Hike #1284; Newport to Thompsontown

Hike #1284; Newport to Thompsontown

12/28/19 Newport to Thompsontown with John DiFiore, Brittany Audrey, Kirk Rohn, and Diane Reider

The group in Millertown

This next hike would be another point to point, the next in the 911 Memorial Trail series picking up where we last left off in the Juniata Valley.

911 Trail completed so far

Every time I have one of these hikes I think “okay, this is the one that’s going to suck”.
This one was going to be mostly road walk it seemed, but then again the last couple of them were supposed to be like that, and they ended up being great as well.

Pennsylvania RR former main line at the supermarket

This one was no exception to that consistency, we ended up having a fantastic time.
I made the meeting point a public boat road on the Juniata River just to the south of Thompsontown, where there is a bridge across. The parking lot is built partly on the old Juniata Division Pennsylvania Canal route.
We shuttled in my van to the start point, where we left off in Newport, but first headed to the north side of town so that I could get comparison shots from an historic photo that showed the aqueduct crossing of Little Buffalo Creek.

Canal art downtown

I was glad to find just about the exact site, and the comparison came out great.
We made our way to the Weis Market, and I noticed that the tracks were still in place as an industrial spur immediately adjacent to the store lot. I didn’t notice that the last time.
The railroad used to go right down the center of what is now 3rd Street. We walked that route to the middle of the settlement.
Newport was originally called Ryder’s Ferry, because there was a ferry crossing there before any bridge. The town was changed to Newport after the arrival of the Pennsylvania Canal.

Pennsylvania Railroad station

Diane is somehow descended from the first settlers of the town, as “Reider” is actually the same last name with a different spelling. Some places spell it the same.

Historic image downtown Newport PA, probably 4th of July

From the mid 1800s through the early 1900s, it used to be home to one of the state’s largest tanneries. It used to stand where the playground on the south side of town is now, which was one of the places we visited on the last hike out there.

Downtown Newport now

The railroad that runs up 3rd Street today is the original route of the Pennsylvania Railroad from around the 1850s. The present location of the railroad was the route of Pennsylvania Canal. The Pennsylvania Railroad took over the former site of the canal in 1904.

Little Buffalo Aqueduct on the canal

The Pennsylvania Railroad had taken over most of the Main Line of Public Works, which included the Juniata Division canal by 1859, and they operated it until about 1901.

The aqueduct site today

At that time, the main line of the railroad, now four tracks wide, was moved to on or closer to where the canal was. Remnants exist, but in many places it’s built over.

Station under construction

The new station was built in 1908, and the original one became a freight station up closer to 3rd Street. Both the original line and the new main line remained in service, but the old one was more of just an industrial siding. The north end of it is still used.

Historic view of the 1908 station

We headed down the main street and then checked out the old station, which is now standing pretty delapidated. It doesn’t look very hopeful for the structure, as the roof is starting to come down. I figure they will probably demolish it before too long, which is sad.

Out building by the station

We walked around and had a closer look at the building, and a small annex building behind it with old steps up to the tracks.
We then headed back down and toward the bridge over the river.
There had been a lot of fog earlier, and some of it was still just burning off in the bright sun.
We got to the other side, and the official trail turns to the left on the Juniata Turnpike following the river upstream.
We walked by a messy looking service station or something, and continued to walk along the road a little bit until there was a bit of a ramp going down to the left.

Newport Station

There was a mowed swath of land below, probably part of the property the garage and such was on behind us. We hurried along the mowed grassy area along the river.

Bridge over the Juniata

We then headed into the woods at the end of the yard section. There was a sort of good path along the waterfront for a while down there.
We weaved around rather easily, and the path became more vague, but remained easy to walk for a while.
We had good views back at the bridge over the Juniata further back, and across we could see one of the culverts that provides access to the river from Newport. Just past the arched culvert that was obvious, there was another narrower one, which I think might have been a left over from the canal days, maybe an old weir or drainage.

PRR underpass

We continued walking to where there was a drainage that made the path impossible to continue. Still, walking the shore was not hard yet, so we kept going.
There was a beautiful stand of huge old Silver Maples in this section, and then the highway got too close so we had to climb back up.
Juniata Parkway was a bit busier than I prefer, and when the Shortcut Road came in from the right it got even busier. Still, it was along the river, so it was better than it might have been.

Juniata Bridge

It’s always interesting to see the subtle nuances of an area. We noted how most every vehicle went by was a pickup truck, and that every single one of them was towing a trailer.
We noted that among the few buildings was a massage parlor by appointment, and the houses were lovely old historic ones, but they looked to be hoarders and in pretty poor shape at times. Other houses were rather upscale and pretty. We started seeing more of those as we approached the settlement of Old Ferry.

