Hike #1331; Phillipsburg/Easton Loop

Hike #1331; Phillipsburg/Easton Loop

6/11/20 Phillipsburg Easton Loop with Jennifer Tull, Kirk Rohn, Justin Gurbisz, Joel Castus, Brittany Audrey, Major Tom Conroy, Ken Zaruni, Professor John DiFiore, and Dan Asnis

This next one was a big loop between Phillipsburg and Easton. Such loops are always a really great time, and I really do love doing repeats and alternate versions of it.

Warren Highlands Trail on Marble HIll

Even when it’s a hike I’ve done in the past, I always manage to try to put something together that we’ve never done as part of it. This area certainly offers a lot of that.
We actually met at the Hillcrest Shopping Center, which was where I’d met the second time I put together a loop hike in this area back in January of 2007. The first time I looped through using the future Warren Highlands Trail as part of a long hike was 2006.
This time, we did similar to what we did that first time, by walking from Hillcrest to the back of the lot, and then up through weeds to ball fields on the north side of it.

Warren Highlands Trail on Marble HIll

Because of all of the crazy shit that continues, there was orange mesh fence all the way around the entire ball field in back to keep people from playing on it. We had to go around and step around a lot of it in order to walk further north.
We cut through another line of trees to another ball field, and then came out at Stelko Avenue.
My plan had been to walk over behind the hospital building and then head north, but it was much brighter on the line of trees at the hospital side so we opted to stay on Stelko to the north. It turned out to be the right trajectory to get to Major Tom’s house anyway.

Warren Highlands Trail on Marble Hill

Tom had been texting me over the last few days that we should stop by his house on our way through. I didn’t think we’d be passing by the place until much later I think, but it worked out pretty well, and the intersection we came out at on Belvidere Road was just a couple of doors down from his place. When we got to that intersection he came out on his porch and hollered out to us. We all walked over to the shade of his front yard and had a break.

I found clovers!

Major Tom shared wings, some sort of other food I forget, and some Klondike ice cream bars with us when we arrived.
He decided that he would join us for part of the hike from there, and we all started walking Belvidere Road together to the east.
Soon, we came to one of the entrances to the Lopatcong Park where the pool is. The pool was shut down, but we were able to walk around the south edge of the park through some of the shade heading east. There is a connector trail here that we’d put in to connect with Warren Highlands Trail years ago, but I wanted to do the main trail so we continued to the east out toward the other park entrance at Amey Street.

The group on Marble Hill

We exited the park and walked back out to Belvidere Road a couple of blocks to where a paved trail follows the south side of it. From there, it’s only a short distance to where the Warren Highlands Trail comes out from between two houses in a tight piece of park land.

One of the big trees down on Warren Higlands Trail

This section took a while to officially put in place. There are a lot of property encroachments, and we had some nice meetings with the land owners to make it happen. Originally, we had the trail skirt some of the weeds heading to the north, but a couple of years ago John Kosar and I went up there and cleared out a new section of trail directly through the weeds to give some of the private land owners more privacy.
John made a really nice routed sign that read “Warren Highlands Trail” on it, and then cemented it into the ground so that no one would be able to move it.

Some tree work needed in Marble Hill Natural Resource Area

We also put some great posts up in the edges of the fields above, and rather than just put blazes on them, I painted the entire posts obnoxiously bright light blue so that no one would have any question of where the trail was supposed to go.
Thankfully, all of this was still in place when we arrived. We went up through the first swath of woods, which could use a little bit of cutting, across a bit of mowed lawn, and then onto the trail that goes up into the woods. I could probably add a few blazes in there, but overall it’s pretty self explanatory where one needs to go.

Wrecked kiosk on Warren Highlands Trail

I had only recently found out that the former leasing farmer, Ray Raub had passed away. His wife had died a little while before him, and he got sick and passed some time in the fall.
Ray was a really cool guy that had had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with the county and the state.
My grandfather was involved in some sort of lawsuit with him on the other side, but he didn’t seem to hold any animosity.
I ended up meeting him when I was laying the trail out through the tract that he leased for farming, and he had done improvements including drainage structures he called “thank you maa’ms” along the way. It was Ray that suggested the trail take its route through the fields rather than around the perimeters where I had originally laid it out at first.

Destroyed kiosk on Warren Highlands

I ended up talking with him on the phone, going to his house, and collecting information on historic sites up there in my time working on the trail. There is so much more I wish I could have asked him before he passed, but I found out way too late.

