Hike #1310; Califon to Washington

Hike #1310; Califon to Washington

3/25/20 Califon to Washington with Brittany Audrey and Joel Castus

The craziness continued every day. There was always more news about death and how it was getting worse all over online. I don’t have television, but I suppose at this point, being on line was even worse. The only time I felt sane at all was being out on a trail somewhere with positive people who were not fear mongering constantly.

WHY don't people quit leaving poo bags???

I don’t deny that there’s a virus or that we have a serious problem, but even at the numbers effected, it’s still not managed in such a way that merits the widespread panic crowds and buying every bit of toilet paper within reach.

Spring is here

Because it was my birthday week, and because it was close to Spruce Run and such in case I was needed, I decided we would do a hike that was nearly a repeat of one of the first ones I did going back to the beginning of 1998.
Of course, at the time before I had my driver’s license, all of the hikes had to end at my house in Washington. As such, I did everything I could do coming from all different directions.

Gorge trestle

At the time, I was aiming for all of the hikes to be twenty miles. The first hike I scaled off with my grandfather in his office, using his USGS topo maps and a scale, and it went over so well that people started asking me about doing other hikes.
Of course, I had hiked all of this already, but I needed a distance. I had the concept of doing the old Warren Railroad we had done on the first hike to complete it from the south, but that was only a few miles. Then I considered that the Jersey Central line was there and we could do that from the High Bridge area.

Historic view at Gorge Trestle

Then to the east from there the High Bridge Branch of the Jersey Central continued on.
We scaled off a twenty mile route to Washington that would begin at Crestmoor Crossing just over the Morris County line.
This time, we wouldn’t do exactly that; the route from Crestmoore would be twenty miles and I didn’t feel the need to go that far, although that was the original intention. Instead, I figured we could start in Califon and just chop off a little of the start of it to make it more like 16 or 17 miles.
We all met at the Krauszers in Washington and then shuttled in my van to the start point down in Califon. I decided to park just across from the old railroad station, which was the first stone rail station the Central Railroad of New Jersey ever built.
The people of the town, which was known as “California” named for the California Gold Rush, had wanted a stone station, but the railroad said they would only build it if the town provided the stone. The town agreed, and the stone structure was erected.

Gorge trestle

It ended up becoming the standard to have stone stations, many of which still stand today such as the very nice ones in Somerville and Raritan.
As the story goes, the sign maker did not have enough room on the sign to write “California”, so he abbreviated it to Califon, and it became the town name.
We walked from the station on the rail bed, now known as Columbia Trail, which I absolutely hate (It should have been High Bridge Branch Trail. “Columbia” is the name of the town the Paulinskill Valley Trail ends in, which creates confusion, and government agencies should not be giving free advertising to private companies. It was not a stipulation of the trail deal for the name to be given, and for that matter, the gas line would be required to keep the thing mowed either way, so they just took their maintenance budget and pushed it onto tax payers, and still get free shout out.).

Ken Lockwood Gorge

The trail entered the woods with a few houses here and there. As we moved away from Califon, we passed the former home of John Palmer, an old black man who was the grandson of slaves, and a World War II veteran. He was well loved in town, but had very little to his name save for this property that was a former basket factory land. He started scrapping for a living, and had a small junkyard on the land.
I had heard stories about him my entire life, so when I finally got to meet him back in 2007, I was both honored and shocked that he was still alive.

Somewhat dry falls

My dad said “That guy was old when I was a kid!”.
He passed away a few years back and the site was cleaned up. When he had little left, the A&P in town used to give him a chicken every day, and everyone would help him out. My buddy Vance would bring him things, and even my grandfather did his property survey for free.
We continued on past here and crossed Hoffman’s Crossing Road. I was taking the bollards out of their sleeves and tried handing one to each Brittany and Joel, because it’s always funny to act like they weigh nothing and have someone go to grab it and drop it.
After Hoffman’s Crossing, we entered Ken Lockwood Gorge, which is one of the prettiest sections of Hunterdon County, although it gets overrun. Brittany had hiked this with us before, but it was dark, so it was probably her first time seeing it really.

Ken Lockwood Gorge

We continued through to the trestle in the middle of the gorge. I had some historic photos I had to take along the way for this one, which I lined up pretty well.

