Hike #1328; Jacobsburg Loop
5/30/20 Jacobsburg Loop with Linda Salvesen, Jennifer Tull, Kirk Rohn, Michael Krejsa, Joe Tag,
This next hike would be a big loop almost entirely in Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center, weaving around on lots of trails and such and covering the most distance we could milk out of the park.
On Henry's Woods Trail
Like in all of these hike journals from the start of this, I start with about the same thing: the world has gone crazy. I have seen far more than I care to when it comes to the management of all of this.
If I didn’t care about people and what is going on, I could just milk this issue and enjoy lots more hiking and tom foolery than ever before, but that’s simply not how I feel.
Fortunately, things were starting to calm down again at this point. The the week prior, parks in New Jersey were opened back up to fifty percent capacity. Regardless of that, I still want to keep away from most of them because I don’t want to have some sort of a problem with groups.
Henry's Woods Trail
The management has not made sense from the start. We are supposed to be in a partnership with our neighboring states to “stop the spread”, and yet each state is acting like a despot.
We left liquor stores open while Pennsylvania closed them, and so everyone flocked to New Jersey to get their booze, and places like Bourbon Street in Phillipsburg did $83K in sales in a single day.
We closed parks entirely when no other state did, and so everyone (including us) flocked to parks in New York and Pennsylvania. Even worse, when we first closed parks to 50% capacity, it was decided to open fishing season two weeks early, bringing countless New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians in to fish a little bit early. The waters were full of people “not social distancing”.
Lovely Henry's Woods Trail
It gets even more frustrating when I am sent out to photograph this situation that was prescribed and choreographed by those who claimed we were avoiding it.
Homestead Trail
As I see it, we should look at it like a reservoir with a flood coming. The same amount of people are going to show up no matter what, just as the same amount of water is going to come if we have a storm. The water will go over the spillway when the reservoir fills, and then flood somewhere else. The same with people. Just just flooded elsewhere.
The answer obviously would not be to chop twenty feet off of the top of the dam to protect against a flood. In doing so, we have literally caused more spread.
There are so many other details of this that just drive me crazy, which I only get into in person. Media lies, “fact checking”, and even finding that untrue.
It’s even been mildly annoying that friends who don’t go too crazy about the virus put on face coverings only when being photographed because of their concern of being “shamed” online.
It’s amazing how many friends, some of whom I considered to be good friends, dropped me as a friend on social media over all of this, as they must feel I’m selfish or uncaring.
Boy do I look happy
All that aside, I was incredibly happy to see so many people show up for this one. It’s just another step in the return to normalcy.
I had work earlier in the day. Even though there is now swimming, and at the time no camping at my job, we still had to work two full timers to the weekend, which was pretty pointless. As such, I have more weekend work, which means those Saturdays must be night hikes.
There have been a lot of hikes that I’d held off as doing as day hikes that would be great loops, because I keep branching farther out into other areas. With the whole covid scare, it worked out that I had these loops ready to go at pretty much any time.
Because it was looking like things were not going to calm down for a long while, I came up with enough loop hikes to last me through August. When things did start to calm down, and even some smaller group activities of up to ten people were allowed, I decided to keep doing some of them out of respect for those who were not comfortable yet doing carpools.
Homestead Trail
One of these loops was a variation of one we had done last year around Jacobsburg.
I try to have parking areas be places that we can be after dark without having any problems, and so this one was perfect because we used the park and ride lot just off of the Belfast exit on Rt 33. I am able to get there within a half an hour after work, and we are good there after dark.
This loop would take us onto several of the trails I had never done within the park, which was great. I continue to be amazed that there are so many more that I have never done, and there are still others in this park I’ve not yet touched and it’s been god knows how many years I’ve hiked there.
The group on Homestead Trail
After meeting at the lot, we simply walked onto Henry Road beneath Rt 33, and immediately on the other side there is a trail that follows along the edge of the road, and then into the park.
We walked that a short bit, and past an old stone house followed by a parking lot, with short trail sections connecting in between.
I don’t know the history of that first building there, and it’s not in any of the guides.
This is the former Nazareth Branch of the Lehigh and New England Railroad at East Douglsville Road
At the parking lot, a trail went right into the woods, and then e turned left from it on the first turn which went across the old mill race associated with the Boulton Gun Factory.
William Henry II established his gun manufacturing facility in 1792 in Jacobsburg. He had come from the Lancaster area I believe it was, and set up at the settlement just north of where we were.
A forge was constructed at Jacobsburg along the Bushkill Creek, and the Henry Rifles were once a huge deal. They played a major role in the War of 1812. The needs for guns grew with the Civil War, and three generations of the Henry family operated the business at what is now Jacobsburg EEC.