Ham

I was told by my Superintendent that Ray Raub’s daughter has been taking care of the estate, and that there were new lease people taking care of the property.
I noted immediately when we came up to the first cultivated field that there was a good mowed trail around the outside of it, something that I’d never seen done to such an extent before.
Mr. Smith, who lives in the house directly to the right of the trail when entering, was mowing sections of it through the woods, but maybe he’s going further now. Maybe it’s the now lease. I’m not sure. But whatever the case, this looks like a positive development.
The first negative thing was that there was a giant tree down over the trail where it follows the old Kelly Lane, a former road, up from Belvidere Road. Kelly Lane apparently used to continue uphill and then down to Marble Hill Road, and might have lined up with Buttonwood Lane on the other side. There is a foundation on the left side of the trail going uphill, which Ray Raub told me was an old school house site.
The 1874 Beers Atlas of Warren County shows the school closer to the bottom of the hill, so I’m not sure what the case might be. Either way, I’d heard of an old “Buttonwood School”, and it’s possible that this could be it. It will take more research for sure.

A Sycamore in the Delaware

We continued uphill past where there was apparently once a farm house, as well as a barn. The double corn crib there had only collapsed rather recently. The trail route was well mowed as we continued uphill.
There was a section of field to the left that for some reason seemed oddly left out of cultivation, but the rest appeared to be in corn.
We continued to the top of the hill and did our group shot with the view over Lopatcong Township from the top. We then continued along the edge of the field to where the road cuts into the woods on the road and then the trail cuts in on the left of that.

Along the Delaware

I had laid out this section because another parallel road leaves the state park land and goes into private land, so I had to stay within the boundaries.
This was the worst section of the open Warren Highlands Trail currently. I broke off some vegetation as we walked through, and had thought originally we would cut back vegetation with happy Corona saws while we walked, but I forgot to put mine in my van. Instead, I just broke them with my hands.
There’s too much really to do by hand in this stretch anyway. There are a couple of pretty big trees that need some chainsaw work at a turn point. Hopefully I’ll get to that.

Along the Delaware

We made our way along this section, which Major Tom hated because he’s really worried about ticks, but I assured him that it gets much clearer as we move on ahead.

Pump house building tunnel

There was one tough spot near the fallen tree where we couldn’t see the next trail blaze. I had routed the trail around an interestingly angled Northern Red Oak tree in this area, and there are several sharp turns. Some of the carsonite posts I put in to guide through this part are actually still there all these years later. Most of the ones down in the fields have been ripped out and lobbed who knows where.
Soon, the trail came out to a former woods road and turned left. This section was easy, although it was hard to tell at this point that it was ever a woods road. When I first marked it, it was heavily used by ATVs, and so it was the easiest way to get through from this point to the power lines.
We headed out to the power line crossing and took a break. Dan caught up rather quick. Despite the fact that he had not been hiking nearly as much with us lately, he surprised me with how well he was able to stay caught up this time.
We continued through the woods from the power line to the foot path section.

In the big pipe

While the section that I reused the old woods road and ATV trail was on the east side of the power line, the section to the west had no trail at all until I spent countless hours scouting for it and cutting it by myself. However, today you would never know that I built any of this trail because it has been overtaken by ATVs. Some people have even tried taking credit for building this section, but I swear that there was never a trail there until I cut this open. I specifically routed this entire stretch to pass by my favorite largest trees on the property. This was now the county owned Marble Hill Natural Resource Area, as the power line is near the boundary between the state Marble Hill property and the county.

Here is the original on ramp to Rt 22 bridge

We passed through the section and by several huge Yellow Poplar trees I’d liked, and then past the largest Northern Red Oak on the property. We then reached the intersection with the connector trail to the yellow trail, which I blazed with yellow and a red dot.
There were several trees that had fallen over the start of this trail, so there was no telling even where it was supposed to go any more. I have to remember to report this section, although I don’t know what will go on with it because the covid stuff has likely knocked out a lot of what the Youth Corps in Phillipsburg are able to do.

Getter's Island in the Delaware

We continued ahead on Warren Highlands, which goes down through a deep stream wash, then up and down a second one. On the other side, the red blazed Lopatcong Connector Trail makes its way back out to Lopatcong Park parallel with the new High School building. Major Tom left us here to head home, because he had to be to work later in the night. He ended up not following the trail all the way through, and instead went out by the high school and followed their access road down to his house.