Ken Lockwood Gorge

The route from here is something I’ve done a whole lot in recent years. It’s easy to get to from work, easy to use for loops, and yet I still love it. The Highlands Trail broke off to the right and we continued from the gorge across the road overpass at Readingsburg.
A little further beyond, as we approached High Bridge, I pointed out the entrance to the Taylor Steelworkers Historic Greenway, where I had built the entrance sign.

Gnome houses

We walked up behind it and down the red blazed spur trail to the overlook of the Lake Solitude Dam. There were no leaves yet, so I was able to point out the Solitude House and old Company Store from this point.
Solitude House was nicknamed such by John Penn, last Royal Governor of Pennsylvania, who was under house arrest at the site along with his assistant Benjamin Chew to keep them from stirring up political trouble in Philadelphia. The house was home to ironmaster Robert Taylor, who was hired by his predecessors William Allen and Joseph Turner to manage the ironworks.

Carvings on the trail

We headed from here back up to the rail bed and continued on into town, across two crossings and out to Main Street.
The entire stretch of the rail trail from Califon on to High Bridge is loaded with all sorts of gnome stuff along the way. There are little custom made gnome homes and statues all along the way. Brittany was stopping to photograph just about all of them she saw. There are also a lot of geocaches involved with most of these.
We turned left on Main, away from the rail bed in order to find a bit to eat a little further down. I saw the guy who owns the liquor store who Bill Jentz had introduced me to on the way, and then moved on down to the pizza place on the right.

Solitude Dam

I’m not sure if it’s the same place that’s been there for so many years that I’d in the past stopped at, but they were at least open for takeout. There was only one guy, the owner presumably, working.
I got two plain slices to go, and we all started walking back up the Main Street.
When we got to where the Taylor Wharton Spur track used to cross the road, we went left and then climbed up to the eastbound connector to the wye on the Jersey Central line we had just been following. There are still rails on the wye, they are just grown over really badly.

1976 image by Breck P. Kent of American Freedom Trail in High Bridge

We crossed the bridge over the Taylor Wharton spur, and then headed into the High Bridge Commons lot.

The same scene today

I set up then and now compilations on the way that I had been trying to get for a while, including some of the American Freedom Train that passed through here in 1976.

Former HB Branch at the commons lot

We took a little break in the lot, and then made our way out onto the former westbound connector to the wye out to the main line. There are still rains on that as well, but buried in the pavement and grass in the parking lot.
As we walked back, there was a sort of skill course for bicycles under construction, and maybe new trails going off into the woods. We went by this and headed right back out to the main line tracks and turned right.
The tracks going north from here aren’t really used for much of anything, but they are kept clear as far as Ludlow Station west of Hampton.

1976 American Freedom Train at High Bridge junction

When Interstate 78 was built in 1986, it severed the connection as a through route and a new connection was made near Bloomsbury with the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

The junction site today

Now, it could be used through to Bloomsbury, but there’s not much reason for it.
Still, despite the fact that it’s barely used, some serious tree cutting had taken place on the line since the last time I had been on it.

Historic image at High Bridge junction

Just about every tree on the slopes in the cut heading north had been removed.

The junction site today

This wouldn’t be so terrible except for the fact that whatever organization was doing it blew all of the wood chips into the drainage ditches cause the tracks to get inundated with water.

Wood chips blocking the drainage

We continued walking to the north and passed beneath Cregar Road, followed by Buffalo Hollow Road in the cut, with lots more wood chips everywhere. The tracks then went up onto a fill to cross the Willoughby Brook out of Voorhees State Park, and then continued into a cut into Glen Gardner area. There is still a wooden post there that might have been an older mile marker, and a siding to an industry still attached.
Also in this stretch was a concrete phone booth which is an uncommon thing more and more these days. They were booths for workers to call out.

Track flooding north of High Bridge

We continued on the shelf high above Rt 31 and into Glen Gardner parallel with the quarry. There was a stone wall to the right where quarry buildings used to be.
We continued to the north and crossed over the road that leads to Hagedorn, and continued beyond there to cross Hill Road on an old stone arch bridge dating back to the earliest days of the railroad, probably 1853 construction.
We continued north through town, and the next crossing was known as Bell’s Crossing. As I understand, the settlement sometimes was referred to this early on, and it was also known previously as Sodom, as well as Clarksville. It eventually took the name Glen Gardner after the name of the owners of the quarry operation.
The village was already settled early on, and grew starting with the construction of the Spruce Run Turnpike, which was chartered in 1813. The main street through town is the original route.

