Hike #1449; Tottenville to Oakwood Heights Staten Island

Hike #1449; 10/31/21 Tottenville to Oakwood Heights Staten Island with Justin Gurbisz, Jennifer Berndt, Professor John DiFiore, Diane Reider, Robin Deitz, Serious Sean Dougherty, Stephen Argentina, Jennifer Tull, Caroline Gockel Gordon, Galya, Anne ?, Alex Gisser, and Phil ?

This next hike would be a long overdue return to the perimeter of Staten Island. I'd been saying I was going to try to walk the entire thing of it for so many years, and every time I start on it, I tend to stall again.

I had hiked from the Bayonne Bridge across the island and covered a lot of the greenbelt system, which was amazing. I had done the north shore almost completely out to the Staten Island Ferry. I had walked from Great Kills Park all the way east to Fort Wadsworth another time, and then another up the up the east side from Wadsworth to the Staten Island Ferry.

What was left was the remainder of the south side and the west side.

When people ask "where are you hiking this weekend, M'ke?", I often get responses of surprise because we hike so many unconventional places, but the truth is, Staten Island actually has great hiking. 

I chose for a meeting place the former site of the Tottenville Ferry, where people could at one time take a ferry between Tottenville section of Staten Island and Perth Amboy NJ.

A local entrepreneur named Henry Hogg Biddle operated the ferry between Tottenville and Perth Amboy, and established Biddle's Grove, a summer resort in the north part of his bordering property in the 1850s.

The ferry operated until 1963, but the train station, which was conveniently located at the ferry site, still operates today.

I found that there was on street parking at the former ferry landing on Bentley Street, and so I concocted a hike that would take us along the shore of Staten Island from this point, and we could simply head inland to the next Staten Island Railroad station to head back when we'd done enough miles. I had hoped to reach Great Kills Park at least.

While we were waiting for others to arrive, and of course checking out the awesome waterfront views looking over toward Perth Amboy, many more cars and people started showing up. I didn't really think we had more people for the hike than what were signed up, and they didn't all look like the type that would be signing up for one of my hikes.

It turns out this was another group was meeting at this spot in order to do a shore cleaning. There was indeed a lot of litter around the area. We chatted with them a bit about the ferry and history of the area. They were appreciative that people would come to Staten Island to do a hike like this.

It was probably a good thing that they were there because they saved us some out and back time. 

My plan had been to try to follow the beach to the south the entire way, but I figured we'd come across some private land. I thought we could at least get from this point to Totten Shore Park, just to the south, but they let us know we couldn't, and what streets we should walk to get there.

Actually, I think we could have gone to Totten Shore. They told us there was too much junk and clutter on the beach to walk through ahead, as if something like that would ever have stopped us. Of course, they didn't know our group and what we are accustomed to doing.

Still, I was not going to be the man standing there arguing with the locals. I thanked them and we headed up Bentley Street to the a bit. 

Ward House

I did manage to get a few then and now history shots at the ferry site. I actually did not know that there used to be a ferry at the site until just before the hike was about to happen, and so I saved images to my phone on this the night before.

I decided right from the start that I wasn't going to follow the instructions I'd been given exactly. We made the first right on Arthur Kill Road. The west side of Staten Island actually is the Arthur Kill, and the road afforded us some views of it as we walked.

At the end of the dead end street, we were able to walk directly into Totten Shore Park, as I had suspected we would. There was a short trail that went beyond a galvanized guard rail and then up through the woods to the left. It brought us up through the woods to Hopping Avenue, where we turned to the right.

We followed Hopping Avenue to the end, and then turned to the right on Amboy Road. We then turned immediately left on Wards Point Road to continue to the south. This took us toward the Biddle Place where I wanted to continue through, but there was a large chain link fence and no access to the property from there, so we had to turn back.
We made a right on Perth Amboy Place, and then a right again on Satterly Street for just a short bit. 

Ahead on the right was the historic Ward House, built in 1835, in Tottenville, Staten Island NY. The Ward families once prominent land owner, and this is the last remaining of the many Ward family homesteads.

I had read into this history before heading out, so I brought the group ahead to that. It was closed to tours due to covid crap, but at least we saw it. Then we backtracked to the Biddle Place.

We turned to the west down the driveway that led to the H. H. Biddle House, a lovely mansion house on the slope that used to overlook the Arthur Kill, built between 1840 and 1855.

The house features rare Greek Revival Doric columns on both sides of it, facing east and west.
The Biddle Family is said to trace their roots back to the Mayflower Pilgrims, the same as my family, although I can't recall what the names are that my family was associated with.

