Hike #1283; Manville/Raritan Loop
12/26/19 Manville/Raritan Loop with Annika Krystyna, Jennifer Berndt, Ken Zaruni, Kirk Rohn, Michael Krejsa, Justin Gurbisz, John DiFiore, and Dan Asnis
This next hike would be a big loop I came up with starting at the Walmart of Manville. I had done tons of the trails throughout the area in the past, but there’s still a good amount I’ve never touched, so I figured we would check it out.
It ended up being a night that I still can’t quite figure out how to process. There’s always a lot going on in my life, but some things that merit some huge response are really difficult to come to terms with. Between being sick and the deaths, I can’t describe what I’m feeling.
The Raritan at Manville
The Walmart used to be a major industrial area. The Johns-Manville Company is what the town was named after, which produced insulation and such. It’s said that when it was in operation, there was so much of the shit floating around that it looked like it was snowing.
I never really realized until this hike that the place was named for the company I don’t think. That’s kind of strange considering how many times I’ve walked through the town. My first time was with Skyler back in 2003 when we were doing the series on the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It was just after Halloween, and we walked the active tracks eating trick or treat candy from my brother Bobo and drinking wine.
The Raritan in Manville
I made the meetup point the Walmart plaza near the McDonalds, but a lot of the group went to where the address automatically took them to. We waited around at McDonalds until everyone was there.
The route I came up with was to be a loop along the Rartitan mostly, but I wanted to incpororate sections of Duke Farms, as well as some other little parks I had never done before, and then bits along the river heading back toward Manville. The original hike I had planned would have been a loop way out to Duke Island Park and beyond, but that would be a bit too far for a single night thing.
We walked across Main Street onto Dukes Parkway East, and then turned to the right into a park land along a gravel road, which took us to the edge of the Raritan River.
Raritan River
This was a beautiful little area. A trail continued straight along the river downstream, but we were to turn left to follow it up stream a bit. I’d never walked through this bit of park before.
We continued along the lovely river to where the access led back up to Dukes Parkway East again. We then turned right on the right for several blocks until we came to 10th Avenue where we turned left, and cut the corner over a grassy swath.
I had intended to cross over a school yard ahead, but most of it was fenced in. We continued down 10th, and were able to continue across the school property at the ninety degree bend. We crossed over Brooks Blvd and continued another block south to North Street.
Sunset along the tracks
North Street runs beside the former Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks, which has a very wide grassy swath beside it, so we were able to walk along that easily.
The sun was setting beautifully as we wandered along this heading west.
North Street ended at a house, and my plan was to turn right on 21st Ave and hopefully find an access trail into Village Green Park, a large bit of mostly open field space that leads all the way to Rt 206. It was getting kind of dark when we got to the end, and I changed my mind and decided to follow the tracks a short distance until the end of the last house’s yard.
When we were close to out of sight from the house, I climbed up the slope and sure enough found a well worn trail leading in the direction we needed to go, parallel with the railroad tracks.
Everyone followed me up, and we took the path through a good long swath of woods. It paralleled the tracks for a while, but then turned to the right and eventually came out into the open mowed park fields.
We turned left along the edge of the Village Green Park, picked up a paved trail briefly, but then continued to the left, heading west through the park. There was a lot of standing water on the ground we had to walk around, but we managed to get to the west side of the park.
Along the tracks in Manville
We turned to the right through the end of the park, north, until we came out on Brooks Blvd just before its intersection with Rt 206. We frantically hit the crosswalk thing over and over as if we actually believed that would make any difference in it going faster.
Once we got across 206, a paved path on the other side led us along the highway north.
After a little while, we came to one of the gates to the south section of Duke Farms where we turned to the left.
I had never walked this part of the Duke Estate. The closest I came was following the old South Branch of the Central Railroad of New Jersey through the southwestern section back in 2008. The branch broke off of the CNJ main line in Somerville and continued to Flemington.
South Branch of the CNJ near Somerville historic image, 4/25/53 photographer unknown
At that time, the section of the estate was officially closed, and there was no public access to it. We just kind of wandered on through and didn’t have a problem. It would make a great trail really, because it’s not too terribly overgrown or developed over.