Old mile post

We continued across Bells Crossing, and next the railroad went onto a high fill to cross over the Spruce Run, which is a substantial tributary by the time it reaches that point.
We left the fill and went into a deep cut on the approach to Hampton, and the signal base that was there forever to the left was still there. I reminisced a bit about all the time I had spent in this area when I was little, climbing under the original Rt 31 bridge that was replaced only a couple of years ago.
We took a break under the bridge for a bit, and I gave a little of the history of the town of Hampton.

Old phone booth

It was originally just called “Junction”, because it was where the Warren Railroad joined the Central Railroad of New Jersey in 1856. The Warren Railroad became the main line of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western almost immediately, and until the DL&W acquired the Morris and Essex line, the bit to Hampton was the main line.
In the early days of railroads, a name like “Junction” was fine, but as more towns appeared and more railroads were built, there were more junctions, and so such a generic name was no longer going to cut it. The nearest town was New Hampton, which was there since colonial days, and so the town name became “Hampton Junction”. When the junction was cut out by 1955, it just became Hampton. That’s how New Hampton is confusingly a century older than Hampton.
The bridge was about the site of the junction itself. The tracks from the old Lackawanna main used to extend under the old bridge, but some of them were removed during replacement.

Shrooms

The station used to stand just ahead, but was demolished probably before I was born. I’m not sure when.
We walked down the tracks a bit, and then turned right to try to trace the Lackawanna line. It used to be pretty overgrown in this area, but someone had recently cleared off the center of it quite a lot. We followed that out to where it used to cross Lackawanna Avenue on a stone culvert. That was torn down around 2002, despite my last minute efforts to try to save it.

In Glen Gardner

We headed down to Lackawanna Avenue, and then out to Rt 31 past the Hicks paving place. One abutment to the bridge that used to span Rt 31 for the rail line is still in place. The bridge was torn down in 1959.
From here, I had to decide which route I wanted to take. At first, I thought to go up and follow the old Lackawanna main into what they called “the cut” outside of Hampton. It would then take us out toward Dutch Hill Road, but it can get rather overgrown.

Under 31 bridge

It also leads out to someone’s yard before that, so I would have to cut up hill to get to fields or something and then out to the road. Rather than do that, we decided to just follow the road through New Hampton to get to the next section we could walk on Dutch Hill Road.
We reached the right turn onto New Hampton Road, which is also the route of the Spruce Run Turnpike, and turned right. Brittany ran down to the gas station straight ahead to use the restroom.

The junction site

While waiting, I decided to head down to the predecessor of the current Rt 31 bridge over the Musconetcong below. I had an old photo of the site before the newer bridge was constructed from 1921 I wanted to try to emulate.
The settlement on the Warren County side of the bridge is Imlaydale, and the abandoned bridge we visited was not the original bridge to cross the river here. Before that, there were two pony truss bridges even further down, and the main road went through Imlaydale.

The old bridge, 1921

The abutments for these bridges are still in place. The road went onto an island in the river, and then continued to a second bridge.

The bridge, same spot, 2020

I also recall that there were remnants of a stone arch out there when I was little, but there might not be anything left of that any more. I seem to recall seeing one stone arch remaining out there, but I have never seen it again since that time.

Imlaydale bridge

We made our way down the road into the settlement of New Hampton from here, which was named for Hamptonshire England.

Imlaydale Bridge site today

There is a ton of history through this town beyond the Spruce Run Turnpike there, recent and otherwise.

Former Union Hotel

We passed by the New Hampton Inn on the left. I was honestly surprised not to see signs that this hole in the wall was not open.

Smith House

The building looks like it’s made of plywood and thrown together with its flat roof. My dad used to drink underage there when he was little, as did just about all of the other locals. With the crazy shut-downs, a lot of the bars are remaining open as speakeasies. There was only one car outside of this one.
I suppose it wouldn’t work well in that area since it would be obvious people were inside. In someplace like Washington or Phillipsburg where the majority of patrons come in by foot, it’s far less surprising.

