Hike #1626; Richboro/Newtown Loop

Hike #1626: 10/6/24 Richboro/Newtown Loop with Jack Lowry, Sarah Jones, Mike Heaney, Diane Reider, Robin Deitz, and Everen

This next hike would be a long loop in the area around Newtown Pennsylvania. Of course, we had done a tons of stuff through this area already, and one would think we'd already finished all of the trails there are to do through the area, but we haven't.

I wanted to try to post something that would be interesting and feature a lot of new stuff, but also tie in some stuff we'd done from the past that was quite enjoyable.

I came up with this route which sort of works as a coda or afterthought in the Neshaminy Watershed series. We had started several years ago trying to hike the entire route of the Neshaminy Creek and its tributaries, and while we did do just about all of it, there is still quite a lot of trails we had not touched upon yet.

I picked out several of the trails along the way that we'd not done, and some that we had, and pieced together what I figured would be a very interesting hike between Richboro, Newtown, and areas north including more of the trails in Tyler State Park that we had not covered yet.

The meeting and start point would be the Northampton Recreation Center.

Not to be confused with Northampton County, which is to the north. Northampton Township is at the west end of Bucks County, with the settlement of Richboro at its center.

The Northampton Recreation Center property is a former Nike missile base area that is now mostly actie recreation and sport fields, but can be used to tie in directly with Tyler State Park.

We parked near the recreation center building to the west of Tyler State Park, and just barely to the east of the center of the settlement of Richboro.

I was surprised that not more people showed up for this one. I figured it would be a really fun and relaxing trip that would have lent itself well to a large group, but it seems that things are dying down a bit lately.

We started our hike by heading east across the parking lots, and then skirting the edges of ball fields to the east. We crossed over the entrances to the park, and there was an old stone building off in the distance to the north of us.

I looked up the handsome stone house in the 1876 J. D. Scott Atlas of Bucks County, which suggests it was home of Paul Blaker at the time. It's kind of hard to tell without a lot of points of reference which homes are which on these properties.

We crossed over the No. 1 Lane, which goes into Tyler State Park, crossed over parallel Richboro Road, and then turned right to the south on Fir Lane into a development.

We made the very first left turn onto Redwood Drive through the development. Ev was in the stroller through all of this, and he pointed at things asking "daddy what is?".

I would point out fire hydrants to him, and mail boxes, explaining that these mail boxes stand alone, which are different from the one we have at home, which hangs on the side of our house in town.

We continued around a corner on this road, and then turned to the left onto Shelbourne Road, which took us around another corner. We then turned left onto Hawthorne Terrace out to Holland Road.

We crossed Holland Road directly, and got on a concrete pathway that parallels but meanders a bit parallel with the road. We continued to follow this along Holland Road to the south.

The 1876 Atlas map shows that this was once the Joseph C. Camm farm.

We continued parallel with the road for a bit, and there was a beautiful stone farmhouse on the opposite side. The atlas map shows that this was likely the home of J. K. Craven in 1876.

At about this point, an asphalt trail turned hard to the left and led into the park land, which is part of the grounds of the Council Rock South High School.

We passed several tennis courts on the left, and then skirted baseball fields as we headed to the east, some of them with active sports going on.

We skirted the south side of a soccer field, and the path intersected with a sidewalk along the edge of Rock Way, where we turned to the north.

We crossed over the entrance road to the high school, and there was a small pond, possibly just a retention pond, straight ahead, but with drought conditions it was just about empty. We decided to try to go closer to the edge of the pond rather that skirt it, and I ended up walking on some of it.

From here, we skirted the edge of Rock Way to the north, and then made the first right onto Keenan Lane, which was a parkway style entrance with an island in the middle. We kept to the right, and walked through the parking area to a pool and poolhouse used by the residents of the development.

At the end of the lot, there was a little pavilion thing, a pretty view of a retention pond, and then a paved trail that went to the left around the north side of that pond.

We followed the trail, and there was a sign soon reading that it was for residents only, but we figured no one would care.

The trail turned north away from the ponds, and then through a tight spot between lines of homes parallel with Sydney Drive. 

At a fork in the trail closer to Sydney Drive, we turned right and skirted the rears of homes and trees on the right. When we got to a good spot beneath some trees that seemed a bit more private, I stopped to give Ev a diaper change, because he'd indicated that he'd made a pants mess.

I got that done pretty quickly, and we were on our way down the paved trail to the east. The trail cut to the north tightly between more homes, and soon came to an end when we reached St. Leanards Road.