Sun over the Juniata

There was soon a building on the right side of the road that was completely abandoned. It was some sort of a warehouse loading thing, and the near side of the foundation was just stacked up railroad ties that would never fly on an inspection these days.
We went over and walked right inside. There were no signs saying keep out or anything.
It was a wide floor plan with an office space to the right side, so we had a look in there.

Abandoned

Inside the office, someone had scribed upon the calendar “Deer are dum but people are smart. They drew a picture of a deer badly, and a text from it reading “I can’t see people or camo”.
There was also a very odd Jesus calendar we had to leaf through. Brittany knew what each of the months was supposed to be a representation of.
We looked around the building a bit more and then started moving on back along Juniata Parkway upstream and slightly up hill for a bit. The road was much further away from the river, but as we gained some elevation, we could see down to it.

To the right, I noted that there was what appeared to be piers in the river. At first I thought this would have been a bridge site, but then after reviewing the historic maps of the area (from 1877-1905), I found that this was in fact the “Old Ferry” for which the settlement takes its name.

Juniata view

It was probably a cable ferry that used the abutments as a sort of base. The were wide, but it wasn’t far enough to be the canal.

Juniata view

We continued walking along the road a little further ahead, and I could soon see the towpath come in to view down closer to the river. The canal crossed just before that spot.

Giant Silver Maples along the shore

The canal, it turns out, did not cross the river on an aqueduct at this point. It crossed using a rope ferry, which was connected to stanchions on piers across the river.

View across the Juniata

On the other side of the river, we missed two locks just before the aqueduct site that are reportedly in good condition, but just a long walk on the tracks to get to. Maybe one of these days.
We continued down to a driveway that went down to some houses on the west side of the river. When we got to where the canal used to cross, we turned right on it, and then came to a very short watered section where it must have been used as a private pond for a time. The watered bit ended very fast and entered a wooded swath ahead.

Small old aqueduct

There was no trail following the old canal route. We had to push through some weeds parallel with it, and then came out to a very small stream.

Abandoned

The stream, it turned out, passed through an extant former stone arch culvert aqueduct beneath the former canal. I was impressed to see it still in pretty good shape.
The side of the arch was starting to bow a bit, so it’s not going to last forever, but I was glad we got to see it as it is.
We pushed through the weeds, over the stream, and then up the other side to emerge at the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s Greenwood Access.

HAM

The canal crossed the access road, and really only looked like a slight dip and a line of trees. We walked down to have a look at the waterfront first, then made our way ahead along the shore of the river.

Aqueduct

This was a good stretch, I figured, because there was going to be pretty much public land from the boat launch on up through the other end of Millertown to the north. From the boat launch, we would pass through woods, behind a camp ground, behind a park property owned by the Owl’s Club, around some football fields, and then to Millerstown Community Park.
The first bit was pretty overgrown. We eventually emerged in the Owls Club Park, which had a pavilion above. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the canal up there. I thought it was along the river more closely, but I was a bit off.

Cocolamus Creek aqueduct site

We walked along the river pretty closely, which became quite open. We skirted the ball fields, and then at the end hit a trail that had a foot bridge across the Cocolamus Creek.

It was in this area that we realized the canal was a bit further inland, because the remnants of the aqueduct that carried it across the creek were just upstream from the foot bridge.
We walked to the other side, and then up to the towpath which is a paved trail out to the former west end of the aqueduct. A history marker about Millerstown was at the end.
This settlement has been in place since 1790 when the original turnpikes were the new routes through. The first canal boat on the Juniata Division came through in November of 1829 full of dignitaries, and the first canal boat built west of Harrisburg passed through in July 1830.

The Pennsylvania Railroad was extended to this point in 1849, an it severely hurt the canal business.
The trail did not continue along the towpath from this point in the park. The towpath was more out in the fields, and the trail made its way down closer to the Juniata. We went down to check out the shoreline and get some views of the river, and then started walking the paved path that followed it.
There were these signs, the kinds they use for political campaigns, only they read “Kids your own safety, keep your parent(s) and pets on the trail at all times. Fortunately, there were no children around to put us in our places.

Sillines

We did stop at the playground and used these weird dinosaur things that nearly tilted over when we got on them.

