Hike #1304; Port Jefferson to Rocky Point

Hike #1304; Port Jefferson to Rocky Point

3/7/20 Port Jefferson to Rocky Point with Kirk Rohn, Jennifer Bee, Professor John DiFiore, Neil George, James Quinn, Alex Gisser, and Joel Castus

This next hike would be another point to point, and the next in our ongoing Long Island series. We had last left off at Port Jeff, and were ready to continue east.

Port Jeff Station

The Long Island series is constantly evolving.
Unlike other hike series I’m working on, I’m not in a huge hurry to get it done at all. I’m also not in a huge hurry to “get done with the next section” or something. This is nothing like the way so many hikers obsess over finishing a “next section” of the Appalachian Trail or some other long distance trail. This is fully about the experience, and making it the best one we can, but keeping the basic arbitrary deadline and goal point we are headed toward as a guide.

Setauket-Port Jeff Greenway

The series has evolved quite a lot into a very rewarding route, and it’s taken a lot of planning to make it into something interesting to connect otherwise unconnected bits of greenway.

Lawrence Aviation site

Particularly, hikes like the last two in this series took a good amount of planning to find a way that would be interesting.
When I planned this hike, it felt like it might be the “last” one like that in the Long Island series I would have to do.
When we reached Rocky Point State Park, we would reach the Paumanok Path, a 125 mile trail that leads from there all the way to Montauk Point at the end of Long Island. As such, most of these hikes can sort of plan themselves and I just have to break them into sections.

Abandoned

Of course, things never go quite as planned. We find more interesting sites. We rework the route and extend it, and we find more parks that merit our attention.

Paumanok Path map

Some people can’t handle changes in plans very well. They get all upset that it wasn’t the way they pictured it in their head, and the floodgates of negativity open relentlessly.

Abandoned

I’m fortunate that I don’t look at things this way, or at least I try not to.
For a hike like this, changes bring about something of interest, and I remember this is why we are out there to begin with. The only rule I try to commit to with these hikes is that we cover at least fifteen miles. It’s not as important where the destination ends up being. We shoot for that destination, with little destinations on the way, but if we don’t hit some, it’s probably because we discovered other destinations. If we took time on such things, it means they are at least as important, if not more, than what we had initially planned.

Abandoned

It makes me think back at doing other hikes, and I pause to look at a map, either paper or on my phone, not because I need to particularly know where I am, but because it’s part of my experience.
For me, it’s fun to look at a map, and I imagine what it might look like before I arrive. There is no disappointment in a comparison that is nothing like what I pictured. Rather, it enriches the experience for me. I am enriching, not detracting from my own experience.
I feel it to be so similar to the AMC people that used to tell me never to wear cotton, and that I needed to wear over-the-ankle trail shoes or something to be able to hike, or that we can never discuss religion or politics. It’s just an imposition of another’s belief that their way is better than mine, and that I must adhere to their standard to enjoy or be successful.

Abandoned

My own standards are just fine for me, and I’m incredibly happy with my manner of conducting these trips, otherwise I might have been extremely frustrated by this day!
My meeting point was at the strip mall at Rocky Point near the Kohl’s store. This was a convenient island of development in the middle of the roadfront of Rocky Point State Park.
My plan was to hike much of the state park for the end of this hike, and to finally do our first hiking on the Paumanok Path.
The night before the hike, I went through my typical pre-view of the trip to be sure I had everything together, and I ended up changing the route at last minute.

Abandoned

I found a couple of ways through other places at the start, and another way of coming off of the north shore beach in such a way that we could eliminate some road walking, but add a little bit of mileage to the hike. I didn’t think it would effect it all that much.

Abandoned

At Kohls, we all got out of our vehicles to surprisingly strong and cold winds. I chose to wear a light blue blazer and butterfly collar shirt and tie, and a pair of brown khakis that were far too thin for this kind of biting wind. I put a wicking material shirt on under my button down one, but it didn’t really help me with the wind much.

Abandoned computer room

Everyone went into a bagel place in the strip mall for some sort of breakfast thing while I got ready to go.
When everyone arrived, we all piled into my van and shuttled to the Port Jefferson train station on the Long Island Railroad.
Port Jefferson is quite the historic spot; a port on the Long Island Sound, and historically a very important railroad stop going back a very long time. The settlement dates back to when the colonists first bought the land from the Native Americans in 1655.

abandoned

Their name for the place was “Sowasset”, which meant “place of small pines” or “where water opens”. The first home was built in the area in the 1660s, and one from 1682 is still standing in the area.
By the end of the 1700s, it became a major ship building yard, and the Long Island Railroad completed its branch to Port Jeff in 1873. The branch was then extended in 1895 out to Rocky Point and beyond to Wading River.
The station we parked at dates to the time of the Wading River extension. The original 1873 station burned down and was replaced in 1875, then replaced by the current one.

Abandoned

The extension to Wading River was abandoned in 1938 I believe, and was later used as a utility right of way.
One of the routes I had planned potentially for this hike was to trace the old railroad bed to Rocky Point rather than the beach to the north, but chose not to yet, and would save that for a future one.
Alex has run late; he just flew in late the night before from California, and in his daze boarded the wrong train to Port Jefferson. He ended up on the train to Port Washington instead. He got in touch with me saying he could arrive by 9:30 and wanted us to wait for him.

Abandoned

We had already taken some time for everyone to get bagels and such, and we had to shuttle to the start, which took some time anyway. By the time we got there, it wasn’t really much more time to wait, so we went to a mini mart just across and down the road from the station.

