Hike #924; Jersey City, Hoboken, and Bayonne

Hike #924; Jersey City, Hoboken, and Bayonne (911 Trail Pt 3, Morris Canal Pt 1)

3/20/16 Jersey City, Hoboken, and Bayonne with Matthew Davis, Shelly Janes, Jennifer Berndt, Brian ?, James Quinn, Jim “Uncle Soup” Campbell, Amy Davis, Wilma Vargas, Serious Sean Dougherty, Gregg Hudis, Neil Washington, Dan Asnis, Jenny Tull, Som ?, Cindy Browning, Alex ?, Jean Gisser, and Nancy ?.

This next hike would be the third in my 911 Trail series, and the first in the series to cover the entire Morris Canal again, this time tracing it backwards from what we’d done in the past, from Jersey City to Phillipsburg. I came up with a loop rather than a couple of point to point sections for this one, as well as the next one, so that both series could run simultaneously. These hikes have been popular, but still not as popular as many of the others we’d been doing.

Keep it Green

We met in the morning at the Liberty State Park light rail station, where we’d met before, to start the hike out. This time, we would start on the Morris Canal Greenway, head along that east to it’s terminus, then follow the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway to where we were on it last at Hoboken Station, then head on the Liberty Water Gap Trail route across Jersey City. This way we’d connect with the previous spots in the series.
We started walking from the station to Liberty State Park, then crossed the Morris Canal Big Basin with some good views to the east. We reached the actual former Morris Canal route when we got to the main city area along the Hudson Bergen Light Rail. We had to parallel it, walk through part of time, and did an out and back into parking areas when I thought we could get through, but couldn’t.

Morris Canal Big Basin

There was propoganda around on “Keep it Green”, because there is a plan to develop the undeveloped tracts of Liberty State Park and make them some sort of an amusement park. The plan has fallen under great scrutiny and given the governor really bad press.

Last lock on the Morris Canal

We had to take a break for everyone to use a restroom pretty early on. That’s one of the biggest problems with urban hikes. There’s no trees to go behind, and then when we do find a place people can use, a large group can take up to an hour to use it. We waited around, then moved on to the east. We headed out onto the peninsula at the end of the Morris Canal Little Basin. This was the actual eastern terminus of the towpath canal. Originally, the Morris Canal ended in Newark, but it was extended across Jersey City in 1842, and so this was the outlet lock area. There was a filled in concrete thing around where that outlet lock would have been. We went out and across the lock after heading to the end of the peninsula, then followed the waterfront beyond.

Colgate Clock

We went out onto that other peninsula thing where we visited the Colgate Clock. This historic clock was built in 1924 when the Colgate Company used to be just to the north in Jersey City. The company left the city and all of the other buildings were demolished in 1985. The clock was moved to the waterfront, and sits next to the Goldman Sachs Building, the tallest skyscraper in the state of NJ, who maintain it today. That building was completed in 2004, and the clock was moved somewhat for it’s construction, so as a term of the city agreements they’d maintain it. We made our way from the clock onto the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway and began heading to the north. It did seem a bit different than when I last walked the section in 2009. I was very glad Matt was able to do this one with me, because he would have the common frame of reference on having walked this section with me at the time. It was nice to see Shelly show up as well, because she was also on that previous trip back then.

Peace in Hoboken

I stayed pretty much to the waterfront, going out and back where I could. Some of this stuff was what I considered to be “new perimeter”, because the waterfront was developed more since I hiked the whole perimeter. So I’m kind of keeping up with it, and can still say I’ve hiked the entire current walk-able perimeter.
The section of the walkway to the north seemed to go on really long, longer than I’d thought. A lot of people in the group kept asking about meeting up later, at the Hoboken Terminal. I tried to explain to everyone on line that I could not predict what time we’d all end up there, but everyone kept asking the same questions about it. I just let them know they might be waiting a while. Some were already texting me at the time we started in Liberty SP, and I had no idea they’d be waiting over two hours for us to get there.