1955 food

I had been to this spot before, so we formally connected to the previous hikes here. 

It was just to the left that the road intersected with Rt 332, Richboro Road. Also at this intersection, or at least close to it, was where the road had been rerouted from its original course, which had a steeper descent toward the Neshaminy Creek and a tighter corner. I had hiked that older route a couple of times, but we weren't going to do that this time with the stroller.

It sucked going down hill on the narrow Richboro Road, but it wasn't all that far to go before coming to the first bit of Tyler State Park.

I pointed out springs going off to the right, which are believed to be part of the historic colonial "Dripping Spring". We headed a little further downhill until there was enough good room to get off of the side. I pointed out where the original road route came back to the current alignment, but only for a moment.

Just ahead was the Spring Garden Mill, and the nearly forgotten covered bridge site, which was built in 1815, and washed out in the great flood of 1955.

The bridge had been a Burr Arch Truss style, and we walked past the mill to the site so I could show everyone where the bridge abutments still remain, and we could see where the abutments bore the weight of the trusses.

This historic mill was a grist mill built in 1819 by Richard Imlay. It remained in use until the 1950s, and was so named for the aforementioned "Dripping Spring",

In 1781, members of the Doan outlaw band are reputed to have hidden their horses in a dense thicket near Dripping Spring, just before they rode into Newtown and robbed the County treasury. Newtown at this time was the County seat.

1955 flood

The mill passed through different owners before becoming part of Tyler State Park, and it was re-purposed as a theatre, the home of the Langhorne Players.

We crossed to the north side of the road, and then turned right to cross the Neshaminy Creek. A trail that parallels Richboro Road is known as Buckman Trail.

We continued to the middle and took in the nice view of the creek. A single large Sycamore tree still stands from the very first time I'd ever been to Tyler on the left side of the stream looking north.

A rough trail went into the woods to the left, but it gets steep, With the stroller, I was pushing for having another very relaxing day, so we continued east on the paved route first. 

Soon, we crossed over one of the entrance roads, and soon after that was the intersection with Tyler Drive Trail. I waited for the others here, and then we cut to the north into the park, and almost immediately crossed the entrance road again before entering the woods.

The area that is now Tyler State Park was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. George F. Tyler between 1919 and 1928 where they raised dairy cows, poultry, sheep, pigs, and riding horses.

The land was purchased for park use in 1964, and it was dedicated ten years later.

Of course, the history of the area dates back far longer than that. Some of the homes on the property belonged to earlier farming families, which date back to the 1700s.

The Tyler mansion now serves as the administration building for the Bucks County Community College.

I'd done a whole lot of great hikes through this park. My first one here was part of a night hike back in 2009. I didn't do much else in the area until another night hike several years ago when I was temporarily transferred to work at Washington Crossing State Park, and it wasn't so far to get there.

Toll House

Since that time, I've had several great hikes through the park, but I still haven't done all of the trails there, so this time I aimed to cover more of them.

We continued on Tyler Drive Trail through the woods to the north, until we got to the intersection with Quarry Trail, where we turned to the right. There were a lot of people playing disc golf around this time I recall.

There was a good restroom just a little north of the intersection, so we paused there for a few moments to use the facilities, and Ev got out and ran around for a little bit.

We continued from here to the east on Quarry Trail, which was a bit uphill but pretty easy. We came out into a parking lot, where the trail left the old road route. That route used to be cleared and mowed back to the right of the lot, but it was sad to see that it had been completely let go by this time.

We continued on the trail where it kept going beyond the parking area, but changes names to Green Lane Trail.

The trail came out to Green Lane and we turned left along it, beneath the Rt 532 Newtown Bypass, and out to the lot for Council Rock High School North.

Once we were in the lot, we went hard left and up a very steep grassy slope to beside the ball fields.

We continued north along the edges of the baseball fields, and when we reached the northwest side, we cut onto a path that comes out behind Newtown Shopping Center. 

1954 moving of the Durham Toll House

We reached that lot, turned right, and followed along the south side of these lots heading east. My plan was to have lunch somewhere in this vicinity.

Ev really wanted a cheeseburger, and there is a Wendy's somewhat close by, but I didn't want to go too far out of the way.

We walked along the south side, along the back of many stores, and then descended through grass into a sort of retention pond area, then back up to behind Village at Newtown shopping center.

I noticed that there was a Five Guys burger place, and I don't think I've ever eaten at one. Not only that, but some of the others had also not yet patronized this chain, so we decided this would be our stop. We'd try something new, and Ev would get his cheeseburger.