Abandoned

I confused the clerk at the Sunoco station by calling the Metrix cookies and cream bar both chicken and some kind of hamburger. We hung out so long inside that I’m sure it was probably the most interesting thing that had happened to him all day.
The train came, and Alex was soon over to us so we could start walking.
We headed south along Rt 25A to the intersection with Hallock Avenue. To the right, the Setauket-Port Jefferson Greenway started at a parking lot.
We had hiked this greenway on the previous trip, but I wanted to backtrack onto it and cover a little bit of different stuff and revisit others.
The trail is not a rail trail, but rather a sort of utility right of way that was never used for what it was intended I guess, and it became a paved trail. It is to be extended as part of the Empire State Trail, but I’m not sure where it is going west of Setauket for that.

Abandoned

John commented as we walked the path sort of up hill, how the tiny dip to the right hardly merited the giant guide rails they had put along this trail.
After a knoll and a power line crossing, we came to the large field of abandoned buildings on our right side.
This was the former Lawrence Aviation Industries Inc. site. It is said to be the most contaminated site on Long Island, in plain sight and with lots of people walking by it every day (we stopped and asked several people on the last trip if they knew what the place was, and they honestly had no idea. I did research following the hike to find out its true dirty story).

Abandoned

The outfit was a manufacturer of titanium military aircraft parts including the Grumman F-14 Fighter Jet.
The company started when it’s predecessor, Ledkote Products moved from New York City to Port Jefferson in 1951. The company changed names to Lawrence Aviation in 1959.

Abandoned

Going back to around 1979, the site was under investigation for volatile organic compounds based on well tests around the 127 acre industrial site.
The first site visit by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services was conducted in 1980.
It was found that tanks of toxic material were found throughout the site. The ground water in the area was found to be well above the level to be safe to drink, and contained tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene to name just a couple things.

Abandoned

Non-lined cesspools were found with contaminants on the property.
The wells in the area had to be taken out of service, the residents supplied with bottled water until they could be connected to a public water supply.
The owner of the company, Gerald Cohen, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison and ordered to pay $105,816 in restitution for illegal storage of more than twelve tons of hazardous waste on company grounds. I have been told that the sentence of a year and a day was just barely enough so that he couldn’t go to an easy county prison.

Abandoned

As of 2019, Cohen and his company have been ordered to pay 48.1 million dollars for cleanup of the site. The facility has been abandoned since 2003.

Abandoned

Outside the site, there are big chain link fences, but there are three giant holes in them. One of them has a dumpster next to it, and it even looks like a walkway. To the west, there is a long section of chain link fence just laying on the ground, and the gate from that side has an enormous hole cut through it.
This time, I did not see a single “no trespassing” sign on the entire section of gates, which is really surprising.

Abandoned

Here we have a public trail going by it, where they deem a three foot slope on the side of it to be enough of a liability to put up sturdy metal railings, but the most contaminated Superfund site in all of Long Island is just wide open for people to waltz on into.

Abandoned

We went around the gate to the left and walked into the opening, then turned to the left into the building we had gone into last the previous time up there, which has a broken down old yellow lift on wheels. There was a jack under it that Kirk tried to jack up.

Abandoned

We wade our way to the end of this building, turned right, and then went through small opening into the next one. It was in this building that Kirk found an enormous grinding wheel on the previous one.
We exited this room out the other side to a room with a giant machine in it and cat walks around the outside, and then a bit level platform across from it. I went up on the level platform and Jen climbed up onto the cat walks while the others checked out stuff down below. Joel went into an office area and found some interesting very old computer that took up a lot of room.

Abandoned

We exited this building and went straight across a wide opening to a doorway in the one across. The door had been busted out by something pretty strong.
This was one of the cooler buildings. It had machines and giant conveyors and such, and pools in the middle of the floors that were probably used for something like a galvanizing process. There were also lots of hooks and hoist type things on tracks hanging from the ceilings that were used for moving pieces of machinery around.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/U9lZmV7CGDw

An interview with Gerald Cohen from 2010

We walked to the end of this building, and James was milling about looking into different rooms off to the sides. The rest of us continued into the next room to the right.

Oooooo

There was a lot of graffiti, some of it quite professional looking, in this area. we turned to the right into another large room I’d never been in, an found more manual conveyors in a more wide set up than the previous building section, and another large machine that parts would go into.
We continued back out and into the last section of building we had gone through the last time, and everyone had a look around before heading out the south side.
The place was really eerie, and made all sorts of crazy sounds with the wind being so heavy.

Abandoned

The one section of building made sounds that emulated those of ATVs, but they were not. There were large fans in the upper walls, which cast an eerie shadow of their movement into the buildings. There was always high or low pitched metal bending sounds.

Abandoned

We exited the building to he south side, and then turned to the left toward the building I recognized from the previous time we were out, but didn’t go in.
We reached the edge of he building, and found the first door that had been forced open.
There was some sort of big machinery right inside the door, the thing that was used to force the door. I wasn’t going in that way because I didn’t want to climb over stuff. We moved down to the next door, and there was a dumpster and trees blocking the way in.

Abandoned

We went around the front of the building, and there was a bay door that was forced up, and someone painted “don’t go inside” on the floor. We ducked under it and entered this one.
We continued walking around in there, in a big loop through the building.
This one wasn’t as interesting as the previous ones we’d gone through, and it was much darker because of less holes and windows in it. There were lots of wooden pallets lining the main room from this one. It must have been a receiving bay.