We took a little break in the front of the Biddle House and checked out some of the landscaping, which was pretty nice. I also had several historic photos of the place, so while the other were resting, I was setting up history compilations of the site.

From this point, we headed to the left of the Biddle Place, and passed a nice old caretaker's house which probably dates back to I'd say around 1900. It is still lived in.

The entire area is part of the New York City park system's Conference House Park, and we'd be taking some of the trails from here.

As we headed slightly down hill, there was another house on the right with sort of shingled sides. I believe this was the Rutan-Becket House.

Originally the William Henry Rutan House, it was built around 1850 on the bluffs above a ship yard and provisions that had been established by W. H. Rutan and his brother James in 1849. 

Rutan-Becket House

The Rutans were carpenters and ship builders, and the Rutan Shipyards were one of the first in the Tottenville section of Staten Island, which helped to establish the area as a serious maritime center. 

W. H. Rutan also served as a New York State Assemblyman. 

The house remained in the Rutan family until 1910.

The house was abandoned for a time, and then purchased by Walter and Kathrine Becket in the 1950s. The completely reconstructed the exterior, including a four column portico. The house was modernized to 1950s standards, and today it is still furnished in the exact same way as an example of popular American decor of that decade.
We headed around the front side of the Biddle House again, and found some steps leading down.

These brought us right out to the beach of Conference House Park, with wonderful views out along the Arthur Kill and out to the Raritan Bay to the south.

The stony beach was really pleasant for walking, and the shade was nice because it was on the west side. We continued a little ways down the shore to just below the historic Conference House.

The stately home was built in the late 1670s by Captain Christopher Billopp.

This home was the venue for the Staten Island Peace Conference in 1776, which failed in its intent to end the Revolutionary War in 1776.

The host was Colonel Christopher Billipp, heir and grandson of the builder.

Legend has it that Captain Billopp circumnavigated the waters surrounding Staten Island in a day, thus claiming the island for New York rather than New Jersey.

This is another of those places I would have loved to have had a tour of, but there wasn't so much time with everything I wanted to hit, and most everything was still somewhat shut due to covid craziness.

We checked out the building extensively, and took a little break around the big trees. There was a group using a pavilion that overlooked the water doing Tai Chi or something.

I set up several then and now history compilations of the Conference House before we were ready to move on.

The mound of land directly in front of the house is known as the Burial Ridge. This was known to be a burial mound for the Unami, also known as the Raritan valley band of the Lenape native American tribe.
We headed back down to the water; there is an inland trail that traverses Conference House Park, but I wanted to try to stay on the beach and as close to the outside of Staten Island as possible. It was really a beautiful day to be out.

We soon made our way around the southwestern tip of the island and began walking along the Raritan Bay. 

We passed by Ward's Point on the west side, circled, and then watched closely to the phone GPS until we got to the southern tip. This was the southernmost tip of all of New York City. This was where I decided I wanted to do our group shot. It is known as the Ward Point Bend.

We passed by the very end of Conference House Park and the beach got a bit rockier for a bit. We then skirted private homes that butt up to the beach. We were able to walk right on through, and beyond that was Robinson's Beach. 

There were some pretty awesome creek outflows in this area, and occasional public lands between the homes to the north. We also found bricks and such floating ashore. One of them read S&F Co, which was the Sayre and Fisher Brick Company, which operated in Sayreville, South Amboy, South River, and East Brunswick New Jersey. The company was in business from 1850 to 1970.

We passed through Red Bank Beach and parallel with Butler Manor Woods where giant rocks began to appear on the shore. There were also some concrete ruins of whatever it was I don't know. Above us were the Handmaidens of the Most Pure of Heart or something, religious institution.

Mt Loretto was soon above us on the left, a great height of land on which sits the original Princes Bay Lighthouse. The land is a terminal moraine from the Wisconsin Glacier, and the light house was completed here in 1864, and the attached keeper's house in 1868.

I had planned to go up to see the old light, but the slope was pretty crazy. We opted instead to stay lower, and we saw the current Princes Bay Beacon, a free standing metal tower.

We got a little bit past it, and Justin and Sean started climbing up the thing. There was a hole in the chain link fence at the base, so they went for it. While they were doing that, John and I got in the bay and went for a swim. Galya started following them up the tower as well.

I got way out in the water, and I realized it was October 31, two of us were crazy in the water, and two of us were crazy up above. Justin got on the highest point of the tower he could and stood up on it.