It was a really nice stop, and we were able to sit outside on the wraparound section of the awning to the businesses. It was really great because Ev didn't have to be secured into anything, and he could pretty much just run around as long as he didn't go to the side or out into traffic. Of course, he wanted to go farther and I'd have to stop him.

When he realized he could get the door open to the front of the place, despite it being heavy, he also wanted to be going in and out a lot, which I also had to stop.

After eating, we headed from this location downhill and out to Durham Road to the north. We crossed over the road, and there was a parallel trail on the other side we began following to the east.

On the south side of the road was a handsome old building that was home to Nina's Waffles and Ice Cream. We considered stopping here, but I also wanted to move along. There was a lot more to do.

I didn't know the history of the place, but I could tell it was old and out of place from everything else in this strip mall, so I figured I would look it up later.

As it turns out, this was the historic Durham Toll House, which was built about 1870.

The toll house originally stood at the corner of Sycamore Street and Durham Road just a couple of blocks to the east, today Rt 532 and 413. It served the Wrightstown and Newtown Turnpike Company until 1920, when it became a private residence. A toll gate was at the intersection, and a pedestrian passing cost one cent, two cents for wagon with horse or ox, and later 5 cents for automobile.

The building was moved to its current location in 1954 to save it from demolition, and then it was saved a second time in 1989 when the developer of The Village at Newtown allowed it to stay as an Historic Landmark. Restoration was funded as part of this process.

I didn't see any historic markers at its location at the corner of Durham Road and Eagle Road, but it has an obvious historic look. Not exactly the same as toll house cookies, but same concept (the cookie brand is an image of an old tollhouse on the way to Boston).

We continued on the pedestrian path to the east, out to Rt 532, Washington Crossing Road and Sycamore, and turned left following Washington Crossing Road. The paved trail remained parallel in the woods to the left, separated well from the traffic lanes with a vegetative buffer, making it an excellent walking route.

We skirted some fences of private properties, crossed the intersection with Cliveden Drive, and there were lots of political signs everywhere along the road. The one that really got me was one that simply read "weird". I didn't know what to make of it.

"Weird", by the early 2000s, had become synonymous with virtue, celebrated as an embrace of individuality. Publications such as Weird NJ and Weird US have been lauded for showcasing folklore and oddities. Coming from our group, hiking in suits and ties, or with guitars, "weird" is an identity we've come to love. Of course, Jack had his carbon fiber guitar on hand at this time.

I posted the photo on Metrotrails with the sign, not knowing at all what side it was supposed to represent, or if it was just one of those signs like the ones that read "I just wanted a sign" and nothing more.

This year, I think we are seeing more political aggression than ever before, and I feel as though I would never put a campaign sign on my lawn, because I'm opening myself up to potential criticism or harassment. 

Out of curiosity, on the drive down, I counted how many Trump vs Harris signs there were along the roads. Bucks County is typically a Democratic stronghold in Pennsylvania, but I noted that there were only a few Harris signs in New Hope, a couple others besides, and there were well over double for Trump. I felt that was a pretty strong indicator of what the political feelings were in the area.

I am still unclear if the "weird" sign was supposed to be pro or anti Trump or Harris. It seems that they've backed away from making racist claims, and have gone to calling one another "weird", and it somehow was sticking more than those other claims.

I think it was the Democratic side first calling Trump weird, and his rebuttal was basically "I'm not weird, they're weird", and using that term as negative makes me feel rather resentful. The results from my post of the weird sign led to arguments between people on who was supposed to be weird, and to whom it was derogatory. It was very strange.

The trail moved away from the road ahead, through an open area heading gradually uphill, and then through a swath of woods. It emerged before Crittenden Drive, but then there was another trail that broke off to the right. We followed this, which took us behind more homes heading north.

We emerged after a right turn onto Harmony Way, and I was supposed to go right to get to the next bit of trail, but instead, we cut straight across through grass and down to the next bit of trail as a little shortcut. We didn't really miss much doing this, but we probably weren't supposed to go that way.

We turned left when we hit the next bit of paved trail, and headed to the north between homes in the loop between the segments of Harmony Way.

We continued to the north and came to Harmony Way again, and turned left on the road. We quickly reached the closure of the lollipop loop the road makes, and continued to the west along it. There was a wide, grassy swath right next to the road, so walking this didn't really feel like walking a road.