Abandoned

We made our way out of the building through the one wide open bay door at the other end of the building.
From there, we were ready to get on with the hike. We had already spent a lot of extra time in the place that I hadn’t intended, but it was just so cool that it didn’t matter.
We exited the grounds through the hole in the fence near the dumpster, which spat us back out right along the trail.

Abandoned

We turned back the way we came from, heading east, and there was a narrow trail going up a slope to the right. This wasn’t the way I had intended to go, and I thought about it for a moment before saying “screw it” and went up.
This was something used by mountain bikers. The undulating terrain was being used as jumps and such. We continued parallel with the Lawrence Aviation property, and then moved inland to the right for a bit. We came upon a camp area with a tarp erected for cover, and lots of stuff laying around.

Abandoned

Among the stuff laying around were two perfectly good bicycles. One of them was a very nice Cannondale. Alex looked rather enamoured with it. I admit I would have probably taken it if we hadn’t a long hike to get done with. Someone pointed out the fact that “people get shot for taking bicycles around here”. That was quite true.

Abandoned

We weaved through the woods from here, and ended up right back on the trail at another foot path type of access. We turned left on the paved trail, and then there was another narrower trail going left again. We turned back into woods again here and started heading southwest.
This trail was much more narrow. No one was really using it. It eventually started to peter out. One section of it seemed to turn left through more brush, but we turned right through a brief crappy section to some more open woods.
The area was another homeless camp or something, because there was garbage strewn about including tarps and wrecked old tents. We paused here for a few moments.

Uncommon old wooden beam bridge

Google maps had shown a dotted line trail going north/south from Setauket-Port Jeff Greenway, north to Sheep Pasture Road. It was labeled as “Fire Road”. I had wanted to get to that, but we found a path to cut the corner.
We had almost reached the thing, near some apartments when we took the break. We made our way to this path and started walking to the north, and skirted the edge of fields on the right after the apartments had ended. The route turned left out to the main entrance to Lawrence Aviation from the road.

Great find!

We were inside a chain link fence, and this one didn’t have good breaks in it. We stepped back away from the road, and I saw a way out to the right. There were a lot of logs and such dumped alongside the road, probably to keep people from riding ATVs through there, but we managed to get out and climb over those followed by the tracks of the Long Island Railroad Port Jefferson Branch, with its concrete railroad ties.
Some of the group had fallen behind at this point, so we had to wait here a few moments for them to catch up.
Once out, we turned left on Sheep Pasture Road and headed slightly up hill parallel with the railroad to the intersection with Bayview Road. We paused here for a moment again for everyone to catch up.
Bayview Road went across the tracks to the left on a wooden beam bridge, which surprised me. Bridges completely supported by wood like that seem to be getting less common all of the time, and this one doesn’t look that new.
While waiting, I spotted something in a black container in the leaves beside the road.

I was surprised and delighted to find it was a fully sheathed Woodsman’s Pal brush cutting knife! I had first used one of these that Jason Itell had brought on a hike down near Valley Forge PA in 2008, and was impressed with how well it cut, with its odd hooked end. I never got around to buying one, and they’re not particularly cheap, so this was a great thing to find. I think they go for between $175 and $195 each! It fit pretty easily right into my backpack. We turned right and went north on Willis Avenue.

Mirror group

Willis Ave hooked sightly to the right, and we could see the Cedar Hill Cemetery from the road. We cut through the woods where there were no houses toward the edge of it.

In Port Jefferson with old power plant

The historic, picuresque cemetery was fist established in 1859 when the thirteen acres were purchased from Hubbard Gildersleeve according to Port Jefferson Historical Society.
There was a big chain link fence around the place, and so getting into it wasn’t that easy.
Neil found a spot in the fence that was drooping enough that we could get over and walk through. Alex and John turned back to Willis Ave and decided to walk into the cemetery the more mature way through the main entrance.

A Port Jefferson scene

Jen got stuck on the fence barbed wire but otherwise got over okay. I fell in the dirt trying to get over right away. The rest of us all got over and we started walking down through the cemetery toward the main entrance.

Historic Port Jeff Flour Mill sign

We headed out the main entrance to Liberty Avenue where Alex and John were walking up, just reaching the entrance. We all turned back down hill to continue.

Port Jeff ferry landing

Liberty Ave led out to Old Post Road, a former major through road which was intended as the main route to Boston.
The post roads were where royal dispatchers would carry important papers under directions from the King. As early as the 1670s, these were merely trails through the wilderness that would be marked with ax marks for future riders.
The roads were ordered opened in 1672 under Charles II, mostly using pre-existing aboriginal trails. This particular post road went out to the end of Long Island, at which point they would ferry across toward Boston.

Port Jeff Ferry landing

In the early 1700s, Benjamin Franklin took to these roads himself in a coach he outfitted with an odometer of his own invention, and used it to scale miles. A stone marker was eventually placed at every mile on the post road. Remaining markers are often known as the “Franklin Markers”.
We didn’t follow the post road just yet. Instead, we crossed directly next to a house, and climbed steeply down a slope into a ball field associated with the Port Jefferson High School.

Port Jeff

We crossed the field and reached Mill Creek Road. We paused here while I looked through my maps. I wanted to go left by the high school and ascend to a running track they have, and then come out by way of a field park to the north.
I could see down to the right there was another path entering a swath of woods that might get us the same place. Someone was staring cautiously out a window from the school, and rather than look too suspicious, we opted to move further from the school and try that other path option. This led us out to Barnum Road and only cut a short corner.