Ahead, we could see the Dorothy Fitzpatrick Fishing Pier. We continued on the beach toward it. From this point to the pier, the beach edges were lined with Osage Oranges, also known as Hedge Apples.

We were goofing off with Osage Oranges along the way here. There was a giant fish statue at the entrance to the pier, and we stuck some in its mouth. We carried some off to the end of the pier, and Stephen and Justin I think threw some of them off. There was a guy already out there fishing, and he was pretty pissed about it. I think Stephen was apologetic about it, and we ended up chatting with the guy. Fortunately he wasn't murderously livid.

We told him what we were doing, and he was kind of impressed by it. We headed out from here along the beach to the east. 

As we headed along Princes Bay from there, there were lots of odd rock sculptures set up along the waterfront. 

Much of it was using rocks and such, but it also incorporated drift wood and other crap that had likely washed up on shore. I noted a big trash can in one of them, barely visible from behind the rocks. There was some plywood, and even styrofoam incorporated into the mess.

I had actually heard about this before when I first took interest in walking the south shore of Staten Island. I posted some photos when we did that last in 2010, and my friend Mark Moran from Weird NJ/Weird US left me a note saying I should check out these oddities when I go the other direction. Well, it only took me twelve years to do it, but I finally got there. Thanks Mark!

The beach was much narrower and rockier through this section, out to where the Lemon Creek flows into the bay. It was not some small creek we could just wade. We had to go inland a bit, and so we headed up to Johnston Terrace where we found a dismantled porta john along the way. 

We headed north from here on Bayview Ave parallel with the creek, which was a nice road to walk and it afforded us some pretty good views of the Lemon Creek. There was even a spot with a wooden platform overlooking it.

We reached Hylan Blvd and turned to the right, then crossed Lemon Creek on the bridge on the road. We continued east here until we got to Seguine Avenue and turned right. We then went south toward Kingsland Street where we turned to the right, then south on Trenton Court which became Hank Place.

Along this last stretch of road, on the right, was the lovely and stately Seguine Mansion.

This area was still part of the Princes Bay section of Staten Island, east of Lemon Creek. The mansion house was built in 1838 by Joseph H. Seguine. It is also known as Seguine-Burke Mansion.

Seguine was the founder of the Long Island Railroad Company, so this was also something that fit into the theme of the hike since his line was our transportation back at the end.
Except for a time from 1868 to 1916, the Mansion remained in the same family.
Joseph Nurke purchased the home in 1981 and lovingly restored it, as well as developed an equestrian center.
Today, it is property of New York City Parks, and Mr Burke maintains life rights, which means he still lives in and cares for the property, but it has a better chance of being preserved in perpetuity under the current plan.

I was able to get a then and now compilation of the site from the east side of it as we were walking down Seguine Avenue again, a right turn from Hank Place.

Unfortunately, there were no tours of the property going on here either because of lasting covid craziness.

We continued down the road for a bit and there was a bar called Lily Red's on the right. Or that's what it's called now. I forget if it was the name at the time. But anyway, I was thinking this would be possibly our lunch stop because it was on the way, but when I went in and a few in the group came along, we found that the place did not serve food. So we were out of luck for a bit despite everyone being hungry.

We turned right when we got to a boat yard on a road that is called Johnston Terrace, and probably once crossed the Lemon Creek ahead. 

We had had a few more good views of the Lemon Creek to this point, but the next section was one of the best walking of the day. To the left of the road, a good crushed stone path went to the south along the end of the Lemon Creek, then along the Raritan Bay to the east. This was known simply as Lemon Creek Park.

The trail just sort of stopped with the surfacing close to the main part of the bay and sea wall, and we got back on the beach to the east.

We walked south around protruding land known as Seguine Point, where there was a carved wooden deity thing along the shore. 

Just as we made our way around the southernmost tip of the point, there was a giant ship making its way to the east parallel with us. 

It was overtaking our speed easily, but then we saw another was making its way west from the other side. This was crazy to watch from our perspective. It absolutely looked like the two were about to collide, and we had our cameras ready to record it if it did.

Of course, the ships passed each other without incident. They clearly have a route or channel they follow all of the time and probably pass one another on a regular basis without a problem, but it was just crazy for us to see.

Holten Avenue Park was the next bit of public beach we went through, followed soon by Wolfe's Point Park.

Here, there were four very large structures on pedestals that looked like they were old retro camping trailers on platforms, but they were actually restroom facilities, set above everything to protect them from storm surges. I'd never seen anything like these before either.

Not only were these structures interesting, they also provided for a better view out over the bay than we would have had otherwise.