The original forge site was converted to a grist mill and sawmill when William Henry II finished with a government gun contract, and the Henry family established the Boulton area forge at what is now the southern end of the park about 1812, now Boulton Historic Site.
Historic view of the lake at Boulton, now gone
The site also was home to the Catherine Furnace, and the first pig iron in Northampton County was produced there.
The Henry Family continued their gun making operations, and the last gun maker at Boulton, Granville Henry, died in 1912, ending a century of work there.
Along Homestead Trail
Mary Henry Stites died at Boulton in 1989, and donated the home to the Jacobsburg Historical Society. Other sections of today’s park were acquired at different times.
I stopped everyone when we got to the footbridge over the Bushkill Creek to point out the remnants of the dam, and then we headed over to the historic site itself where the old Henry homestead still stands as well as a couple of barns.
We walked from there back the way we came, and then followed the west side of the Bushkill Creek along Henry’s Woods Trail.
This one is probably my favorite in the entire park because it is the most narrow and follows a high cliff above the creek. They actually close it down in the Winter due to icy conditions, because a fall from it could be rather deadly. We followed this along, and there was a set of steps down into the creek to the right, but we didn’t take to it because there were too many people in there at this point.
We emerged near the new visitor center building and parking lot, and then crossed over the Belfast Road directly. A mowed but unmarked path led to the original forge buildings.
This is where the Nazareth Branch of the Lehigh and New England Railroad crossed the Bushkill Creek
The colonial village of Jacobsburg was settled in 1740 and named for founder Jacob Hubler. Only foundations remain of the lost town today, and trails penetrate the land with few signs visible until leafless months. Only the two buildings from the forge area, I believe, remain of the settlement itself, which was mostly a bit north of this spot.
We walked around the buildings, and then continued to the north on a trail I had never done before on one of my big hikes, known as the Native Garden Footpath.
This trail was pretty nice, and no one was on it, compared to the others which were mobbed with people. It took us right to a very nice spot along the creek, so we all went for a dip.
Henry Forge
After this refreshing time, we started heading further along the trail and came out on Belfast Road again. We went directly across, and then uphill to the trail just beyond the new visitor center building. We turned right, and followed this parallel with Belfast Road, and then reached a power line crossing.
I made a wrong turn at the crossing, and we had to backtrack a bit, uphill on the power line briefly, and then hard left onto the Homestead Trail, which is a long series of a few trails that follows mostly fields high above the Bushkill Creek and Boulton Historic Site.
We kept to some field edges, and I tried to do some of these trails slightly differently than we had the last time I was up there a year before.
We reached the height of the land, and continued along the field edges, and then looped back when we reached the far west end, near a great view out toward the Lehigh Valley.
The group on Homestead Trail
I chose that spot to use for our group photo.
We moved on along the trails back around and closer to a few houses, parallel with Henry Road and then Jacobsburg Road. When we got to another trail intersection, close to the intersection with Jacobsburg Road and Fehr Road, we regrouped and exited the park briefly.
We turned left there, and followed Fehr Road for a bit, which is a pleasant back road, and then turned right on East Douglasville Road. These couple of short road walks allow for a good long loop within Jacobsburg.
Near the bottom of the hill on East Douglasville, we checked out the abandoned right of way of the Lehigh and New England Railroad’s Nazareth Branch. The much forgotten line was rather grown over at this point, and at first I didn’t think I was looking at it. Mike Krejsa was checking his maps better, and confirmed that this was definitely the spot.
Historic 1935 image of a locomotive on the Nazareth Branch taken by Rod Dirkes
The Nazareth Branch was chartered in 1898 originally as the Bushkill Branch. Track construction took place in 1900 and 1901. The line was nine miles coming off the Old Bender's Link at a point called Bushkill Junction near the village of Rismiller just west of Wind Gap, heading south through Jacobsburg and Aluta toward Nazareth.
The line's main commodities were slate, limestone and cement and was built to compete with the Lehigh & Lackawanna Railroad which was LNE's rival at the time.
The same year 1901, Northampton Railroad was incorporated to build a line from Bath where a connection would be made with the Lehigh & Lackawanna Railroad to Martins Creek, P.A.
LNE quickly purchased the charter and built the line themselves, opening the line as the Martins Creek (sometimes also called Uhlers) Branch in 1904. A connection between the Martins Creek Branch and Nazareth Branch was made at Tadmor. The LNE not long after acquired the Lehigh & Lackawanna Railroad, renaming its Bender's Junction-Bethlehem portion their Bethlehem Branch, abandoning L&L's Old Bender's Link and soon began to favor their routing over the Nazareth Branch. A bit of Old Bender's Link, L&L's earlier routing to Wind Gap from Bender's Junction was kept in place between Wind Gap and Rismiller to reach the Nazareth Branch.