Port Jeff

We continued left along Barnum Road, and the park I wanted to come out of, Joe Erland Field, was on the left after a bit. On the other side, there was a Rocketship Park to the right.
I figured there would be a large rocket ship in the place, but it looked kind of lame.
We continued along a trail that went to the left and down along the Mill Creek, which had historic markers about a flour mill that had been in service there from 1858 until 1924. It was quite a picturesque little spot.

At Port Jeff

Joel was behind and someone said he was fixing his shoe.
It turned out to be a bit worse than that for our only newcomer to this hike.
He had somehow twisted his ankle and it was really bad. He tried wrapping it, but he was moving very slowly after. He felt awful for having injured himself so quickly on his first trip out with us.
I give him credit for not wanting to give up. He managed to move for quite a while after the injury anyway. We walked along the creek section, and then out to the waterfront at the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry.

Abandoned rails to the ferry area

The ferry is one of the oldest operating ferries in America. Service started in 1872, and the current operating ferry company began offering its service in 1883.

View toward Port Jeff power plant, ferry coming in

Across the little bay there was a closed power plant which I had thought was the nuclear one we had heard about previously. I was wrong about that; this was the Port Jefferson power station. The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant is the closed one that never really fully activated a bit to the east of there. We wouldn’t reach that site this time.
Plans for the disused power plant at Port Jeff have been talked about for years, and I think the current plan is to take it down and rebuild a plant on site from the ground up. Nuclear is not an option they consider on Long Island because of the inability to adequately evacuate should there ever be a problem.

View toward the power plant

The wind was getting pretty hard to deal with at this point. We pushed on through it, and walked a nice walkway along the waterfront to the east.
Along the way, we passed some railroad rails leading out to the water. It makes sense that at one time, there would have been tracks leading out for direct access to the Port Jefferson ferry, whether it be for people or for freight, but I could find no historic USGS maps going back to the 1880s showing such a spur existing. It’s quite an oddity.

Centennial Park Beach

We made our way through Harborfront Park, which had nice pathways through it and a statue of some people holding up the wooden frame of a boat. This is certainly a representation of the boat yard and construction that once happened here.

Steep slopes and falling trees

We made our way around a couple more docks, and then toward the Centennial Park beach, where people were walking their dogs. This is one of the few dog beaches on Long Island that I’ve seen. If fact, dogs are banned from more parks than not from what we’ve seen on Long Island.
James was going to bring Cory Salveson with him for the hike, and he wanted to bring his dog, Banjo, but the problem with some of these hikes is that too many of them do not allow dogs at all. In the case of this hike, we would not have been able to do the cemetery or the entire later beach section with Banjo.

Beach at Port Jeff

The slopes above us were getting very steep. Some tree roots were well exposed and looked like they were going to fall right over the edge. A bench was broken by tidal surge which pummels the hillsides and causes washouts. It was put together with rope and duct tape!

Nice fix!

We continued up along this section of beach for a little ways until we came to an access at Saints Orchard Road.
My original plan from Port Jeff was to walk Old Post Road and cut through some school properties, but then I decided I wanted to walk that swath of beach because it looked pretty.
We headed rather steeply up hill on Saints Orchard Road, which eventually leveled off and got more pleasant. This was a good road to walk, because it had very little traffic being a dead end. We continued to the intersection with Cliff Road at the top.

Power plant view

The Belle Terre Community Center was on the corner there, which doubled as the local court house. There were cop cars parked all outside of it.
We continued just a little further ahead straight, and the road name changed to Old Homestead Road.
At that point, the Port Jefferson Country Club’s golf course started appearing on the let side of the road. There were houses along Old Homestead Road ahead, but I figured since it was such a windy day, no one would be out golfing. After all, no one wants to screw up their average in this kind of wind. It was the perfect day to try to walk it.

Port Jeff power plant

We made our way to the left on a vague path that took us directly out onto the green. This was a great move because it allowed us to skip a long section of road walking ahead.
We walked along some soft astroturf for a while, and also used some sections of paved trail that followed somewhat close to the south end of the golf course. We were along the back yards of a few houses, but no one seemed to be home or paying attention really. We just kept walking, and had to go further north slightly to avoid a few hills, then back to the south again when the course came back next to the road.

View along Crystal Brook Hollow

We continued on the course around a corner toward the north just a little bit more, until we were parallel with the intersections of Old Homestead Road, Winston Drive, and Waterview Drive.
We cut down hill slightly and under a line of Cedar trees, then back up to reach Winston Drive where we turned right. This took us down hill away from the golf course.
Around this time, Joel decided he didn’t want to chance hurting himself any more, and would sit out the rest of it. He didn’t have the Uber app on his phone, so I started trying to help him out with that.

Mirror fun

Service in this area was absolute crap. I was showing two to four bars, my Uber app was opening, but I couldn’t order the location in it. Jen started trying hers, and we all continued walking and trying to get service.
Jen got it first and managed to order the Uber for Joel, but her service became crap almost immediately after. We started moving on along the road, which changed names to Crystal Brook Hollow Road. There were some nice views through the trees toward the waterfront here.
When we reached the top of a little hill, service came back, so we all paused.