Dusenberry House

Just past the dive bar, the original New Hampton Inn, a beautiful building, stands on the left, but it’s now just a few residences inside.

American Hotel

The original New Hampton Inn was known as the Union Hotel, built about 1840, and was a stage coach stop along the route of the Spruce Run Turnpike.

New Hampton School

It served as a general store for a time, that has been closed for a while now.
The Union is probably referring to the 30,000 Acres purchased in 1742 by William Allen and Joseph Turner, rather than the union referred to in the Civil War since its construction predates that. It was the name of the land holding associated with the Union Ironworks.
Just about every house in New Hampton is pretty old. Just past this to the left is a house that appears vacant these days, but there used to be an old man there who would just sit in his chair out front and wave at everyone going by.

Base

When I was working for Hunterdon, my buddy Bandit (Adam Johnson) would tell me every time we went by that I needed to go interview that guy to put in the “Cult of Wavers” in Weird New Jersey, but I never got around to doing it.
Across the street from that house was a ragged but cool abandoned house.
The world got smaller as I posted the photos on Metrotrails when I found out that the home was the family home of an old friend from Port Colden, Rich Smith, and the old man that waved across the street was none other than his grandfather.
Sadly, Rich died a few years ago, but his son, also named Richard, reached out and friended me on Facebook after I had posted the photo. He was saying he plans to move to New Hampton in the near future.
We continued up the road into town past many more historic homes, including one of the oldest, the Henry Dusenberry stone mansion house built about 1793.

Warren RR bed

Dusenberry was a local merchant who settled in New Hampton about a decade before building the mansion house. He owned mills and such there, and I think he must have been maybe the father of the founder of Port Colden, William Dusenberry. Port Colden was referred to for a long time as “Dusenberry’s Folly” because the town never took off as expected and the third grid of planned streets never came to be.
That was two connections back to my little home village of Port Colden in the same mile.

Warren RR bed

Another great old building was the lovely three story American Hotel, built in 1862 by Jacob B. Thomas near the site of an earlier hotel he owned.

Old 31 overpass remnant

This was near the center of the settlement where Shoddy Mill Road comes in on the left. The old through truss bridge on Shoddy Mill Road is now closed to traffic after having been damaged. Who knows what will become of that in the near future. It’s a different kind of through pony truss than the standard late 1800s kinds we usually see. The only other near ones like it are in Clinton and in Glen Gardner.
The Shoddy Mill itself as originally a four or five story mill that burned early on, and that section is now a sitting area for apartments that were built into the replacement mill.

Old 31 overpass site

An interesting little repurpose spot.
We headed slightly up hill and passed the old school house on the left. This is now home to the Lebanon Township Museum. The museum was a spot we used to stop in on my past hikes, when an old friend, Louise Sliker used to run it. She was my dad’s elementary school teacher, and so she used to refer to me as one of her teaching grandchildren. Up until she passed away several years ago, she still sent me a birthday card every year.

Rt 31 overpass site

We headed on along the road past the intersection with New Hampton Road where the Spruce Run Turnpike turned away.

Warren RR bed

We soon turned right to steeply climb Dutch Hill Road. When we got to where the railroad used to cross, we turned left and followed it into the woods to the east.
The section of the Lackawanna Railroad bed is private land at first but soon enters Musconetcong Wildlife Management Area. It’s a really cool section because the railroad ties are all still in place, though rather rotten. They haven’t seen a train on them since the removal of the trestle in Changewater in 1959.

Warren RR bed

When we were heading to the starting point, I pointed out where you could see the railroad bed in the Winter time from the hillside.

View from the rail bd

I pointed out a spot soon ahead how we could look off into the Musconetcong Valley and see the cars out on Rt 31 in the distance.
A little further ahead are some stone ruins along the right of way that I don’t know what they were for. Maybe there was a quarry or something in the area, I don’t know. The stone structure is crumbling right along the edge of the line. I wondered if maybe there was a station stop close to New Hampton at one time, or otherwise some other kind of industry. I really don’t know what it could have been.

Ruins along the rail bed

We continued on the grade with the very pronounced ties, and at a cut section we could see where the ties widened and there must have been a switch.

