Hike #1301; Blairstown to Manunka Chunk
2/26/20 Blairstown to Belvidere with Justin Gurbiosz, Kirk Rohn, Ken Zaruni, and Ellie Zabeth
This next hike would be a point to point night hike, this time between Blairstown area and Belvidere area at Rt 46 and Manunka Chunk Road, at the former A&P.
Old post office, flatiron building, Blairstown
I planned a hike that would take us mostly on Paulinskill Valley Trail, but planned for some potential alternates as well, depending on the weather.
The building today
Either way, I love the rail trail there and never tire of it. It’s really a relaxing, outstanding one to do for any night hike. I love that the surface is always so soft and easy on the knees.
Old school or something?
I used a route of back roads I’d planned on another past hike, and then the old Lackawanna main line that we’d soon be doing as part of our anniversary hike, as well as the old Bel Del Railroad to get back to the meeting point, which was the Belvidere A&P, which has been closed a few years now. Other stores occupy the strip mall, but the grocery store remains closed to this day.
Ken, Justin, and Kirk all showed up at the start point, and we piled into my van to head up to Blairstown. I planned to park on the main street in town, as not to have any problem parking after dark.
The foot bridge in Blairstown
We headed into town, and then headed for Main Street just west of the intersection with High Street, at the old bank building that is now the office for Ridge and Valley Conservancy.
My first order of business was to go inside and talk to RVC President Bob Canase, an old friend from way back before I lived at White Lake Natural Resource Area, and a great steward to the lands in this region.
Bob and the RVC were recently ousted as property managers at White Lake due to an argument with a county guy, as I understand. There were some outrageous claims made, and a new contract awarded to the Youth Corps to maintain the property.
Now, I love the Youth Corps and what they do, but the ability to continue programming at the site the way Ridge and Valley Conservancy has done is spreading them very thin. They handle the Morris Canal greenway as it is, which is already a huge undertaking. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened lately.
Old station site
I went in and had a nice discussion with Bob, and he introduced me to two of the employees there.
I still don’t clearly know exactly what happened on county level to make this happen, but there was something dirty about it that I don’t like. People sometimes are at odds with Bob, but the truth is, the man knows what he’s doing and he really wants what’s best for the land.
I left, and I shook Bob’s hand and thanked him for all of the work he had done at White Lake and throughout the northern region of the county. We’ve not seen the end of him; RVC has some great projects coming up whether the county participates in it or not.
Old station site
We headed over from the front of the building toward High Street, to the Flatiron Building of Blairstown. It sits on the corner of Main and High, and was originally home to the town’s post office. I think now it is a real estate office of some sort.
We headed from here to the right, along Carhart Street, past an old school building, and then turned right to head over to Blairstown Wine Gallery where I got myself a bottle of 19 Crimes Rum Barrel Aged wine called The Uprising. We then headed across Rt 94 and onto the old foot bridge that enters Footbridge Park.
Station site
The foot bridge was a gift to the town of Blairstown from namesake John Insley Blair on the occasion of his 91st birthday. The original bridge at the site was constructed soon after the 1876 arrival of the Blairstown Railroad, in 1877. That line eventually became part of the New York, Susquehanna, and Western and was extended east to Jersey City and west to Stroudsburg in 1881 (and by wholly owned subsidiary Wilkes Barre and Eastern, to Wilkes Barre in 1893). Today, the station is long gone, but the foot bridge retains much of its historic character to this day.
Historic image of foot bridge and station
I had several historic photos of the station I wanted to emulate for some of my then and now compilations, so I worked on those while waiting for everyone to get together.
Station site
They all ended up waiting for me taking more and more photos, and soon we were off along the trail heading to the west. I had though to walk to the north and explore the Limestone Ridge Forest Preserve, but then figured it might rain and might get dark, so we just stuck to the railroad bed this time.
We continued through a section of woods ahead, and I noted what looked to be a separate right of way to the let, which diverged and came back to the main one the trail is on. I figure this might be an earlier alignment of the Blairstown Railway before the NYS&W took over. I know the rights of way differed somewhat in some areas, like in the area of Warrington, but I’m not sure about here.
Station marker historic sign
We continued walking the rail bed, which was pleasant and clear, toward the North Warren Regional High School and fields, which was to the right, and then beyond to reach Lambert Road. Directly across was the airport.
Blairstown Station site
The Blairstown airport area was originally known as Kalarama, and it was a station stop on the NYS&W line.
When things started slowing down, something happened to the station at Vail, the next station west. I think it burned down. At that time, they opted to eliminate the station at Kalarama, and use the same building over at Vail. They loaded it onto a train and tried gently carrying it west to teh other station site, but it ended up falling off of the train and breaking apart, so that was the end of the Kalarama station.
The airport is built over the railroad bed, and so it was necessary to turn left on the road, and then right into the airport entrance to continue on.
mmmm
We went in the entrance to the airport and continued around the access road to the south side, which is now the route taken by the trail.
Along the way, we passed by an old yellow house on the left side that has been abandoned for many years. I’ve been going into the thing for probably at least fifteen or more years. It’s looking worse every time I go into it.