Steps in Easton

The rest of us continued on the Warren Highlands Trail over an area full of washouts that were created through the construction of the new high school. It continues to get worse every time we pass through the area, and the county is still in some kind of lawsuit with them which I testified for. I don’t know what’s going on with it currently, but it keeps eroding deeper.
Warren Highlands Trail soon joins with the yellow trail on the right, which makes a loop from the parking lot on Marble Hill Road. We continued on Warren Highlands on undulating terrain through Rhododendrons, and entered the area where the iron mining took place in the late 1800s. I pointed out the first small mine on the right of the trail as we walked by.
We soon reached the intersection with the orange blazed Mine Trail, which was the first loop I’d put in when I started working on the Warren Highlands Trail. Here, we turned right briefly on Warren Highlands to the overlook area into the Little Water Gap or Weygadt Gap.

Wherever is interesting to walk...Easton

Unfortunately, while I was on one of my longer trips the previous month, I’d found out that someone had destroyed the information kiosk on Weygadt Gap. I had to get up to the spot to see it myself.
The photos I saw online showed it in three different pieces, but now those appeared to be gone. The pieces were taken and placed in a fire pit next to the overlook and burned up. I was able to find one corner of it and pulled it out. I put it in my backpack and took it with me.
We headed back to the start of the Mine Trail, and followed it to the west.
The trail leads along the iron ore vein the way I laid it out. It passes by what were probably two prospect pits first, and then follows the vein along a few open cut mines. It then turns to the right to a rather flat area where there was probably some kind of workings, and then descends very slightly the the mostly horizontal, thirty foot deep mine adit known locally as the Ice Cave. We went in and sat for a bit, which was really nice and cool.

Bushkill Creek

I never get tired of coming to this place. We took our time, and then headed down the orange blazed mine trail to return to the Warren Highlands Trail, and then followed that down slope to the left. This led us down to an informal connection to River Road.
We turned right, and then crossed the tracks at a sort of formal crossing, then went down to the Delaware River at a lovely little area owned by the Delaware Riverview Association. They tried offering this property to Warren County, but it turns into too much of a party spot and we can’t quite maintain what we have let alone that.

Under the Rt 22 bridge

We got in the Delaware for a nice refreshing dip for a while, and just relaxed. It felt great. There were some guys out beyond a little island in some sort of makeshift boat that were coming in. The one guy had made it out of some sort of junk barrels.

Hiking the same spot in 2002

He came up and chatted with us a bit, and said he figured he could make it work. It was pretty cool that he was as crafty as he was about it. I talked to him a bit about the property, and he really seemed to care about the place. I’m hoping this kind of person is the one that will take it on and not let people mess it up for others.

Lehigh Valley RR bed

We chatted for a while, and I started telling everyone the story of Getter’s Island, because they had seemed to know something about the “ghost island” in the river.
I had first read about the Getters Island story in Frank Dale’s book “Delaware Diaries”. Frank Dale was an old friend who lived well into his nineties and only passed away just last year. I met him when I attnded one of his presentations after the publication of his second book “Bridges Over the Delaware”. He gave me copies of several of his smaller books free of charge, and we hit it off immediately with our love of history.

Lehigh Valley RR bed

The story goes back to a man named Charles Getter in 1833.
Getter was said to be a real ladies man, and he was fooling about Easton quite a lot. He apparently got a woman named Rebecca Lawall pregnant, and was forced to marry her. In early 1833, he strangled her and dumped her near where she lived, but was soon after caught.
He made a full confession before his execution, which was to be held on the small island in the Delaware River where the slopes on either side made it like an amphitheater.

Old Rinek Rope factory along the rail bed and Bushkill Drive

Getter walked from the jail to the boat, and was hanged on the island, but the first rope broke. A second one was found, and he was hung the second time successfully.
The island was renamed Getter’s Island.
In later years, there was an effort to start steam boat service up the Delaware River. The first trial run took place where the boat locked out of the Lehigh Canal and started pushing its way up the Delaware. The current, however, was too strong for the engine to handle, and the boiler exploded. Several were killed, and bodies were thrown into the Delaware and onto the island.

Morning Call view of the Rinek Rope Factory

The guys seemed really into the story, and I might have stopped with the Getter story if they hadn’t seemed as intrigued as they did.

Former Rinek Rope Factory

It was because of these two stories that the island gets all the stories written about it. In recent years, there were attempts to sell the island as park land, but no one seems to want to buy it. I think people realize what a nightmare river feature property will be.

Old Rinek Rope Factory and rail bed along Bushkill Drive

We said goodbye to the guys there, and I thought I’d lost my phone, but fortunately I found it stuffed down in a pouch in my pack more.
We followed the informal trail along the river, and the next site of interest was what we believe to have been the intake for the old Phillipsburg Pump House.
The Pump House is county property, preserved back around 2001. I had toured it when that first happened, the first time I met Ken and Ann Miller who have the Friends of the Transportation Heritage Center.