We continued east, and after this park the beach got much narrower yet again, approaching Huguenot Beach. There were tons of rocks on the shore, and it soon got impossible to continue walking on the sand. It was necessary to either walk in the water or go further up on the rocks. Most of the group opted to do that, but some of us stayed down in the rising surf.

We had to make our way around one really rough one where there was almost no way of doing it without getting wet. Still, most of the group managed it well and we got on a wider section of beach beyond. 

The reprieve on the beach only lasted us a little bit. It started looking much narrower ahead, and we still hadn't stopped anywhere for lunch. The group was going to mutiny if I didn't give a break from this mess. We probably could have continued to bully on through, but the next segment was looking really rough, and the tide was obviously coming in. We couldn't do it and keep dry. There was also a creek outlet and much closer back yards to the shore in the area head.

I decided we would cut back inland when we got to the end of Poillon Ave. We took that directly to Hylan Blvd again where we turned right for a while.

The road took us over the wetland that led to the outlet that was one of my concerns from before, and then back into more neighborhood, starting with Southeast Annadale. I think we stopped for food at Hylan Ave Bagel and Deli and had a nice little break.

I think this replenished us pretty well, because it got better again from here. Everyone just needed to be out in normalcy for just a bit.

I think I got a small sandwich or something there, and we looked at the drink coolers for good stuff. I somehow convinced Alex that he should get himself a Sour Apple Four Loco, and he absolutely hated it! It was pretty funny, and I tried to convince him to drink the entire thing, but he wouldn't do more than a couple of sips. Instead, he passed it off to me, and of course I couldn't waste it.

We pushed a couple more blocks along Hylan to the east. I think some realized how close we were to train stations the entire time, and talked of cutting out, but I reminded them that if we wanted to just walk the road the entire way, we could do our entire distance of the hike in only about 8 miles. That's not why we were doing this. I wanted to see all there was out there.

We turned down Arden Avenue to the right for a couple of blocks and reached the waterfront once more. There, we turned left on a road called Mayberry Promenade. A good walkway was along the waterfront.

When that road turned left back inland, the homes were really close to the water again, but I came up with a plan here also.

Just one block in from the shore, we turned right on a pedestrian path where Strawberry Lane came in from the left. This took us east to Wakefield Road. We followed Wakefield straight, which is a dead end, but there is a foot path that goes into public woods at the end. 

We followed this in and to the right. There were some branches down over these paths a bit of the time, but nothing too terrible. This took us out to Tennyson Drive, which we followed to the east.

We stayed on this street through neighborhoods until we got to Groton Street on the left. Just past that, a sandy path led back to the beach to the right.

We continued along the waterfront through Crescent Beach, then had to head back out to Tennywood Drive yet again.

When we reached the intersection with Goodall Street, we were able to turn right again on a paved trail toward Port Regalle. There was some good beach front in this area, and there was a good walkway that went all the way around the adjacent community. Unfortunately, it was locked and gated. No one could walk through.

We had to head all the way back to Tennywood Again, then cut to the right after the development onto Seaside Wildlife Nature Park where there was another trail. 

This was a particularly nice one. There were paved trails that passed through on the inland side, but as we headed to the waterfront, there was a stunningly beautiful boardwalk section. We followed this to the end, and saw some old pier ruins and passed through Lighthouse Park. This had a little light house model in it. We took the trail through this park out to Mansion Avenue where we continued as close to the shore as we could.

We followed the road almost through to the end, where I was hoping there would be some way for us to continue walking through and just get into the western side of Great Kills Park, but there was no way. 

There were all of these condo areas, and we went into this Yacht Club loop development to the north for a bit, and I planned on cutting over through the condos to the north of where I thought we could access Great Kills Park, but that was chain link fenced also. We ended up having to walk all the way out to Hylan Blvd yet again, but we did sneak behind some condos and such to try to make it a little more interesting.

Galya decided to cut out early somewhere in this area having gotten pretty tired. I was really glad she made it though because she lives on Staten Island, and it allowed her to see so much more awesome stuff that is so close to home. We all have amazing places basically in our back yards that we never see or get to use.

We followed Hylan to the east again, and off of Fairlawn Ave to the right there is an access to Great Kills Park. I had hoped to reach that sooner, but we didn't, so at this point it was only a couple hundred feet more, and we could turn to the right directly onto a trail into the park rather than walk one more bit of road at all, so that is what we did.

The trail was basically a gravel service road for official use vehicles only. We followed that to where we were right on the waterfront of Great Kills Harbor.