Warren RR bed

All of this was double tracked at one time, except for the Changewater Trestle. That and the Oxford Tunnel were the only two places on the old road that were not double tracked, and even Oxford Tunnel for a brief time was double tracked through it. Around the turn of the century, the idea of replacing the Changewater Trestle with a concrete span similar to the Cutoff structures was discussed, but never happened.|
I think the ties we saw were probably the spot where it used to switch from double to single track, although everything else we walked was only a line of ties for single track.

Junction ties

I think all double tracks in the area were removed for this branch in the early 1900s.

Trestle site

Soon, we turned onto the fill for the Changewater Trestle. There was a foundation hole to the right just before approaching.
The trestle went through several changes over the years. The most notable one was on the side where we were standing.
The spans on the south side were originally two stone arches that were eliminated some time early on. Deck girder span was put in their place with a concrete pier to replace the arches. The masonry base of the one arch is still standing, and the concrete pier was placed on the other base. The eastbound abutment was also replaced with some concrete.
It would appear that the demolished ruins of the arches were simply left where they were dropped below the bridge. We climbed down carefully to the left and then beneath the bridge site over these rocks to reach the bottom.
The far side of the trestle site is something that has been in question a long time as well.

There is a kiln built into the oddly shaped abutment, and our best guess is that the mortar for the construction of the bridge was fired on site rather than elsewhere, a rather sensible move.

The mill site on our hike in 2002

Changewater is reportedly named for the changing of the water used by the mill races. The mills here are long gone, unfortunately.

The mill site now

The Changewater Grist Mill stood up until about 2003 when it badly collapsed and then was suddenly torn down.

Historic Changewater Trestle view

The Warren County side of the bridge was home to a graphite mill associated with the same company that still owns Asubury.

Trestle site now

The stone portion of that also stood well into my lifetime, but that was torn down and turned into a parking lot for NJ Department of Fish, Game, and Wildlife.

Historic Changewater graphite mill iage

Changewater was also home to an iron forge at one time, which is reportedly part of the stone building standing just to the east of the trestle site at Forge Hill Road.

Old graphite mill and trestle site

We crossed over the bridge and had a closer look at the old stone arches below before moving on.

Busted stones from the arch

The Changewater Bridge that stands today is a double stone arch built in 1900. It was given a concrete facade on the downstream side I think in the 1960s, but the stone facade remains on the upstream side. The bridge was deemed to be in poor condition and they plan to replace it with a modern structure.
We headed uphill on the other side of the bridge through the Warren County side of Changewater, toward the post office, which is one of the smallest I know of.

Warren RR bed

I brought up that the post office used to be in the building on the corner, which was the general store.
It seems every corner I come to, there is some piece of local lore to pass along, and this led me to the story of Edson Castner.
Castner was the owner of the house I grew up in in Port Colden, and my grandfather purchased it from him. He lived in the house for a time when he first got married.

Ruins on the Warren RR bed

He told me when he bought the house that Castner didn’t want all the money up front, even though he had it, because he wanted to charge interest on it or something.

Warren RR bed

Castner was known for loving his money, and there is a story that when his wife had a heart attack and one of his patrons was in the store, he used his phone to call for an ambulance...and Castner charged the guy for the call!
The craziest of all of the stories was Castner’s cause of death: starvation. He was so cheap that he wouldn’t eat his own merchandise, and so he starved to death in a store full of food.
Edson Castner is not the Castner that Changewater is best known for. That one goes to the Castner Family Murders of 1843.

Warren RR bed

Joel and Brittany had not heard about this one, so I imparted the story of how John Castner, his wife, his daughter, and his brother in law were all brutally murdered, and a hired hand mortally wounded .

Warren RR bed

Castner’s brother in law, John Parke had a great deal of money, and it was well known, so that as the motive for the attack.

Warren RR bed

Joseph Carter Jr. and Peter Parke, who were both related to the Castners, were charged with the crime. Both had come into money just afterwords, but they were not the only suspects by far. There was apparently plenty of reasonable doubt in that either of the two of them could have committed the crime, and in the first trial, they were found innocent.
An overzealous minister from Washington was said to have pushed for someone to hang for this crime, and so Carter and Parke were tried again and found guilty.

Warren RR bed

They asserted their innocence right up to the few moments they were hung in Belvidere.