Old Lehigh Valley RR bed

The plan was to have a railraod themed museum along the Delaware River in the area that used to be the Kent Yard, but it never cae to be. The Pump House area was used to store artifacts that had been intended for the museum, but a lot of it had to be donated to other places because of how things were falling through.
The Allis Chombers pump is like three stories high, and really quite amazing, but this intake area had always been bolted off and impossible to get inside of.
This time, the door was forced open, revealing two rails and a steep drop down. I didn’t try to get inside, but I reported it to Department of Land Preservation. Hopefully no one gets into the pump house and wrecks anything that way.
We continued walking along the river, and the wide shelf ended. The foot path then continued to the giant concrete pipe that goes beneath I think the JP Mason industrial site.

LVRR bed

We headed into the pipe gradually uphill and emerged at the box type culvert at River Road a little south of where the trail comes out at the Marble Hill parking area. We then continued walking the trail route along the road to the south.
I noticed this time that the trail marker posts along the street had markers on them now, made of some sort of ceramic. I never got around to putting the light blue blazes on these posts, so I’ll have to get around to that soon.
We turned right at the industrial site, but instead of following the actual trail route, we turned left down the parallel alley. That took us toward the Rt 22 bridge more directly.
We headed toward the bridge, and I pointed out how the original road used to ascend to the bridge level. It was changed from that after the flood of 1955 when so much of it went under water. Before that, the road lined up with Bushkill Street on the Pennsylvania side, and it was officially known as the Bushkill Street Bridge before Rt 22.

Old LV rail bed

We walked up the former highway route, and then climbed to the sidewalk over the bridge. When we got further out on the bridge, I pointed out Getters Island in the river and referred back to the story I had told a little earlier.
Once on the other side of the bridge, we turned left and began walking up to Bushkill Drive.
We noted some stairs going uphill, which I had never tried to go up before. There were a lot of older staircases up to Lafayette College I had never tried to follow, so I figured it would be fun.
A lady that lived in one of the houses to the right, which use the stairs as access, told us that the stairs end and that it was private. She said that they might have gone up in the past, but that they dead end just above her house. We didn’t argue it and just headed back down to Bushkill Drive, which we walked to the west. I walked through all of the hung hoses at the car wash area to be silly. The place wasn’t open or I might have ran through.

LV Railroad bed

When we reached the steps at the base of Lafayette College, which we go up often, we chose not to do so. Bushkill Drive straight ahead was closed down for paving or something, so we continued straight ahead on that knowing there would be no traffic.
We continued ahead and took in the nice views of the stream. A short distance after an intersection where vehicles were again allowed on it, we crossed over and picked up the right of way of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad’s Easton and Northern line. This spur section dead ended at some shops along Bushkill Drive.

Ties are still visible

I had first hiked this section on a trip back in 2002 when it was not at all a trail yet. It’s been developed as the Karl Sterner Arts Trail now.
While we were walking this section, Kirk related the story that he had met Sterner, and there were just a couple of them together high up in a building for some holiday thing, and now he’s gone but has a trail named for him focusing on arts.
When the trail went in, it followed the rail bed only to the cemetery access bridge, then remained along the Bushkill Creek sandwiched between it and Rt 22 until the rail bed eventually crosses over the creek, and then follows that.

The scrap yard when it was still there...with Randy's Rooster

It was much more recently that the actual rail bed was turned into a paved trail parallel with Bushkill Drive for a bit. It follows it only for a short distance, and then ends.

The scrap yard today

The rail bed then turns left and I think goes into a car dealership lot, and remains parallel with Bushkill Driver, recognizable only as an area of cinder dirt for a while. We skipped the car lot because there was a fence on the one side, but it was wide open on the other.

Old LV bridge

We continued along the road, and then came to an area where there was some sort of construction or destruction going on on an old building to the right side of the road.
This was the former Rinek Rope Factory, which has been closed for some time now. It is apparently to be rehabilitated into something, which is really nice to hear. Easton is doing a pretty good job of not tearing down its historic structures, and instead utilizing them with the understanding that the unique buildings themselves are a customer draw. It certainly adds to the appeal of a place.

We continued on past the factory, and the former rail bed became very obvious in an area of grass to the left of the road. This area hasn’t changed much at all over the past decade. The railroad ties are still visible in the grass that gets mowed over regularly, and there is a foot bridge over a section of it to a business to the left.
We continued past this spot, and then had to go around the fenced off former scrap yard property. This used to be a really interesting spot because there were metal scrap sculptures through the area. A cage made of horse shoes, an Atlas made of beams and wheels, and a giant rooster that perched atop one of the buildings.