We continued on out to the intersection with Eagle Road. We crossed the road, and then continued north on the paved walkway parallel with it.

We didn't have to go very far onto this, and there was an unpaved, grassy side path to the left that led to the south of a large home, and then out to the Newtown Veteran's Park trail.

We turned left on the paved trail, and followed it south along some elevated retention ponds and such, then along the south side of soccer fields.

We turned right between the soccer fields and a baseball diamond to the middle of the park, and then cut to the northwest a bit, sort of off of the paved path and through the grass to come out on Durham Road. We'd come up this road in the past, actually on the last Newtown area hike.

We only had to go out onto the narrow road briefly, and then cut up a steep grassy slope to the front yard of the house at Rose Bank Winery.

The winery takes its name because it is apparently the historic name for the property, the Rose Bank homestead.

The original section of the homestead was built in 1719 on the property deeded by William Penn to his daughters.

The property was expanded upon following the 1832 purchase by Jacob Buckman.

We'd stopped at this winery a little over a year ago and really loved it. They'd let us use the upper indoor level, and Ev was barely walking yet, but was able to crawl all over the place.

This time, we ordered what we wanted, and then could hang out outside at the venue. There was live music going on, and there was a giant pinscreen thing that someone could lean into to make a sort of form of themself jutting forward.

We hung out and relaxed here and I started off with a bottle of the blueberry wine, which I shared with everyone around our table.

After we spent some time, I ran back in and picked up a bottle of the red raspberry wine to go, and we headed out.

We walked around the barn building where the tasting room is to the east, and then headed to the north.

Newtown Elementary School is right behind the winery, and there are more ball fields connecting from the Veterans Park to the south.

We skirted the road, and then made our way through some of the grass to the north, out to Wrights Road. There was another paved path on the north side of Wrights Road, where we turned right briefly parallel with the road, and then another paved path went north, downhill along a meadow, and then into woods.

The development is known as Newtown Grant.

We crossed over the Newtown Creek on a bridge and boardwalk. We had been parallel with this for some time, and it is a tributary to the Neshaminy Creek. After crossing, we came out to South Drive.

From here, we went briefly left, and then right on another road known as Columbine Circle. We walked up the road a little bit, and there was a space between two  houses after some curves.

It looked a little sketchy to go through, but after some wine, I was feeling like we could pull off a lot of things.

We passed through some grass and went a bit northwest through a small swath of trees, and then came out behind some townshouses on Elfreths Court. We turned to the right, to the end of the cul de sac, and then turned right behind the very last townhouse.

Once we were past the house and toward the next bit of development on Rittenhouse Circle, and we turned right through grass around a large retention pond directly to the north without approaching the buildings on that road just yet.

When we did come out past more buildings onto Rittenhouse Circle, we turned right only briefly. We looked between the next buildings to the right, which was at this point north. I had hoped there would be a way through to the next separate development to the north.

The first opening had no options. There was a chain link fence in between. However, after the next set of buildings, between them the fence ended. 

We cut through and came out to the road on the south side known as Society Drive. We then cut to the north through the development, along lots of sidewalks and such along buildings.

We continued to the north, to North Drive, which was the main road into the development. We cut straight across through grass onto the cul de sac to reach Laurel Circle. I was planning on potentially cutting up between buildings to the west to reach Rt 413. I recall there really wasn't a very good way, so we just went back out to North Drive to reach that road.

We turned left, and continued only a very short distance to Twining Bridge Road whee we turned left.

My previous time out there, we had cut through fields to this road, but this time we'd just simplify it and walk the road from here.

Twining Bridge Road is overall pleasant. It turns ninety degrees to the left, then ninety degrees to the right. There's an abandoned house down a long lane off of the road ahead, which I've eyed up on aerial images quite a lot, but we didn't bother to try to check it out this time either.

We continued along the road a short bit past the driveway to the abandoned house, and then a paved trail follows the right side of the road to the east. 

We followed the trail along the road across Dorchester Lane, and it ended before we got to the intersection with Swamp Road.

We turned left on Swamp Road, and then in a short distance, right onto the north entrance to Tyler State Park, toward the Schofield Ford Covered Bridge. As I understand, Twining Bridge Road at one time must have continued straight across and down to the bridge, but development over the years has shifted the roads somewhat.

We headed down the unpaved road to the parking area, and then downhill beyond further into the park on the old road that is now closed to traffic, except in special situations for handicapped hunters I understand.