Honey Locust

The entire park was completely overrun with tons of Christmas decorations. Seriously A LOT. They were everywhere and on everything. There were archway things over the trail, there were gnome homes decorated for Christmas, and all sorts of settings with santas and elves.
Whoever set it up certainly puts a ton of time into it. The trail continued on the right, and near the end of the wide park, it ascended a bit to the hill where the canal was.
We reached a stone thing holding a sign that read “Breyer Ice Cream Co. Millerstown PA”. I had no idea, but I guess the Breyer’s we know and love had a plant here.
William A. Breyer started selling ice cream in Philadelphia apparently, first from his home, and then from a horse and wagon on the streets, in 1866. His son, Henry, incorporated the company in 1906 and it grew. The local operation actually started in Thompsontown, and moved to Millerstown in 1926.

Old Breyer Ice Cream sign

The milk was purchased from local farmers and turned into condensed milk in the local plant. Ice became a commodity locally as well, as it had to be harvested in order to keep the milk cold during transport from place to place.

The tral in Millerstown

The local plant remained in use until 1966 and was sold off. The original sign was saved rather than scrapped with the rest of the building structure, and donated to the municipality for display at this place in the park.
We continued onto the canal towpath, which was now the trail again. It passed through a section of woods after passing by more history markers on the local dairies, as well as an enormous spiky Honey Locust.
The trail went very closely parallel to Rt 322 and the route was at first very obvious it was the canal towpath. As we moved along, the trail went down hill to the left, closer to the river, and we could see the canal disappear under the highway fill.

There was an underpass along this section further down that led out into the area of downtown Millerstown. John headed through the culvert and went to walk the other side, while the rest of us remained along the river side.
We soon reached the bridge over the Juniata, and the trail ended there. We went down hill to try to pass under the bridge. There was a faint informal path that led this way, and we went down closer to the river. We then climbed back up toward where we were before, and then saw John walking down another old woods road parallel with Rt 322. This was a good route for a surprising amount of time along the river heading up stream. There was a culvert and a boat access in this section to Millerstown on the other side.

Most of what I’ve read said that the canal was completely covered over by Rt 322, but this was not the case. Some of the rip rap rock side wall was at times evident, and the towpath was pretty obvious, although not at all clear. We passed a couple of fishermen, and the woods road disappeared. A faint foot path continued along the river for a time, just below some of the towpath wall of the canal. It was really cool to see when some of it emerged from under the vegetation and leaf litter.

Canal wall remnants

I got in the river and started walking that for a time while the others remained on the slope, but it started to get too hard to follow. We would have to climb up hill and follow the edge of the highway for a bit.

Along the Juniata

We emerged along the highway at the Rt 322 pull off rest stop, and Brittany and I assessed the different bottles of piss we say with regard to who was healthy and who was not based on color.
We had a long section where we had to walk combined Rts 22 and 322, until the canal came back out from under the highway onto a wider flood plain to the left, and William Penn Highway broke off of 22. We turned left to follow that.

Along the Juniata

The canal was in the back yards of houses along the road there, and we could sometimes see some remnants of it along the way through the back yards. The first house I saw appeared to be a very old log cabin.
We had to walk a good distance along William Penn Highway. The canal was always just over to the left of us, but we couldn’t often see a lot of it because of trees and houses.
We finally turned off to the left when we got to Thompson Lane. It was shown on google like it was a public road, but it did have a gate over part of it.

Thompson Cemetery

I was going to stay on William Penn Highway, but then I saw a cemetery on the left, so we decided to go on over and have a look.

Thompson Cemetery

This was a pretty old cemetery, known as the Thompson Cemetery.
We checked out some of the stones, and then had a seat on the wall at the lower end of the cemetery. While there, a lady came out of the next house down and walked over to the cemetery to greet us.
The let us know that it was private property, but then said that it looked like we were having a “nice time”, and that we didn’t have to leave. I asked her a couple of questions about it, and noted one old grave stone close by reading “John Thompson Pioneer” who died in 1779.

The old canal directly below the cemetery

The lady explained that he was the “original”. Nearby Thompsontown was actually founded by his son, William Thompson, but that John was the original pioneer to settle the area.

John Thompson grave

I told the lady that we had bee hiking as closely as we could to the old Pennsylvania Canal, and I mentioned to her that I heard there was a lock on the property nearby. She said “oh yes” and she pointed out where it was.
In the distance, from the cemetery, I could see the lock through the trees out in the pastures were her animals were roaming. She told us that was known as the Thompson Lock. She was descended through marriage to some of the original owners of the property she said.
I asked if she knew what number lock that was back there, and she said it was #7. On the previous hike, we had passed near to the sites of Lock 3 at latest, and I know there were two locks on the other side of the Juniata crossing. I’m not sure where one lock was between this one and there, but it all made sense that it was the seventh.
There was a larger John Thompson tomb stone placed near the oddly shaped original one.

Lock 7 in view

The lady told us that William Penn Highway is the OLD Rt 22, and that the Thompson Lane was the OLD OLD 22.