Group mirror thing

Really no one should have tried to meet us there. I was planning on staying on the waterfront, but I could not find the way to get to it and stay on it the way I’d wanted to, so on the way we had to head through the streets. I suppose it worked out alright since I wanted to connect again with the previous one. We headed through parks on the way there that just weren’t easy to pass through, because gates were closed and locked on one end and not the other. We all had to climb over one of the fences, and it took a while to help everyone over. We managed, and once we got into the Hoboken Terminal, we passed through and started following the waterfront south again. Somehow, we missed the entrance to this section, so this time we were able to get where I wanted to be. We got back out to the street, and continued south to the Liberty-Water Gap Trail route, on 6th Street.

Group reflection

The official trail route as per the website continues on 6th Street heading west. This is also marked as East Coast Greenway, which also makes it the 911 Memorial Trail.
The future to this route might be to use part of the old elevated railroad line that closely parallels it. In many cases, it was on a bridge, and you can still fiend piers left over from the line, but for much of 6th there is a nice elevated fill, only with bridges missing at each block where a street comes through. Some prefab bridges could be put in place over these areas and there would be a really nice greenway up there. I think it will happen eventually, but for now it’s necessary to walk the road...for normal people.

Rail bed

I decided to try to climb up and walk a section of it. This was rather futile, not only because we had some weeds we had to walk through, but because we very quickly had to climb back down. This meant having to backtrack a bit because the old masonry abutments make up a long high wall parallel with 6th St. that we simply were not going to be jumping off of. We had to backtrack and that was it. So I didn’t bother going up to any of the other ones as we moved on along 6th.
We continued on the road for a bit, then turned right on Newark Ave at the next intersection. We followed that slightly up hill, and passed an historic cemetery. I watched some of the old buildings that appeared to have masonry foundation or first floor levels, but newer brick tops. I wondered how far back these date to.

6th parallel with the forme railroad

We stopped at a store on a corner when we got to the height of the land. The trail turns left down Baldwin Avenue from here. It was a pleasant enough street walk. We passed a burned out old church along the way. It’s sad to see it sort of gutted, because the facade and general stonework is in fine shape, and actually very beautiful. We also crossed railroad tracks on a rainbow colored bridge.
We followed Baldwin south for a while, then turned right when we got to Belmont Avenue. This road leads directly into the entrance to Lincoln Park on the west side. We lost elevation from this area because we went over Bergen Hill, which is the southern terminus of the Palisades formation.

Gutted out church

Just before getting to Lincoln Park, the road split into a parkway style entrance with long spread out steps heading down into the park.
We headed down, and I don’t recall seeing any real trail markers in this section at all. I knew the way though. We reached the pond in the middle of the park and began to skirt the side of it heading to the southwest. It was here that Mike Selender showed up! I had been texting him roughly where our location was along the way. He lives pretty close by in Jersey City (he had the entire group over his house on one of the past hikes almost a decade ago). He joined us on a City Bike for a bit through Lincoln Park.

Lincoln Park

We headed from here over top of an overpass, then down into the section of park closer to the bay. There are a lot of side trails down there leading off into the estuaries of the Hackensack River. We took a little break and let everyone look for restrooms and such. This was also the end of the portion of the hike where we were tracing Liberty-Water Gap and 911 Trails. From here, we’d get on the Morris Canal Greenway heading back to the east. The canal used to cross the Hackensack River just south of the present location of Truck Routes 1 and 9 bridge. Once everyone was ready, we headed over toward the bridge, which we’d passed under more than a year before on the NJ Perimeter series.

Old LV Railroad tracks heading to former bridge site

This time, there was a fence blocking off where we passed beneath the Truck Rt 1 and 9 bridge, so we just went around it.
On the other side, I hadn’t noticed before, but there were still rails in place from when the Lehigh Valley Railroad used to go across the Hackensack River here. We continued walking along the frontage road back out to the highway, then we turned right on 440 to the south along the edges of the retail spaces. I think it was Som ended up inside one of the fences parallel with the road looking for another way through, and he had to come out at the shopping center. We all decided to stop for a food break at Burger King.