Schofield Ford Covered Bridge (aka Twining Ford) in Tyler State Park, soon came into view spanning the Neshaminy Creek. Quite a few people were walking around the area.

The original covered bridge at the site was built in 1874. Unfortunately, it burned down in 1991 by arson. Funds were raised and the bridge was rebuilt in 1997. At 163 ft, the town truss style double span is the longest covered bridge in Bucks County.

The first covered bridge in the America was constructed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania still has more covered bridges than any other US state.

We went up and across the bridge, and I let Ev run back and forth for a bit.

After a brief pause on the other side of the covered bridge, we began following the trail that goes downstream along the Neshaminy Creek on the other side. There were little side trails off of this route that provided for some nice accesses with beautiful views of the creek. I couldn't resist going in and cooling off a bit.

From here, we continued on the trail ahead, which remained in the floodplain for a bit, and then started climbing rather steeply uphill. 

Google Maps shows this is Twining Hill, but it is shown as Betz Hill on the state park trail maps. Betz Hill Trail is an old paved road route that weaves through the area. We got on it and turned to the left, which took us down a bit to the east, around a bend, and then gradually back uphill to the west again. It was a pleasant and straightforward route to follow through the park, which I hadn't really done fully through in the past yet.

After getting to where the land leveled off a bit, the Number 1 Lane Trail broke off to the left, also another old road route.

There was an old, occupied farmhouse, apparently a live in caretaker, off at the intersection of these roads. The 1876 J D Scott Atlas of Bucks County seems to show this as the property of Benjamin Cooper.

We continued along this main route ahead for a while. There was a point where I think it was open to minimal traffic, probably for another renter of property within the park.

The route was still pleasant, and we followed it all the way to the end of the park, where we approached private homes, first on the right. When homes appeared on the left, College Hill Trail broke off to the left and started moving gradually downhill to the south.

We turned here and continued gradually downhill, with cultivated fields on our left. I chose this general area for our group shot, since we wouldn't be in the park much longer.

We moved away from the houses, and soon were back into more secluded park lands.

The route exited the fields and made its way through some more woods to the south, and then intersected with No. 1 Lane Trail where we would turn right, but we took a break there first.

There was a lovely old stone arch bridge to the right of us, on this old road, and everyone sat on it before moving along. I didn't see a date stone on it, but I assume it might date back to the early 1800s.

We crossed and continued out to another parking area, and there was another old house on the left. Across from it, there was a mowed trail that becomes paved and goes into the municipal recreation center. I should have taken that, but I didn't realize that was the best move.

I'll have to try that other way another time, because there are amazingly still trails to do out through this area.

We continued down No. 1 Lane, and came to the spot where the lines of trees were along the route out to Richboro Road. We turned to the right, through the fields, west, and then south a bit along field edges. None of this was mowed, and it got a little tougher to walk.

We went over a little weedy knoll, and then came to a mowed pathway adjacent to a baseball diamond. We turned right and walked around the outside of that to a parking area and then a little paved trail sort of going west through the recreation complex.

We passed another baseball field, and then went left on another access road back toward where we were parked.

As we approached Baseball Diamond 3, we went to look for the former Nike Missile Launch and Magazine site, which was said to still exist within the park. Diane had mentioned it in the morning, and there was in fact an historic marker for it not too far from where we were parked.

Usually, when we come across these sites, there is little or nothing left to see of the infrastructure.

This was an odd one, because it actually had quite a lot to see. The area that had been the launch and magazine site is now the batting cages for the recreation areas. In fact, some of the trap doors were left in place, easily visible at the chain link fences of the batting cages!

This was one of thirteen installations built to protect the Philadelphia area from Soviet aerial attacks from the 1954 to 1970 period of the Cold War.

Evolving technology and arms control treaties led to deactivation of the site.

We had hiked through some of these before on several different hikes, including one other in this region not so long ago, but we hadn't seen anything like this.

There was a paved trail from the west end of the Nike site, and so I pushed Ev on down that toward the recreation center building close to where we were parked, and the others headed more directly across the sports field to the main line.

I went over to the building and photographed the sign about the Nike site, and then headed over to the cars to conclude the day.

It was a great way to end a very fun and diverse day around the Newtown area, and amazing that even after so many years and so many hikes through this area, there is still so much more to see. Even after this one, there is still so much more to see.

I probably won't return to Newtown area in the very near future, because there is just so much more I want to do everywhere, but it's nice to know that we can slap something together at any time, when we want to reminisce with places we've known and loved, and still get to experience new and exciting other things.