.
I had to walk around for a closer look. The trail skirted it to the north side, but everyone followed me on the route closer to it. I made my way up along the edge of the furnace, with stone work reaching right to the edge of the creek.

There is a lovely waterfall on the creek just slightly above the furnace. We walked hugging the stone wall to the right as closely as possible, then reached better footing along the creek to make our way up to the foot bridge. Justin and I jumped across the creek at a more reasonable spot, and Vicki followed us. Everyone else went to take the bridge. We then took a break and let everyone catch up. Not everyone could move as speedily past the craziness that we had just gone by.
We crossed the creek and continued on Wildcat Mountain Trail’s white blazes, across Orange Turnpike and onto the original highway route, now called Hall Drive. The trail follows this section of road shortly.

The group at Southfields Furnace

After a short bit, the trail enters the woods on the old road. There were large rocks placed in the trail over a wet area to allow for a dry crossing. We continued on the trail through some woods heading slightly up hill.

Wildcat Mountain Trail off Hall Drive

Once we got across the wet area and headed up hill a bit. The trail officially turned off to the right at a big tree, onto another old road route, but we turned left along another. This road parallels the present day Orange Turnpike, and I can only assume that this is the abandoned earlier route of that highway.
The route turned right and followed a shelf along the mountain side heading east toward the town of Southfields. It’s grading was such that I wondered for a time if it could have been one time a railroad tramway from the furnace. It was really pretty well built. The road passed close to one house, and I suppose might have entered private land, though the signs were always on the house side of the roadway.

Old roadway

We continued walking the road gradually down hill toward Southfields.
When we got just about to the village, there were two large stone pillars where it came out to present day Orange Turnpike. If this wasn’t the original Orange Turnpike, it must have been a gated entrance to some other large estate. Whatever it was, it was something important to have an entrance like that, and to be so well built. The pillars were just about at someone’s yard, so we hurried along down hill into town, walking Orange Turnpike down toward Rt 17.
When we got to the highway, Natalia, Monika, and Michele all decided to cut out early and walk the road back to the cars.

Old highway

They almost followed their GPS back, which would have taken them very far out of the way, all the way back the Long Meadow Extension, then along 17A west. If they would have taken the Wildcat Mountain Trail, it’d have been shorter but they’d have had to climb the mountain once again. They were best off just staying with us to 17 and following that the short bit back to the cars. We said goodbye to them and I went over what we were doing next, heading into Harriman State Park.
We passed an old church on the right just before the intersection, on the south side of Orange Turnpike with “For Sale” signs on it.

Old church in Southfields

I wonder if this could be the old Southfields Methodist Church I read about, built in 1834. It was quite a handsome structure, and there really isn’t much else in Southfields that could be referred to in this history.
At the intersection, there was a sign around a post, which Justin pulled up to be more prominent, and he wrote “HAM” on it with his sharpie marker he always has, above an arrow that was already on the sign. We then moved on along Rt 17 to the north just a bit, then turned right down toward the railroad tracks.
There used to be a train station in Southfields by this point, on the old Erie line, but nothing remains of that today.

HAM

We headed down to the tracks, where the station used to be, which is now the terminus of the Nurian Trail.
One of the things that really amazes me is that even these trails are now historic. Back in the day, hiking trails were planned to connect railroad station to railroad station, because of course no one had cars yet. Today, although the railroad station at Southfields is long gone, the trail still remains in place as it did when there was still a station, and it still follows the tracks to the north a short while before cutting off to the right onto Harriman lands.
The Nurian Trail is no exception to this. It was known as ‘the short trail’ to the Ramapo-Dunderberg Trail, a shortcut from the station to get to this other popular route.

Nurian Trail over Ramapo River

“The Short Trail” was redubbed Nurian Trail for it’s builder, Kerson Nurian.
The trail follows the tracks a short bit, then turns right down an old woods road to a steel bridge over the Ramapo River. The old bridge site next to the present metal footbridge was that of the Monroe and Haverstraw Turnpike in 1824. The town of Southfields was once known as “Monroe”, but somehow it got it’s historic name back. In 1898 Edward Harriman built his own bridge over the river about a quarter mile from the location, so when Mr. Nurian layed his trail out, he had it cross a ford where Harriman’s bridge used to be, in 1929. The park later built a wooden footbridge over the river where the old Turnpike bridge was, and then Nurian’s trail was rerouted to cross it instead. The footbridge was washed out and replaced several times until the current span was built in 1950.

Southfields Pedestrian Bridge

The trail was nearly closed in 1953 when the Thru Way was built, because there was no overpass and it was looking like it’d be too expensive. A good argument was made my NYNJ Trail Conference and their then Chairman William Burton, a naval architect, designed the current bridge, which was opened in 1956. At the time, there was still a station stop in Southfields. If this were to be done today, they’d probably just say to close the trail. The passenger service to Southfields ended in 1970, though bus service still continues.
We crossed the bridge, and the trail turned to the left following an old turnpike road to the north, which predated the Thru Way. It then turned to the right steeply up hill.