Society of St. Francis and Little Portion Friary

Jen’s phone was not saying when the guy would arrive, because it was locked onto something saying he would arrive in like nine minutes or something.
She could at least tell what his license plate number was, and that he was to arrive in a brown Subaru, so we waited and watched for a car coming from the direction it initially said it would come from.
Nothing was arriving until well after ten minutes, and we contemplated moving on ahead a bit more. I was worried about moving, because when I had done that once before they changed me for it for moving.

BROWNIES!

We chose to stay put this time, because it was still quite a ways from the initial place the ride was ordered from. Soon, we saw the brown Subaru going by. We waved at the guy, he waved back, and he kept on driving!

Scene in Mt. Sinai

He kept on heading back to the initial place the ride was ordered from, and Jen tried to call him three times before finally getting him on at least the fourth call.
He turned around and came back; he was probably afraid of having to figure out the entire group there. When he pulled up he said he was wondering what was going on there.
Joel got in the car and headed back to the initial meeting point at Rocky Point, and Kirk loaned him twenty bucks so that he would have some cash for food if he needed it while waiting. He had my cell number in case there was any issues.

A scene in Mt. Sinai NY

We continued on along the road and crossed the namesake Crystal Brook, then made the next left turn at the top of a hill onto another section of the Old Post Road.

View in Mt. Sinai Harbor

The road took us up hill rather steeply for a bit, and when we got near the top, there was a lovely old church type of building to the left.
This was once the Society of St. Francis worship area, and something called the Little Portion Friary.
The site had been a place of worship since 1929, which is probably when the stately building dates back to, but the shrinking popularity brought membership I think down to something like eighty in the United States.

Mt. Sinai Harbor

My understanding of it is that the county purchased the land associated with the church place because it was important land that drained into the Mt. Sinai Harbor.

Mt Sinai Harbor

We looked up and saw a sign that read “Abraham was an immigrant, Moses was a fugitive, Jesus was a protester, judge less, love more, all are welcome here”.
This was a very nice sign to make us feel welcome, but what really made us want to go up was that there was a sign regarding a bake sale. Yes, we were starting to get hungry, and although we did not want to spoil our lunches, I got the idea of delicious cookies and pastries made by old church ladies, and couldn’t resist the urge to go in. We walked up the driveway to the place.

Along Mt. Sinai Harbor

At the entrance, we saw a sign reading “Greatful Bread Bakery”, and the door was open. It led down steps and into the basement where we found boxes of prepared pies and such.

Mt. Sinai Harbor

I wasn’t in the mood for a pie just yet, but there were entire brownie sheets in boxes. There was a trust system for paying, with a “suggested donation” of eight dollars for one of the boxes. We pulled funds together and put that in the box, and grabbed a box of brownies.
I think everyone partook of at least some of the brownies.
As we were leaving, a fat man was walking back to the basement area after leaving a restroom area. He thanked us for coming in and mumbled something about soda break coming out.

Mt. Sinai Harbor from Chandler Preserve

We weren’t really interested in soda bread, so we started heading out.
Kirk pointed out the fact that the guy was a little strange. He said that he didn’t ask what brought us here, what was with the backpacks, where are you all hiking, all of the normal things that someone might ask a large crew of people atypically walking through the area, and instead just mumbled something about selling us some soda bread. It took Kirk pointing it out to me to realize just how strange the man came off as!

Glacial till deposited boulders at Chandler Preserve

Since the closure of the original intended place there, I found out that the site was now used to help people overcome opioid and other addictions. It made more sense to me that the guy seemed a little off, and that the bakery was known as “greatful bread”.
We left the site and continued to walk the Old Post Road to the east.
We soon reached the little community of Mount Sinai. There were some very old looking homes along the road as we wandered through.

Chandler Preserve ruins

Some of the homes probably date way back, even to the 1700s. It was first settled as early as the 1660s like nearby Port Jefferson.
Mt. Sinai of course was not the first name of the place.
The local native Americans, the Seatocot (where the local Long Island name “Setauket” comes from), called the area “Nonowatuck”, which means “stream that dries up”. This is probably referring to the dry wash that is Pipe Stave Hollow today.
The first colonial name for the place was Old Man’s, or Old Man’s Harbor. It supposedly has something to do with an aged Englishman who acquired land at some point.
When the first post office was established in 1840, “Old Mans” was decidedly not a proper name for a town. For about a year, it was known as Mt. Vernon, until it was realized that New York already had another town by that name. It went back to Old Mans briefly.

Chandler Preserve steps

It as eventually decided, I think by the postmaster, to give it the biblical name Mt. Sinai, which rumor has that he decided by pointing a needle at a place in a bible.
The area had grist mills and such at one time, and then became a sort of mini resort community into the early 1900s with the nearby beach.
We turned left on Shore Road from Old Post Road, which took us closer to the waterfront. In a little bit, we turned left into Satterly Landing Park, which gave us some excellent views of the Mt. Sinai Harbor. We turned right from here and headed along the mucky spoo shores which had grasses holding deep puddles. This took us back out to Shore Road cutting a little corner.
The road led directly along the shore from a ninety degree bend where we rejoined it. The curb on the road was flush with the pavement, and there was a lot of washed up phragmites blocking the westbound travel lanes.

Mt Sinai Harbor

We continued on Shore Road from waterfront to where it started heading back inland again. We then turned to the left on Seaview Lane into a development.

Shore Road

At the next intersection, Waters Edge Lane, we turned right to the end of a cul de sac, where there was a gate leading into the Chandler Preserve.
We walked into the gate and the trail led us down hill to a lovely outlook of Mt. Sinai Harbor. I got our group shot here.
We headed slightly back up into the woods, and the trail took us up slope a bit more to another little outlook spot. We turned right from here, up hill on a good trail that started off mowed, and then went high up through woods.