This time, we went in through the side door, and I could feel the floor buckling beneath me. Some of it was collapsing on the west end. An entire portion was down. Next to the fireplace, I could feel the floor dipping below me. None of this was really safe to be walking on, so I headed out.
A second right of way to the left of the current trail one?
On the outside, the house doesn’t really look all that old, even though it does bear the evidence or some additions. The truth is, it’s actually quite old and contains hand hewn beams inside.
Sadly, it will probably collapse in the very near future. Maybe that was my last time going inside.
We continued on around the building and along a little bit of Lake Susquehanna, which was named for the railroad. There is an abandoned restroom from when there was a swimming beach there. We weaved around near a finger of the water before making our way back to the railroad bed west.
The house in 2003. It was well hidden in brush back then.
The right of way entered woods and became quite pleasant again. It passed old whistle markers and joined a driveway before crossing over Gwinup Road.
The old house in I think 2006ish?
Elizabeth was heading out to meet up with us. All of her appointments at work had gotten canceled, so she was able to come out and join us for a little while.
The house now
The next crossing was where we were to meet her, Vail Road. The settlement of Vail was the aforementioned station site, but nothing remains of it today.
Abandoned
I instructed Elizabeth to park north of the grade crossing on Vail Road at the Walnut Valley United Methodist Church and walk down the road to the former rail crossing.
She did not see the grade crossing at first, and overshot it. There are not really signs or anything on this end of it, so I suppose it is easy to miss. She continued all the way to the south and ended up reaching the culvert underpass of the Lackawanna Cutoff. I told her she went too far, and she headed back the way she came.
Historic image of Vail Station
She got to the crossing just before us, and we were all able to continue along the grade to the west. We crossed over a driveway known as Couger Lane followed by Crisman Road, after which we were very closely parallel with Kill Road.
Just as we were parallel with the road, a truck slowed down, having seen us just barely into the woods. They had to have been freaked out, wondering what we were doing out so late.
We continued on a very pleasant section very close to the Paulins Kill, and then reached Station road just before the Paulins Kill Viaduct.
I wanted to get out of the woods when there were no cars, and then I wanted to continue on the road as quickly as possible, because people would think we were trying to get up into the viaduct.
I’ve done it countless times, but I didn’t want to chance it at this point since it was so far along and it was cold outside.
We walked station road out under the viaduct and passed the site of the Hainesburg Station. Just beyond, we entered the woods on the next bit of the trail heading west.
Soon, we reached Hainesburg Junction, where the Lehigh and New England Railroad joined in from the right. The LNE had trackage rights over the NYS&W for about twenty miles from Hainsburg Junction to Swartswood Junction to the northeast.
We continued to the left to follow the NYS&W out to Brugler Road near Warrington.
Brugler Road has been a difficult spot for years along this trail. State land continues on through all the way from Rt 46, but land owners have blocked it off.
The sign I found on the trail crossing in 2011
There used to be a brown state park gate at the road crossing there, but it was removed some time just before I went to work for the state park service. I got there one day to find that someone had put up a sign reading “Not a mother fucking trail”.
I pulled the thing down and brought it to the regional office. I don’t think there was any no trespassing sign on the trail this time, but I didn’t look too closely.
We continued form here to the left on Brugler Road. The trail used to continue on the railroad bed ahead, but it closed in and they stopped maintaining it. Now it’s badly overgrown.
We followed Brugler Road up hill to Warrington Road, and turned to the left. We left the railroad bed here and ascended a hill, passed beneath Interstate 80, and the road leveled out to follow along the shore of Delaware Lake, which was quite a pleasant spot this time of night.
A bit after this, the road started going back down hill toward the village of Delaware, which was much more pleasant walking. There were some people outside in front of their home that were probably wondering what these lunatics were doing walking down the road.
Lunatics in the street
We passed several homes of my ancestors, and entered the town. We then continued on further and cut across a wide open field to reach Smiddy’s Liquor Store. I chose only to get an energy drink rather than any alcohol, and a jump sized peanut butter cup.
From here, we got on the old Lackawanna Railroad main line right of way, which we’ll be doing again in late March for the anniversary hike, and followed it south to Manunka Chunk. We crossed over Knowlton Road, followed soon after by Ramseyburg Road. We then made our way to the Manunka Chunk Tunnels. We had a little break and went in to look around.
From there, rather than continue through the tunnels, we turned right to follow the right of way of the Bel Del Railroad to the south.
We were quite close to the edge of a big drop off to Rt 46 along the way, and I told Kirk to watch his step as not to fall down. He said he wouldn’t, but then splattered into the ground right in front of him, with hilarious timing.
We headed to where the Bel Del used to cross over Rt 46 and descended from the grade.
My then and now...
I pointed out where the highway overpass used to be, and how the highway was somewhat rerouted after the railroad was abandoned in 1955.
We had to walk up the highway for a bit from there. It wasn’t too far a walk to reach the former A&P, and then Ken took us back to the cars to the north.
It was overall a pretty good and relaxing trip. The forecast called for rain, but it was unseasonably warm, and barely rained even a drizzle until after we were completely finished with the hike. Can’t ask for much more than any of that.
HAM
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