Nurian Trail

We climbed on the trail over the mountain, and then had a really pleasant section with only minor ups and downs for a bit. We came to some of the old woods roads that lead into the camp at Lake Stahahe, which I had followed with Jillane when we scouted out some of this section, but I didn’t want to go that way just yet. I wanted instead to follow some of the Nurian Trail beyond to where I could connect it with other things. We crossed over a lovely little brook, then made our way onto a short switchback section. There were tons of blow downs in the area. There were so many that I wondered why they didn’t just reroute the trail rather than cut them out.

After the hill, the trail turned slightly to the right. I was a bit confused that we were not getting to a woods road that my map showed that we should be reaching. The trail was shown sort of closer to the camp at Lake Stahahe I thought. It was kind of looking like it had been rerouted since the blazes didn’t show much wear. We continued around a corner at past a lovely little waterfall. Beyond, the trail started to ascend a bit more to a hillside. I knew this could not be right. I went up the hill a bit and realized we would not be hitting any of the woods roads on that grade. I did notice however that there was a side trail down hill from a turn, that must be SOMETHING.

Abandoned old Nurian Trail

We headed back, and I started walking down the rather obvious route. It did not look like a woods road. At best, this would have been an old log skid from the lumbering days, but I wasn’t sure. We continued down it, and it was feeling like a closed trail route.
Soon, I came upon well constructed water bars: this WAS in fact the old trail route. Nurian Trail, on my map, is in fact shown going closer to the camp and Lake Stahahe, and must have been rerouted to keep farther away from that camp. We had located the closed older trail. Once at the bottom, it was easy to see how we could walk to the camp.

We emerged onto a woods road and followed it toward the camp buildings. Some of the farther ones looked outright abandoned, but it was obvious by the tire tracks that at least someone goes out there somewhat often. Rather than take the main road, we took the dirt one lower and closer to the edge of Lake Stahahe than the other ones. Some of this might have been part of Nurian Trail in the past. Kerson Nurian was apparently quite an eccentric. He was a trail builder who never asked for park or private land owner permission, perhaps because he was from Bulgaria and had different ideas about these things.

Camp building

We continued along the edge of Lake Stahahe, sometimes on the very edge, sometimes on the main road, and sometimes on trails and such that went between buildings. Some of these buildings were in really good shape, some of them were in pretty bad shape, and other ones just appeared to be closed altogether.
Lake Stahahe was originally known as Car Pond, but no one knows where that name came from. It was later redubbed Lake Stahahe after the Mohican Indian word meaning “rocks in the water”. The lake is about 88 acres, but was once much smaller. It was dammed about 1914, and dammed again just downstream from the original dams a couple of years later.

Justin and his horn

Some of the buildings look as though they were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, though I’m not sure who did the work in the area. Some of Harriman State Park was built by the predecessor to the CCC, known as TERA, or Temporary Emergency Relief Administration.
Boy Scout Camps were established at the lake starting around 1913, and later on it was the site of social welfare agency stuff. We wandered through between the buildings to have a look at everything. One of the pavilions we could just walk directly through. No one had been through in quite a long time, but there was an air horn left sitting out.

View at Stahahe

We continued along the road past what seemed to be the last building. The road then went through a big rock cut near the south side of the lake. There was a sign there on a post reading “Sound Horn”, and Justin scared the bejesus out of the group by sounding the one he had found.
We continued along the road as it straightened out again. I noticed that Brad and Julia had disappeared somewhere. I had poor service, but sent out a text message to check on them. The two of them do pretty hard core hiking and are always exploring, so I didn’t worry too much about them. It turned out they just kind of stayed on the shore, because when we left the camp later, Brad messaged me that he could see us.

Camp building

On the last straight away on the road, there were abandoned old camp buildings up hill to the left. I was surprised that Justin didn’t follow me, but I ran up the hill to have a look around. I had explored some of this before with Jillane, but wanted to see it again.
There was an old wooden out building first, to the left, then a camp building of larger size just beyond near the edge of the slope. One side of this building was definitely collapsing pretty badly.
The main building was much more serious and incorporated a lot of stone. It too looked like the CCC style construction, but it was in pretty bad shape. The stone work looked fine. The bottom level of it was open, so I went to have a look.

Camp stuff

There was nothing really to see down there. I could walk from room to room but I didn’t find it all that interesting. I left the building and walked around the top on a mossed over paved road. One of the bits of plywood that covered the windows had been removed so I could look in. It was wide open, and a pretty cool building, but again nothing left inside at all.
Next to the building, there was a set of stone stairs heading down to the main access road to the camp. I walked down them, and there were three Eastern White Pine trees growing directly out of the walkway. If walking the road, one wouldn’t even see this thing.

Kissy tree? Claiming the rock?

I walked directly across the street from the old stone steps and found yet another building, this time in much worse condition than the others. I was surprised that these ones were the ones that were let go. One would think that being so close to the main road, and therefore utilities, it would be the obvious choices for caretakers or for any year round programs.
I headed back to the main road everyone else was on, and we reached Rt 106. We turned right to follow the road from here, and I noted an odd tree engulfing a rock.
I didn’t know where we would go from this point. The mileage went far above what I was intending to do for some reason, but we were still finishing well before dark. I had originally thought we would head to the Parker Cabin Hollow Trail for the final leg of the hike, but that was not going to work out. It was a lot of extra mileage.

Ed found Dan’s phone.