CNJ South Branch in Duke Farms
The estate was purchased by James Buchanan Duke, founder of Duke Power and the American Tobacco Company. “Buck” Duke started picking up pieces of land along the Raritan River, and eventually assembled 2,700 acres that included 45 buildings, 9 lakes, and 18 miles of roads. Duke died in 1925, and his twelve year old daughter Doris gained control of the property after successfully suing her mother. She moved in and took control at age 15.
Doris Duke became heavily involved in various philanthropic causes, and turned her father’s estate into an enormous botanical display which opened to the public in 1964.
Duke was quite an incredible woman. She spoke foreign languages fluently, played piano, sang, wrote for Harpers Bazaar, was a foreign news anchor, a competitive surfer, and much more. She worked side by side with her gardeners, climbed scaffods, and remained hands-on.
Things got a bit more complicated when Duke died of cardiac arrest in 1993.
The day I hiked through on the South Branch of the CNJ was the last time the “gardens of the world” would be open to the public before being demolished.
The Duke Farms organization that act as custodians of the property took over management and made several controversial decisions that were much criticized.
Among the decisions was the destruction of the gardens of the world, which were assembled by Duke herself, and the demolition of her mansion to open up more property.
Many people who had been inside said there were no problems with the building, but that the organization sought confirmation bias to support it’s demolition. Justin was in it and even wrote a chapter on a book about it. Most who had seen it said it was fine.
Some of the policies of Duke’s time were a bit outdated. Deer used to be far less common, and she would have them fed on her property. Now, with over 100 deer per square mile in this area, such practice is frowned upon heavily. Also, some of the invasive species like Ailanthus needed to go.
We walked into the property and reached Farm Barn Lane. We turned left here. It was a very level, pleasant walk through open fields. We took another harder left at the next intersection, and remained on Farm Barn Lane near the south side of the property.
We passed yet another intersection and continued ahead, but then came to a giant deer fence. It had an electrified section at the top, and it was not dummy locked. Mike went off to the left along the fence to see if it was something we could reasonably circumnavigate, but there was no good way. I thought about it for a bit, and double checked the maps. We would have to go around.
I wasn’t keen on doing this, because I wanted to stay away from the actively used buildings, but it was either this or go all the way back out to 206 and around on roads. That wasn’t happening.
We went to the previous intersection and turned left, to the north. This took us past the Duke Farms Community Gardens. The main management building was well illuminated off to the right, so we stayed away from there, and went through a parking area by the community garden to the left. We then passed through a line of trees to another bit of Farm Barn Lane heading west. We kept left at the first intersection, as that one led out to Dukes Parkway West.
The road we took led to another intersection where we turned to the right. This one went by what appeared to be a shooting area or something, with lines of block type of things on the left. We skirted the field edges, and then entered a section of woods. I pointed out when we got to the former crossing of the Jersey Central railroad tracks, now just a grade.
The road continued to the west, and went near a house, so I made sure to keep everyone together before coming out on Roycefield Road. When we got to it, we simply turned right without waiting along the road to the north. We re-assembled when we came to the intersection with Dukes Parkway West.
On the other side of the intersection, we continued on Roycefield Road and crossed a stone bridge over Dukes Brook. The garden area on the north side of the road is blocked off, so we could not walk through this section. I let everyone know this would probably be the crappiest section of the hike because of the road walk.
Fortunately, as we continued, an ATV path, probably a patrol management path used by Duke Farms, continued in the swath of trees along the road, but on the outside of the fence. This provided for a very good walking route without us being in traffic.
We paused for a few moments after crossing a service road entrance, and I noticed I had a text message from my brother. Our good friend Paige Foley had died Christmas morning.
This was horrible news. I wouldn’t have believed it, except she messaged me that she was going into the ER sick several days before. She sent me a selfie with a mask on her face, and told me she was not doing well. She had jaundice and she was being moved from Warren Hospital to one in the Lehigh Valley. She apparently had gotten the flu while there, her lungs didn’t recover, and she was going through kidney failure. I was hopeful because the last I had heard was that she was in stable condition, but then she was put in a coma.
I still don’t know how to feel about the whole thing. We had become good friends when she dated my brother some fifteen years prior, and she even did many of the hikes with us.
A weird irony about this whole thing is that we were in the Duke Estate, and Paige at times had an uncanny resemblance to Doris Duke. Sometimes when she would message me something about being sad or frustrated, I would send her a picture of Doris Duke and she would laugh.