This is a huge 580 acre park I had only just begun to hike when I started these Staten Island hikes more than a decade prior. The final point I wanted to hit on this one was to go to the end of the peninsula in Great Kills Park.

The interesting circular harbor has a long and interesting history. It was originally called Marine Park, and later became part of Gateway National Recreation Area, and still is federally administered today.

That very end of Great Kills Park is called Crooke's Point, named for John J. Crooke, a businessman and pioneering naturalist who in 1860 had a cabin and lived at the point. 

Crooke's Point became an island in 1916 when erosion cut the narrow swath of land that connected it to the main land. 

Use of the island as a park had interest going back to the 1920s, but it was not purchased by the city for this use until 1929.

Even then, the park was not yet developed. An incinerator was built on the site, and operated from 1926 to 1941. As a result, 197,000 tons of toxic residue remained at the site.

In addition, 15 million tons of contaminated waste was brought in and used for fill to create the park, and in doing so, the island was reconnected to the main land once more. New York City Parks Commissioner boasted that the city saved five million dollars through the use of "sanitation-controlled fill" to create the park.

The park did not officially open to public until 1949, and it has been at least partially closed as I understand since 2009 to investigate contamination throughout the property.

We continued walking through Great Kills Harbor to the east, and then to the south, along the waterfront. The sun was beginning to set beautifully to the west over the water affording us the rare opportunity of a west coast style sunset.

The pedestrian pathway we were following along the waterfront seemed to come to an end when we got to Great Kills Marina. We crossed the access road, called Buffalo Street, and then followed the sidewalk on the other side briefly. 

To the left was the restroom facility and entrance walkway to the beach on the Raritan Bay side. I originally intended to walk all the way around to Crooke's Point at the end of the Great Kills, but that did not work out as planned.

I think John clued me in on the miles we had done so far, which was already beyond what I wanted to do for the day. We needed to take the most direct route back to the train station because everyone was getting tired.

This turned out most certainly to be the right move, because there was a lovely rainbow over the building and the beach as we approached to turn back. Everyone seemed kind of relieved that I was willing to cut short on my original plan, which really was not at all cutting short on distance.

We got out on the beach, and there was a really nice view in every direction. We turned left, and we could see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge out in the distance, and as far as Coney Island at the end of Brooklyn.

To the south, we could see the Atlantic Highlands in New Jersey, which is the highest point on the east coast between Mexico and Maine.

We turned left on the beach and followed it for a while, and the clouds turned a beautiful shade of pink out over the water and the southern reaches of New York City. 

We continued to where Buffalo Street came closest to us once again, and we turned in from the beach to reach the pedestrian path along it. We would then follow that to the east and north to get out of Great Kills Park. Looking back over the Great Kills Harbor, there was another beautiful sunset view with brighter colors.

We continued along the path to the north, and soon reached Hylan Blvd. Directly across the street from that was the southern end of the Staten Island Greenbelt trail system.

This was a system we had followed many times, and this section was part that was originally intended to be the route of the Richmond Expressway, a limited access highway that was to go north/south across Staten Island. The construction only went a limited distance, which involved an interchange with existing highway, but otherwise very little more. It remains a swath of open space which hides hikers from the neighborhoods amazingly.

We got on the trail and headed into the woods to the north. It must have been odd for the group, especially a group that hadn't hiked this one with me before, to be doing this bit of trail in almost dark. But they trusted me, and we pushed ahead until it passed beneath the Staten Island Railroad.

We then turned to the right on a side path that led us out to Railroad Avenue, and we took that directly to the Oakwood Heights Station.

We took the steps down, those of us going back to the starting point, and Alex was the only one that took the other set because he had to go the opposite direction I guess to get back to where he needed to be to get home.
When the train finally picked us up, it moved along fast back to Tottenville.
All of the stations beyond Great Kills, Etlingville, Annadale, Huguenot, Princes Bay, Pleasant Plains, they could all serve variations of this hike that would involve the beach but also the inland trails that we didn't do this time. Serious Sean said he was looking at those parks trying to figure out what I was going to do, and saw all of that extra inland stuff. I had seen it too, and I think we will have to return to do all of it, but maybe we'll wait for a while to get back to that. I foresee the next big ourney will be finishing the entire perimeter of Staten Island, for which we only have maybe twenty miles left on. If I add on other parks along the way, we can probably break it into two great hikes.
We got back to the Tottenville Station, and a bright red corridor led us right out to where the ferry used to depart from where we were parked, almost as if it was still a thing that could be done today.
We will most definitely have to return to this point.