The old bridge

My old buddy Randy Melick helped to make these sculptures with an old art partner by the name of Keifer. It is ironic that the area where these awesome things once stood is now part of an arts trail that includes none of those pieces that graced this area. I’m not sure what ever became of those pieces.
We continued ahead just a slight bit more, and reached the former railroad bridge over the Bushkill Creek. This had been blocked off from the rest of the arts trail, and the rail bed had trees planted on it just ahead as if they never had any plans for it, but that is apparently now changing. I hear now that they want to make this part of the Two Rivers trail system.

The old LV bridge

We crossed the bridge, which was about the same as I always remembered it, with railroad ties still in place, but not really much more rotted than they were some eighteen years ago.
Once we were on the other side, we headed down to the creek to take a dip. There was another new trail directly under here that I’d never been on, so we took the break, and then came out and walked that trail upstream.
It eventually connected up with the Arts Trail. We continued walking to the new pedestrian bridge that had recently been installed from the Arts trail over to the former Simon Silk Mill.

The old LV bridge

The old silk mill had been under redevelopment for many years, and we had gone in it many times from when it was abandoned right on up until the work began.
I had not yet walked all the way through the site since the redevelopment was complete, so this would be the first time we’d head into it again.
They had done a pretty good job, and my understanding was that there was now a brewery included in the place. We figured we would head over and see if there was any way we could sample anything.
Of course, indoor dining is out of the question. Going in at all was out of the question. But, the guys running the place had these enormous old silk mill windows they were opening up and trying to serve things out from there to the benches and such on the sidewalk.
I couldn’t find my wallet, so Kirk spotted me so I could try a crowler of their strong imperial stout or something I had. It was quite tasty, and I liked it!

Trying some new stuff!

Kirk I believe decided to sample some sort of beer that was made to taste something like pancakes, and he didn’t notice the difference. After having some of my crowler, I could definitely taste the pancake aftertaste from his.
We headed out from this point and down 13th Street to the old mill building at the trail head parking along the railroad bed. We turned left and followed that back in the direction we had come for a bit, and then made the right turn uphill into the Easton Cemetery. It had been a while since I had wandered through this, so I decided to make it a part of the hike.

It was dark at this point, but I knew where I wanted to go. Uphill, off to the left, past the entrance, and then back around past the grave of George Taylor, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Easton was Taylor’s last home after moving from the Catasauqua area.
Taylor was one of only eight on the Declaration not to have been born in North America. Of all of the signers, Taylor was the only one who had once been an indentured servant, and had served as an ironmaster.
When Taylor died in 1781, he was buried across the street from his residence in down town Easton, at another cemetery. When the land was sold, he was re-interred with the monument here.
The cemetery was opened in 1849, and has architectural styles of Greco-Roman Revival, Gothic Victorian, and Art Deco in it’s gate house, chapel, and other structures.
Taylor’s home, which still stands, is now the oldest house in the entire city of Easton.
We walked up past the entrance, and then weaved around past Taylor’s grave. We then weaved around a corner and headed down a switchback slope road which goes to the Rt 22 bridge over the Bushkill Creek. John and Kirk were talking about a girl that had been murdered and left in an old house that had stood near that sharp curve, which I had never heard about before.
We reached the bottom and crossed the bridge back to the Lehigh Valley grade at the cemetery entrance, then headed toward town.

We still had a ways to go from this point. Usually, we end up doing something that ends at the boat launch area at Union Square, but this time we had to head back to Hillcrest.
We turned right on the former Bel Del Railroad bed, and we walked out onto the former Lehigh and Hudson River Railway bridge over the Delaware to take in the great view. Some of the group went ahead to the cars from there a bit more directly. I think they followed the highway.
My plan was to follow the tracks to the overhead former Jersey Central and Lehigh Valley bridges, then go up and follow the former Lackawanna line, which was the Morris and Essex before that.
We did just that, walked uphill, passed beneath South Main Street at the Phillipsburg Union Station, which served both the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the Lackawanna, and then passed through a cut on the former Morris and Essex line. We continued along this for a rather relaxing stroll until we came to Roseberry Street where we turned off to the left.
Kirk again spotted me a few more bucks so that I could get a quesadilla at Wawa, before crossing over Rt 22 directly to the Hillcrest Mall.
This was really a great hike. It went a little later than usual, but because we stopped to swim and do other fun stuff so much. It was great to revisit some fun places as well as to visit for the first time so many that have changed so much.

HAM