Retro Burger King

This particular Burger King was the most retro one I had ever been in. I was pretty hungry, so I’m sure everyone else must have been too. I got a couple of cheapo things and we sat and ate for a bit.
From here, we headed south along the edge of Rt 440. The canal has been obliterated by development through this area, but we would trace it’s former route. There was just nothing to see of it in this area. We passed a Taco Bell which was disappointing because I’d have wanted to stop there had I known we were going to go by it. Glad we saw the retro burger king anyway.

Former canal, and rail line with rails still visible beneath

We remained on the highway until we got to Danforth Ave. From this point, we started heading inland, tracing the route of the canal. It appeared that in subsequent years, rail lines had also used the canal’s right of way, because sections of old rail protruded from the pavement here, or could be seen in shape beneath the pavement.
It was easy to see where the canal went, because there are still openings in the modern buildings where the canal used to be, even though it’s been filled over. We traced the route between the buildings and heading to the southeast.
It’s a good long stretch in this section south to McGovern Park. The former canal is pretty much just a grassy swath, amazingly never developed over.

Modern Morris Canal view in Jersey City

It still looks very different than it once did. There were shopping carts (or as I like to call the, Supermarket Trolleys) laying around, and some junk. We found a ball that we kicked around for a while as we walked this portion of the canal.

Historic view of Morris Canal in Jersey City

Historic photos show this area in sort of a cut, and I can only assume since they were labeled “Greenville”, that it must be the Greenville section of Jersey City, which was where we were walking at this time. We continued to McGovern Park, where there was a paved pathway along a ball field developed over the canal. We went out and around this section, then had to walk out to Sycamore Road and 63rd Street to get back to the canal.

Historic view, Morris Canal, Jersey City

We picked up the canal again when we got to the northern end of Mercer Park. The canal was delineated across this park rather well at first, and then it skirts the edge of it to the south for a little while.

Former canal in McGovern Park

We continued through this park section, then made our way to Merritt Street, then turned right on Avenue C, and passed beneath Rt 78/NJ Turnpike. The canal went at an angle from here out toward the Twin City Supermarket. We continued a bit more to where there was a sort of telephone pole farm on the other side.

Morris Canal at Mercer Park

Once there, we could walk to the light rail station, but other than that it’s really tough to stay on or close to the canal, if it’s even possible. I’d tried to do it before and didn’t really get to it. There are occasionally clues to the canal, but not a lot to see, and I wasn’t about to bring the group through a bunch of illegal craziness, especially this late in the day. I planned to stay above the canal at the nearest road to the west of it, which meant walking back to the north from the Bayonne border we reached Bayonne when we went under 78.
So, we followed Garfield Ave, turned right soon and followed Princeton Ave closely. Shelly and I forget who else cut out at the Danforth Ave light rail station.

Cemetery view with canal beyond

We continued north on Garfield Ave, then turned right after a bit into Bayside Park. There was some interesting painting stuff on the walls down there, like giant chameleons or something. We passed through the park and returned to Garfield Ave. Except for the cemetery earlier on, there wasn’t a lot to be missed here. From the cemetery we could kind of make out where the canal used to go beyond the tracks.
We continued on and crossed over railroad tracks at Bayview Ave. From here, we barely saw anything of canal for the remainder of the day unless we were on it at some point. We continued to Philip Street and used that to lead directly back to the cars near Liberty Science Center.

JC Morris Canal historic view

It’s possible the canal could be about where the light rail is at this point today.
In the final leg of the hike, I received the sad news from Gregg that Wilma’s friend Lenny, who had come out twice hiking with us, had passed away of a massive heart attack a couple of days earlier. He was only 55 years old, not out of shape, and didn’t really eat badly. Wilma said that he had some cholesterol problem, which is exactly what I have. It’s rather worrysome to hear. It doesn’t even seem like it could be real.
We soon reached the cars at the Liberty State Park light rail station. It was just starting to get dark, and we’d made it pretty easily. Matt and I had some good laughs on the ride back. This really was very good day. No crazy drama really, a few hiccups here and there trying to meet up with people, but overall a great day. Things just seem to continue improving on everything we’re working on!

Ham

This particular hike was the one for the series of both Morris Canal and 911 Trail that I had looked forward to the least, and it was still such a good time. I know the rest of them in the series, not to mention everything else we have planned is going to be even more fantastic.
There’s a lot to look forward to.