The US Railroad Administration took over the nation's railroads during World War One and suspended all operations over the Nazareth Branch, rerouting usual Nazareth Branch traffic to the Bethlehem Branch.
After the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, the LNE suffered significant woes, having to abandon several miles of trackage. During the 1930s, the Slatington Branch, Saylorsburg Branch, Glenwood Branch were abandoned. The Nazareth Branch too met its demise when abandonment was filed in 1939.
On the LNE grade
Much of this rail line is a trail today, within the park, and north almost to Wind Gap. It’s been the focus of many of our hikes, and would be a little later on this one again.
We continued down across the Bushkill Creek on Douglasville Road, and then turned right on another trail, back into the park.
This trail utilizes the abandoned portion of State Park Road, which used to go from this point out across Jacobsburg Road. From that point, it is still open to vehicles out toward Rt 33.
We followed the trail for a bit, then made the first right turn off of it onto the foot path that continued along the Bushkill Creek.
Soon, we came to where the Nazareth Branch of the Lehigh and New England crossed the creek. There were two concrete bridge abutments here, and we stopped for a nice break. I took a dip in the water, which I’d been doing at that site for years starting with my first hike to this point back in September of 2005.
Me taking a dip at the bridge in Sept 2005, taken by Fred Hafele
After this spot, we continued a little bit back the way we came, and then headed back up to the old State Park Road.
We crossed over where the trail forked again immediately, and we kept to the left. This was a connector up to the Sober’s Run Loop Trail that I’d never done before, so it seemed like a good thing to do. I can still do another version of this hike where we follow the parallel Explorer Trail that to this day I have not done. Maybe I’ll do that as a variation next year.
On the way up this section, Cory and Linda’s dog Banjo took off running into the woods after a deer or something, but he came back soon enough.
We continued along to the north side of the park, and then to the east where the trail descended at a power line clearing to the Lehigh and New England Railroad bed again, just after an access trail for horse trailer parking lot.
Lehigh and New England grade in Jacobsburg
We turned right and followed the rail bed south a bit and I chatted with Joe for a while. It was quite a pleasant section as always, and there are still a couple of places where railroad ties are still visible.
We remained on the rail bed back to the former State Park Road route, and then turned to the left. We crossed over the Sober’s Run on a foot bridge, and then turned immediately left onto the red and green blazed trail beside the creek.
We continued on this and watched closely for the Sobers Run Connector Trail, which goes to the east side of the park. There were some social trails that were unofficial breaking off that we ignored, and eventually found the right one. In doing so, we also found the wrong one and ended up having to backtrack just a little bit. I knew we were finally on the right route when we reached Belfast Road and crossed.
Here I am on the Lehigh and New England grade back in 2005 with my long hair, photo by Fred Hafele
We headed through more woods, which I recall has a really wide trail that all of a sudden gets narrow. We next crossed Jacobsburg Road, followed by State Park Road. It is in this section that the settlement of Jacobsburg used to be.
I had intended to go to the left on another trail around the northern side of the park, which is supposed to be blazed red, but I didn’t see the damned thing. I suppose the only way to really see it is in the day light, or maybe I need to do a variation of this hike in the opposite direction so I can get done with those trails I’d never done before over there. We ended up not doing them this time either.
We continued across Engler’s Run and kept to the right out near the east side of the park, and headed south. This entire area was a wide woods road type of trail.
When we got to one point, I brought everyone down a non trail section of woods road and showed them the abandoned slate quarry high above the Bushkill Creek, and that route led us right back out to Jacobsburg Trail, where we turned right.
Ninjas are totally sweet
This trail led us right back down to Belfast Road where we had crossed earlier. We crossed again, cut through the parking lot we had before, but this time crossed the Bushkill Creek on the foot bridge to the other side.
Cory and Linda were going to take the road back, which goes through a cut, has no shoulder, and totally sucks, so I convinced them not to.
This last section, the lower Henry’s Woods Trail, is just the most pleasant trail in the park. It has steps down into the creek along the way, which afforded us one last dip in the creek before we headed off on our way.
It was really a nice spot to stop and spend a little time.
We headed from here out along the trail, and it moved off slowly from the creek after a bit. We emerged next to where we had turned before at the old mill race, and then came out to the lot with the historic stone building. From there, we just had to follow the crushed stone path uphill around it, and then alongside Henry Road back to the Rt 33 underpass, and we were parked directly on the other side.
I can definitely see doing another variation of this one again because it’s really just a damned enjoyable hike, not too tough, with plenty of relaxing spots for a Summer night.
I drove Tea Biscuit home and we got some epic Taco Bell to close the night.
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