In fact, just about a month ago, I was at Duke Farms for a regional event at work, when I saw a photo of Doris Duke on the wall that looked like Paige, and I sent it to her. It just doesn’t seem at all real that she can be gone.
Paige looking kinda like Doris Duke
Paige was only thirty. Consistently for just about the entire time I’ve known her, she was in touch regularly, and we usually just sent each other the most incredibly stupid photos we found.
There was always something ridiculous with her that was absolutely hilarious. One time she had to come over to my house just so I could see this enormous completely stupid hat she had knitted.
Another time I had cleaned house and had bags full of random crap I wanted to get rid of, so I brought it to Paige’s house and hid it all over the place. We replaced photos and stuff that were hanging on the wall with old hub cabs and such, waited for her mom to get home, and then left it all there to see when she’d notice.
Photo of Doris Duke in the new center I sent to Paige at work.
I couldn’t even think about it, it’s just such a sad thing. I know a lot of the group had met her also, more recently at parties like the Hikers’ Hootenanny and Buckettfest. I couldn’t keep thinking about it to be able to do this hike. Even though I knew she was in bad shape, somehow I was still pretty shocked that she actually didn’t make it. It just goes to show how fragile life is. Fine one day, and then gone the next.
We continued along this easy path along the edge of the fencing, which fortunately took us almost the entire length of the way around the estate. It intersected with River Road, but we didn’t even notice because we were off the edge of the road on the ATV path.
When we came near the back gate of the estate, which has a deer fence also, my next leg was to walk the new connecting trail from the system near the Nevius Street Bridge. It was only announced recently that this connecting trail was completed, so it was on my list of things to do. I originally wanted to go around a big loop that it incorporates, but we didn’t bother with that this time.
View from Nevius Street Bridge
I noticed that there were cameras on the site, at the gates and such, and so rather than have a problem, I waited for Dan to catch up, and we cut through brush onto the new trail and started following that to the north. It runs pretty close to River Road until the actual approach to Nevius Street Bridge, then it continues on the former road route that connected to the bridge. It was a bit less lit over there than I’d remembered previous times, but still nice. We took a break on the bridge and waited for everyone to catch up.
Then and now of the bridge
Across the bridge was the castle type structure that was also part of the Duke estate, which served as a power house along the Raritan Power Canal. Originally it was a mill site.
Another of my then and nows with the historic mill site
After Dan arrived, we continued across the bridge, and then turned to the right along Orlando Drive. A lot of buildings here were recently demolished.
Another shot of Doris Duke looking like Paige
We continued on this route until we got to the Raritan Mall to the left, where we were going to stop for a dinner break at Frank’s Pizza.
It was the day after Christmas, but I was still surprised that Franks and everything except for the Indian place was closed.
No one really wanted to sit down for Indian food, so Annika and Jen decided to walk all the way to the Dunkin Donuts on the other side of Rt 206. I said there was no way I was going over there, so I sat in the parking lot under one of the lights with everyone else and they went over.
Rather than walk all the way back to the crosswalk to the south, and then back to us, Annika decided to Uber herself and Jen back to the parking lot. They got a driver that looked sort of like Santa Clause with a trimmed beard.
Annika brought back a dozen donuts for all of us to share, which was quite appreciated, except Justin and I kept on going on about how jelly donuts suck. I commented something about them using a baster or something to do it. I forget what stupidity I was saying.
CNJ underpass
We walked from here over by some batting cage or driving range or something on the other side of Orlando Drive, and I led everyone to the rather obscure entrance to the paved path along the Raritan River. It took us down hill, and the water was low enough that it didn’t go under water like it sometimes does.
We had one icy spot on it. Dan fell behind, and so I waited up for him for a bit, and the others continued ahead for a long while. I walked most of the section by myself out over the former CNJ South Branch rail right of way again, and then underneath Rt 206. We waited up for Dan when I found the group.
CNJ underpass on Peters Brook Greenway
We walked the paved path a bit more past the access point up to 206, and then continued along the Raritan downstream. The greenway turns to the left after a bit, but this was oddly fenced off this time. We found our way around it, and there was a construction site where the parking lot is off of Southside Ave. We had to go right to get around the fencing there.
Middle Earth?
We turned left on Southside Ave, and then to the right into Arthur Chambers Park, along the Peters Brook Greenway. The brook is along the left side of the park.