Historic marker

The trail was strewn with giant boulders, which were deposited with glacial till at the end of the Wisconsin Glacier. All of the island is pretty much considered a terminal moraine.

Beach at Cedar Beach

The trail continued up much higher than I had anticipated it would go. Near the top, there were some remnants of some former buildings or something, and some pavement to the right.
The preserve is both Chandler Preserve and Pipe Stave Hollow Preserve in writings I can find, and very little is said about the land owned by Suffolk County.
One of those haunted pages says there is some mythical creature called “The Whacker” lurking there. I found an old book online that has town minutes, where a Mr. Chandler was applying for permit to erect a stockade for a camp around the outside of his land.

Cedar Beach

The locals didn’t much like the idea of such a stockade. At the time, the site was apparently used as like a Summer camp or something.
In later years, there was a resort of some sort that reportedly catered to starts such as Marilyn Monroe. There was a mansion on the site, and it must have disappeared somewhat recently. There were also reportedly apartments up there at one time, but one account reads that they burned down. I’m not sure the truth of it, but it was an interesting bit of property.

Stone strewn Cedar Beach

There were several trails breaking off. We tried to go down each of them to the left, hoping to find a way down to Pipe Stave Hollow Road, but found nothing.

Waves breaking

We continued to the south, and a trail descended for a bit, and then went down a set of steps from where there apparently used to be a building. The trail then went ot the left. There was a guy walking the trail ahead, and we chose to take the fork he took, which went more down hill.
I didn’t see where the guy went. The trail seemed to loop to the left, and joined with the trail we were on from above. It did not go to the bottom, so I don’t know where the guy got to. We backtracked when we realized it was a loop.

Cedar Beach

I decided we would make our way down off trail, as best we could, through Pipe Stave Hollow to the road of the same name.
It was rather steep, and we had to switchback in order to avoid the green thorns that ony seem to grow in sandy soils like pine barrens.
When we got to the bottom, we took a break on some logs. Pipe Stave Hollow was clearly a stream when the rains are heavy enough, but it was a dry wash at this point. I thought this must be what the native Americans were referring to.

Miller Place Beach

We came out to Pipe Stave Hollow Road, from behind a “no trespassing” sign. Properties on Long Island never cease to amaze me with how vague or misleading they can be.
We followed Pipe Stave Hollow Road around a ninety degree bend, and then along more of Mt. Sinai Harbor to Harbor Beach Road where we turned left.
My plan had been to walk west all the way to the end of the peninsula at Cedar Beach, and our lunch break would be a place called Sunsets at Cedar Beach overlooking the water.

Rocks on the beach

The area we were walking through had its place in history. “Oldman’s Harbor” as it was known before Mt. Sinai, was once a major loading place for cordwood which was harvested from nearby forests and taken to New York City and other places.

It was also at this site where in 1780, Major Benjamin Tallmadge launched a raid against the British, killed six of their men, burned their horse feed, and destroyed a stockade and boat, then walked away with only one man wounded. In addition to wood harvesting, the area was also used for harvesting salt hay. We walked out along the road to the main entrance to Cedar Beach. It was a good thing it was not warmer weather. There was a toll for entrance, but it was shut down when we arrived, and it was open to residents only.

Cool cliffs at Cordwood Park

We were fortunately able to ignore this and walk right on in. The wind was blowing like crazy. It was nearly unbearable. The entire day had been very windy, but this was incredibly bad.

On the beach

I actually had to stop and put my hat on. I had only worn the light blazer and thin pants, so it was penetrating me something terrible. I decided at this time that we would not go up and around the peninsula. It was another mile out and back, and we weren’t really allowed to go out there anyway. Rather than risk a problem, we opted to just head toward the restaurant, and it was too windy to deal with doing extra at this time anyway.

Boulders at the beach

The next bit of sadness was that the restaurant was closed. We had checked it online, and google said that it was open. The thing looked completely closed for the Winter.
We went up to the building and hid ourselves from the horrible wind behind the building and under its awning. We all were looking at our phones for perhaps someplace that would be close enough to stop and get some food. There was absolutely nothing nearby at all.
I was still feeling a little squeamish from eating far too many brownies from the church.

Historic Cedar Beach view at Mt. Sinai

The inlest to this beach used to be on the opposite side, historically. Rather than being connected from the Rocky Point side, the peninsula was from the Port Jefferson side.

stuff falling down...

I was glad we’d gotten them at this point, just not so glad that I had eaten so many of them. No one wanted any more of them, so I folded the box up with what was remaining and stuffed it into my backpack. We eventually accepted our sad fate of no food and pummeling wind, and made our way out from under the awning onto the beach to head east.
This beach was unlike any I’d ever walked before.
There was sand, and of course a narrower beach because it was a north facing one, not like a barrier island, but this one had countless little rocks washed up on it just about everywhere we walked. We had to step to try to avoid them at times, because it could be like walking on ballast. It only made it slightly unpleasant, and we had to be a bit more conscious than we would normally be walking a beach section.
The pastel colors of the rocks were from white to blues, greys, and reds, which I noted seemed to be the colors of Pez or Smarties candies. The rocks closer to the water were shinier, and there was a good amount of quartz mixed on.

Historic postcard view at Indian Rock

These rocks are likely all eroded from Connecticut. It looks like some of the stuff I’ve seen hiking over there.