Pastoral scene

We headed back out and followed William Penn Highway to where the older Thompson Road came back in and joined it. There were some pretty pastoral scenes along the highway as we approached Thompsontown. The town name atop one of the barns looked from afar like it read “Humpsontown”.
As we entered the town of Thompsontown, we passed the historic stone Episcopal Church known as St. Stephens, built in 1827. This is I believe the oldest church in Juniata County (most of the hike was in Perry County, but we had just passed out of that, and entered Juniata). Up until 1890, it was also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists.

The old church

At this point, the only thing we had left to do was to walk down Mill Street to the Thompstontown Boat Launch where we’d met, but that’d be slightly too short.

Being immature. "Cox" next to "Nipple".

I didn’t want to cut it to that point, and I did want to see a bit more of the town.
So, we walked to the right and cut into Haldeman Park, which is a park along a creek called the Delaware Creek (clearly named for the Delaware River which is quite far away at this point. A lot of people think the native Americans were called the “Delaware”, but that is not a native name. Delaware is a Spanish name from the Lord De La Warre who was the governor of the Jamestown Colony).
The paved trail went around the outside of the park along Delaware Creek and past a historic marker for the town of Thompsontown. We followed the trail to the north end of the park, and then cut out to North Mill Street near the intersection with Evergreen Street.
At the top of the hill, we reached a lovely overlook of the cemetery behind the Emmanuel Lutheran Church. We had seen the cemetery from afar, and I said we needed to get up there. I think it was a worthwhile view.

Cemetery view

We headed down hill through the cemetery and back into the center of the town where there was a lovely old building at an angled corner with a stone datemarked 1809.

In Thompsontown

I don’t know what the building was original, but now it’s a law office, and it’s quite a nice structure.
We stood for a few moments trying to decide what we should get for our late lunch stop.

Haldeman Park

There were a couple of choices of places that both served pizza, which was sounding really good. I didn’t want to make the decision, so I asked the others to make up their minds on which one we should eat at.
Someone said that the “Pizza Town” sounded like the best one to go to for good pizza, so we took our chances on that one.
It ended up being an excellent decision! The food and service was outstanding at Pizza Town Pizzeria. We sat down at a side booth in this interesting building.

Pizza Town

I asked the proprietor of the building what it used to be, and he said it was originally a car dealership built in 1920. He said after that it was another kind of store, and then he purchased it with his family more recently.

I ordered a dish of I think chicken Parmesan or something. I honestly can’t remember what dish I ordered, but I remember it was excellent, and that the sauce was just perfect.

Ham

It was a homemade taste. This far into Pennsylvania, we are used to finding pizza places that are kind of crappy, but this was a very authentic Italian meal. The proprietor had a thick accent, and told us he was from Sicily, so it was definitely authentic!
We were not only made to feel very welcome, we were treated like part of the family. Someone made a comment about wine, I think it was Kirk, and the owner brought us each glasses of his own wine to have with our meals. Delicious!
Brittany was not very hungry and ended up taking some food home with her. The guy serving the food joked with her and asked her if she was Chinese. He made the comment about her being Chinese several more times which actually seemed funnier every time.
Some of the family members had seen us walking much earlier in the day, and they were shocked that we had come so far. Much of the family was seated in the back of the establishment. It really felt like a true traditional family business.

Train a'comin

We finished up eating, and headed out on our way back through town, and then down South Mill Street. We passed some lovely historic homes on the way.

Train passing

As we headed down hill toward the Juniata River bridge, the sun started setting beautifully. Rather than just walk into the parking lot, we decided to walk across the bridge and back to get a nicer view of the sunset over the river.
Just as I was heading out onto the bridge, a train was coming on the other side on the former Pennsylvania Railroad. I ran across the rest of the bridge to get some photos of it as it went by.
We were hearing trains all day long. It seemed like they were coming every fifteen minutes or so, just like the last time we were out there.

Juniata bridge

We headed back across the bridge, and down into the parking area to finish out the day. I noted that the Pennsylvania Canal towpath was clear like a trail on the far side of the lot.

Juniata view

I wished we had been able to walk that section, but I was glad we had the experiences we did up in town. I plan to tack that section onto the start of the next hike in the area, which will include the site of the aqueduct where the canal crossed the Delaware Creek.
At this point, I have about six more hikes I have to do in order to connect to where I last left off in Huntingdon, and then we’ll be ready to head to the south from Johnstown. I don’t know how we’re going to plan any of that because it’s going to definitely involve multiple days to do it, but I have to plan it somehow.

Sunset over the Juniata at Thomspontown

HAM