The trail took us soon beneath the former Central Railroad of NJ main line, now the NJ Transit Raritan Valley Line. On the other side, a foot bridge went out to Michael Lepp Park, so we went that way, and then skirted the park edge to the north along the brook.
When we reached Main Street, we left Peters Brook Greenway, crossed the brook on the road bridge, and continued up to the intersection with Loeser Ave.
Along the way, I was surprised to see a totally weird sign that read “Middle Earth”. It didn’t look like it could be something real, but clearly someone has a sense of humor. Maybe it’s something to do with whoever adopted the section of highway, but it’s funny regardless.
We turned right on Loeser Ave, and continued down hill beneath the CNJ bridge. I intended to turn left on Nimitz Street, but I missed the turn, so we had to turn back. It gave Dan a chance to catch up with us anyway.
Torpey Athletic Complex was straight ahead through here. We skirted the right side of it on it’s access road, and headed to the south, then to the east. The road was open and cars were coming through, even though the sign on Nimitz said it was a dead end.
Middle Earth sign
We headed down hill out of the park a bit, and then there was a small structure, a sort of a shelter, hanging along the left side of the road near a small brook underpass. Just after crossing the brook, there was a trail access on the right with an orange sign that read “closed”.
This is a really great little trail system in the flood plains along the Raritan River. It used to have nice interpretive signs and such, but no one has been maintaining them at all. There was evidence of ATVs using it, but not much else.
We kept to the right through the entire system, which took us out close to the Raritan, and then basically paralleled it heading around its curve.
When we got near the east end of the park, another trail not shown on google maps goes up hill into the back of an industrial building of some sort. There was a sign reading that the bridge was out, but it just had a little washout on the one side. It was fine to cross.
We headed across and up hill, and then Mike noticed a police car sitting within sight, dark and not running, which we would have to walk right by in order to get out to Van Veghten Drive.
I walked ahead, and noticed black in the fender areas of the car, and decided it wasn’t worth it to bother walking by it. We could walk around the building the other way.
We did this, and I was surprised to see an abandoned railroad spur behind the building.
Van Veghten House history
Going this way actually took us out right next to the historic Van Veghten House, but it was too dark to see it really at this moment. We turned right on Van Veghten Street, and started walking to the east out toward Main Street in Finderne, which is the north side of the Raritan out of Manville.
Mike pointed out where he works across the street, which use to be offices for Johns Manville. He was aware of the Van Veghten Cemetery hidden back on the property, but did not know that the actual Van Veghten House was still standing just down the road.
Van Veghten Cemetery
It’s kind of hidden and people don’t known about the cemetery much, but I’ve done several hikes to it.
We turned to the right down the road, and crossed the Raritan River on Main Street. There is a path down from a parking lot that for some reason we didn’t take. I didn’t see where the map said it should be at, so we didn’t go down just yet.
It came back up after a bit, and we could see a little bridge over what was probably some kind of raceway. There is a dam across the Raritan downstream from the former Johns Manville site, at the Millstone confluence.
In Van Veghten Cemetery in 2008
The raceway probably powered some of the former industrial site where the Walmart plaza is today. The slack water from the dam where the Raritan and Millstone Rivers meet provides slack water back beyond even this point, so it would have been enough to bring in some water when needed.
A trail turned off of the main street to the right just after crossing the inlet, and led down next to the rough bridge over the raceway. The trail then turned left to follow the river upstream. This was the same path we had seen near the starting point when we first reached the Raritan River.
We followed this trail to that point where we had gotten our group shot near the beginning, and then retraced our steps over the access road back out to Dukes Parkway East. We then turned to the left to Main Street again, crossed, and reached the Walmart plaza to finish off the hike in pretty earlier than usual time.
It really was a very nice hike, really about as nice as a week night loop hike in this type of weather could get, but I can’t help but think of the loss of my friend at such a young age.
The group shot
Back around my breakup with Cathy, when I had no money, was in debt, and had nothing going for me, she actually brought me soup, and got me pizza a couple of times. When I was feeling like crap, she sent me stupid shit and made me laugh.
I think of her family, whom she helped so much being home all the time, and being an only child. The pain must be excruciating.
Usually, when a friend dies I end up posting a sort of eulogy on here, but until this writing, it feels like so many people still don’t know about it.
In a way, it’s kind of fortunate that few people read these things through. I write them for the benefit of those who attended of course, but also to express myself and what I’m feeling, or in this case, my inability to do so.
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