Rocks on the beach

We could see Connecticut very clearly, over toward Bridgeport, from this location. To the west, Connecticut was very clear, but it disappeared over the horizon the more we went east. We watched the rocks as we moved on, and each of us were picking up specimens we found to be most interesting. There were high slopes along the way to the right, as we approached Miller Place Beach. Miller Place is named for early settlers and is a small Hamlet that dates back to the 1700s.

Just beyond, at the top of a big slope, Cordwood Landing County Park is an undeveloped section, as this was some of the area it was harvested from. Soon, there were some giant boulders on the beach and just into the water. At first, I thought this would be a jetty like we have in NJ, or some kind of simple water break. I was shocked to see that these were giant natural rocks on the beach, probably glacially deposited. One of them was known as Indian Rock, and used to sit further up on the beach I believe.

That's actually erosion deterrent

There were periodically many giant rocks on the beach partially exposed, or down in the water.
We passed by an access at Miller Place and passed the high slopes at the Cordwood Park, then continued along majorly high bluffs for most of the rest of our time in the beach.
I was not expecting these slopes to be so high. Most of the homes were all so far up that we didn’t really feel like we were invading on anyone’s privacy.

Getting narrow...

There were a few people walking the beach we passed by, but none of them said anything about how we shouldn’t be there. We passed through Woodhull Landing Beach and Scotts Beach, and an area known as Sound Beach. To the right, there was a lot of debris coming down the slopes, and at one time it looked like an entire house had been lost over the edge (we later had confirmed from John’s local friend that every now and then a house does fall off the top and down the slope, as well as decks and such.

Beaches and bulkheads

He also said that one of his neighbors had a road on the cliff side of his house when he moved in, and now it’s just cliff!). The area is reportedly a major erosion problem, and bulkheads are constantly being installed to keep homes from falling over the sides of these cliffs. There was another spot where there were large I-beams sticking up from the sand, and it looked like it supported a venerable structure long since lost.
The beach started getting really narrow at one point, and I thought we might have to rock scramble, but the beach continued just fine and then widened back out again.

Old docks

There were often some sorts of bulkheads or fences along the land side of us. Large wooden structures intended to keep the sand from washing down, protected from waves.

On the beach

In several places, these fences had failed and were busted off. We could see metal replacements in some sections of these as well. In other areas, there were erosion deterrents built right into the slopes to keep them from collapsing further. These people must have insane insurance.
We passed another bit of Suffolk County park land, at a beach section called Tides Beach. There was a jetty there where we took a little break.
As if by some miracle, by the time we had reached Miller Place a little earlier, the wind had died down. It remained breezy, but it was actually incredibly pleasant.

Stopping wasn’t too cold to bear, and this just turned out to be an amazing beach walk. Kirk in particular was really loving this. He said we could just do this every week and it would be perfect. Of course, we can’t be doing that. There’s too much to see.
The beach widened out quite a bit more after the jetty. The waves were very loud, and sounded so relaxing, just like the perfect ones they record for sleeping sound machines.
The sun had begun to sink in the sky, and depending on the exact orientation of the beach, it would be obscured behind the sand cliffs, and then emerge when our angle changed slightly.
I was enjoying this quite a lot; I’d gotten out some Horn Dog Barleywine I’d gotten, made by Flying Dog Brewery.
It was the most bitter barleywine I’ve ever had, and tasted much more like an IPA, but it was okay. Serious Sean had told me recently that he never gets anything by Flying Dog because he doesn’t care for it.

Along the beach

I don’t hate it that much, but I wasn’t as impressed by their seasonal barleywine as I think I should have been. The beach section was another one where my plans shifted a lot. Originally, I was going to cut away from the beach much earlier, but I’d found a good way of going further to Shoreham, and then heading south using both formal and informal trails. I was realizing that this would add a considerable amount of mileage to the hike because we had already done so much extra that I had not anticipated.

I started looking at maps on my phone trying to figure how we could work this out.
The beach narrowed at one more point, and we had to walk very tightly against some of the wooden walls. The waves were crashing up against some rocks that were strewn here for erosion deterrent. We had to time our steps as not to get hit by the waves. Kirk said it best, that it was a fun little thing to traverse, but if it had been any substantial distance, it would have totally sucked.

We continued past another access point known as Beech Beach, and then paralleled a nice tidal pool to the right. I was talking to James a bit, and my plan had been to use one of the next beach accesses to get back up hill toward Rocky Point, since going out as far as Shoreham would take quite a bit longer. As we walked, I was still looking over potential for future hikes, and started concocting the idea for another loop. We could use the section of beach between Beech Beach and Shoreham, as well as the Paumanok Path in Rocky Point State Park, and then the connection I had come up with along informal trails on the east side of it.

Lovely beach view

When I realized the distance was about right and that it would work out, I had everyone turn around, and we would walk back to Beech Beach. It was good timing to get off of the beach, because the sun was about to go down, which meant it would start getting colder pretty fast.

We cut through a boat launch area where it said “residents only” (walking the tide line is legal because below it is government land), and reached Hallock Landing Road, which I think was another one of those cordwood sites back in the day.
The Indian Rock in this area is reportedly where the name “Rocky Point” came from.
It was a bit of a gulch that the road went up in, but we still did have to climb up hill even though we started in at a lower elevation.

Where buildings had fallen down...

There is an Indian Rock also in this area, the largest boulder on Long Island, but we missed it this time.

A tight rocky spot...