Warren RR bed

It was not customary for murderers to be buried in a regular cemetery, and so they were buried instead at the intersection of Port Colden-Changewater Road (now McCollough Road) and Asbury-Anderson Road. A little over a decade later, the railroad came in and changed the road alignment, and Asbury Anderson Road was bridged over the tracks. The site became known as Murderer’s Bridge.
The graves were unmarked for a time, then marked with a wooden sign that read “Murderers”.

A small stone wall with no markings was erected over the site of the graves, which were removed some time later as being a traffic hazard.

Musconetcong Bridge to be destroyed

The case is still quite interesting because a lot of people believed the men to have been innocent.

Changewater creamery

My grandfather told me the story of someone who, on his death bed, told his daughter he wanted to confess a terrible sin to her, and the daughter would not let him tell her, apparently because she knew the story he was about to impart.
At this point, it is safe to say the case will never be solved, but it is an interesting piece of history.
We walked up Changewater Road to the site of Murderers Bridge, past the old creamery building that is now Maxwell Farms and a “deaf child area” sign that has been up since I was only very little.

Cut at Murderer's Bridge

When we reached the bridge site, we peered down into the old railroad cut. The remnants of the stone wall were apparently down in the cut, but I couldn’t make them out this time.

Goats going home

It’s been a long while since I looked for it. It was pointed out to me by the Meekers I think it was, who wrote one of the many books on the Changewater Murders, one day when I was driving by and saw them milling about the site.
We continued straight across the intersection parallel with the old railroad grade, which is mostly state park land now on the right side. Joel fell behind a bit here; he wore these work boots that were just not right for what we were doing, and his dog was pulling him something crazy the entire time, which only works worse on the feet.

Nigerian Dwarf Goats

Brittany got ahead of me, and with Joel behind, I was walking by myself past the next, somewhat newer home when a group of Nigerian Dwarf Goats came running up on me.

Warren RR bed

I had a deja vu moment. Back in 2008, we had done a hike where we were followed by such goats, and they wouldn’t stop following us. The curious animals would have followed us the entire rest of the hike.
The goats were running into the road, and a young guy and girl came running out of the house to fetch them. The guy said to me “Can you grab one of them?”, urging me to pick up one of the goats and help him carry it back to the house. One of the goats appeared to be following toward Brittany ahead, and I yelled out to her to try to hold up for a second and maybe grab a goat. She looked back at me with a combined look of disbelief and shock.

Warren RR bed

I picked up a goat and carried it back over toward the house. While carrying it, the thing was trying to chew through my leather jacket sleeve.
I handed him over to the guy and I asked “These are Nigerian Dwarf Goats, right?” and he looked at me with surprise and confirmed they were.
“Yeah, believe it or not, this has happened before..” I responded to him.
When they had the goats all safe, the boy told me that there was only one of them that ever runs into the road, and the other ones just follow.

Rail yard

I said goodbye and headed back out to the road to continue north to Washington.
We crossed a small stream next to a stone culvert below the railroad bed, and watched as it went into a cut where land owners are dumping all sorts of trash into it.
We eventually came to the intersection of Washburn Ave, where there used to be another bridge over the tracks. There, we headed down the slope and into the railroad cut toward the Washington Yard. Joel was pretty far behind here, so I took some time to dig through the leaves in the cut looking for my cell phone I had lost at the site a few years ago.

rail car

I figure it is probably still in those leaves somewhere, but probably pretty well buried at this point.
|We came out to the Washington rail yard, and I had a photo I wanted to get of the yard area that I assumed was taken looking east. There was no one around, so we climbed up on top of the rail cars to get the view. It turns out the direction I was looking at could not have been the same direction, so the photo was no good. I’ll have to return to get a better one.
We followed the tracks from here to the culvert over Rt 57 and climbed down near that, then walked to the town lot from there. Joel was only just behind at this point because my train climbing allowed him to catch back up.

The trestle site

It was cool to re-hash a bit of my past exploration on this hike.
I never really get tired of seeing all of these great places that have so many memories for me. It is actually really nice sharing some of them with newer members of the group who haven't been around for those hikes that started all of this out.|
There is the ancient Greek saying that "The unexamined life is not worth living", and I really feel that. I feel that knowledge is no good unless it is shared, and this was a great day for that.

HAM