It’s something I’ll have to add to the next one. The area is named for early settler Noah Hallock. As we headed up the hill, we came upon the historic home of Noah Hallock, built in 1721 for his young bride Bethia Youngs. The property was purchased by the local historical society in 2015 and is open for tours periodicall. Maybe I can try to arrange that on the next hike out in the area. Additionally, the Noah Hallock Cemetery is just up the road. We didn’t have daylight to do all of this stuff anyway this time.

Beech Beach

We continued up the road, which had a narrow shoulder, but it was alright, to the intersection with Rocky Point Landing Road. Here, we had to cross to the fire house and then go slightly left to continue on Hallock Landing Road. Across and to the left was an old school house, with a sign on it reading “lecture room”. The Rocky Point Lecture Room was a school house built in 1849 on land donated by Amos Hallock to be a community lecture room and extension of the Mt. Sinai Congregational Church.

Beech Beach

When the local one room school house became too crowded, classes were held in the place as well. Later, Long Island Council of Churches used it as a Parish resource center. The old building was falling into disrepair when the local fire company bought the property for use as an EMT place and maintenance facility, but they did not tear down the old building. Fire Department member Rob Bentivegna took it upon himself to restore the building to its former glory.

Tidal pool at Beech Beach

A handyman by trade, he loved turning it back into something it used to be. Even the door on the building is the same one that was there in 1927.

1721 Hallock House

We headed south on Hallock Landing Road, and sidewalks started up in a bit. They were nice ones that went higher above the level of the street.

Rocky Point Lecture Room

We wandered to the south, and soon came to the power line crossing, which was where the former extension of the Port Jefferson Branch of the Long Island Railroad used to cross on its way to Wading River. There might have been a Rocky Point Station somewhere in this area. As I reached it, I stopped to have a look. The route was recently plowed off by some sort of large vehicle. I told everyone that this was the old railroad bed, and how I was planning to do a hike following it. As we paused and were discussing this, a guy was walking toward us from the other direction.

Old Long Island Railroad branch at Rocky Point

He overheard what I was saying and chimed in saying that this was a trail project under development (he had a firefighter jacket on, and I wonder if he was the man responsible for doing the work on the lecture room). I mentioned about the railroad, and he confirmed that this was it, and that they were to open it all the way out to Wading River. I brought up Empire State Trail, and he confirmed that this would be part of it. He also said they had a section already done out by Port Jefferson, but that it wasn’t using the railroad bed. I’m pretty sure he was talking about the Setauket-Port Jefferson Greenway.

Historic rocket view

The trail is going to be paved, like the other greenway, and they apparently only broke ground on doing some of this during the previous month. I’d like to have walked some of it before they got to this work, but at this point I might as well wait until it’s finished before we push through on that. I have another hike planned, in addition to the loop I had just come up with, that would take us from a point near Port Jefferson east toward Wading River and beyond on other trails. I thanked the firefighter for taking the time to talk to us. I wish I’d gotten his name. We then moved on to the south just a little bit more and came to Rocketship Park. We had passed a Rocketship Park before, but this one actually had a giant metal rocket ship playground erected in the front of it. This used to be a thing kids could climb in, but it was now closed off for that use. I think maybe the previous playground might have had one at one time as well. The park now had a new name, a guy’s name that I forget at the moment.

Rocket

We continued down the road just a bit further to reach Rt 25A across from the shopping center where we had met in the morning.
I had been in touch with Joel. He had given in and went and got Chinese food while he was waiting for us. It was probably about 5:30 when we showed up at the parking area.
As we were walking into the lot, a man walked up to John and warmly gave him a big hug. It was John’s old high school friend and teammate Bill Bakewicz, whom he had not seen in I think he said 47 years!
We stopped and chatted with him for a while, and Bill told us about how the next section of beach we had not done is something like the longest section of privately owned beach in the country. I think that was it, I can’t quite remember totally.
Joel came hobbling out from one of the stores he had been sitting in. He had fortunately brought a book to read and watched a couple of episodes of something on his phone to keep him occupied, and fortunately we were were not too much later than usual

Reunited buddies

We all piled into cars from here to head out for a bite to eat back in Port Jefferson.

On da beach

Bill recommended a place, but there was no way we were getting in there because it was too crowded.
Instead, we ended up going to Seaport Diner just a little south of the station from town, which ended up being quite good. I got a chicken and pasta dish that was so filling that even I could not finish it (I think any pasta made with elbow macaroni tends to be more filling, as this was only the third time after a hike I’ve ever not finished dinner after a hike that I can recall. I typically refer to elbow macaroni dishes as “slop”).
This had been quite another excellent hike. Of all of the things I had planned, we ended up missing out on quite a bit of it, but then again ended up seeing so much more.
My big excitement, finally connecting to the Paumanok Path, would have to wait until a future Long Island hike, although the terminus is literally only behind the shopping plaza.

John and his buddy Bill

We are pretty much connected with it anyway, but as I stated before, I’m not so much in a hurry to complete this.
My expectation for this and most of the hikes is to have a great time, and the only self-imposed rule is the mileage.
I don’t even known if the next hike out ther ewill be the next connection to this.
I really want to take a step back and finish Long Island Greenbelt, which continued south side of the island. There is at least an entire hike’s worth right there. Then there is the railroad bed, and we also have the hike I have been wanting to do along the length of Jones Beach.
I’d like to get at least one more Long Island hike in there before it starts getting really warm and I’ll want all of the hikes to have swimming spots. Maybe early May or late April…we shall see…

HAM