2/8/9 Ironton Rail Trail Vicinity with Jillane Becker, Shelly Janes, "Amish Paul" and Wyatt Hassler, Eric Pace, Laura Cunningham, Sharon Harbousin, Amanda Rosenblatt, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, DJ Ray Cordts, Bill "Guillermo" Fabel, David Noble, Kyle Zalinsky, and Larry Butler
This hike would be a point to point one featuring an exploration of the cement industry, mostly around the Ironton Railroad and vicinity between Northampton and Schnecksville.
Unfortunately, the journal entry for this and many other hikes were lost when Facebook eliminated their notes function. I'd begun saving all of them to there in 2010 after the fire that claimed my home and with it many of the original journals and I'd hoped they would be safe. Unfortunately I was wrong.
The majority of them are saved, and I'm slowly moving them onto this platform and backing up on hard drives and cloud services. The others, like this, must sadly be rewritten.
In some ways, this is an interesting opportunity to give a more recent perspective on the events of that time.
This hike was when we were finally trying to gete with the model I wanted for Metrotrails earlier on. There would be a hike every weekend, maybe a night hike between, and then there would be one party or big event per month, usually hosted by one of the core group members. I had March, DJ Ray had June, Carol and Rob would later take December. It was going well for a bit.
This was February, and February meant Buckettfest.
Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews is one of everyone's favorite characters with his heart of gold and sensorless monologues. As such, his annual party was among the most anticipated yearly.
This was only the second Buckettfest, but would be quite a good one.
We partied all night and got not nearly enough sleep, then headed out in the morning to Northampton PA area to begin our hike. It would take us between there and Trexler Preserve where we'd left cars.
I had found out about the ruins of the area while wandering with my ex, Cathy as well as with the group on a rainy day. We spent a good day on the Ironton Trail and nearby stuff, and I'd done some of the ruins already.
The first part of the hike found us crossing the long abandoned rail bridge between Coplay and Northampton, and wandering around the ruins of the Thomas Ironworks. Much of the buildings in that area have been demolished, but what remains standing today is still amazing. There are foundations, concrete building frames, and tunnels beneath them. The one out to the large maybe three story high building is particularly cool because it's so long.
We spent a good long while exploring this, and then got on the northern leg of the Ironton Rail Trail heading west.
Going this way, the trail took us by a giant concrete plant building that had a rough spiral staircase going through an enclosed edge. I'd gone in once before, and this time I wanted to go all the way up.
We headed over to the thing without being seen, and pulled ourselves up the tower, which required holding onto the rails pretty well. The steps were starting to deteriorate and break off, so we had to be extra careful.
In the top level, there were lots of augers and such that worked the cement process, engine works, and then a stairwell out onto the roof which afforded great views of the surrounding area. David took tons of photographs of the place for something to do with an engineering class he was in.
I seem to recall Kyle couldn't make it out for the beginning of it because he was out with his girlfriend at the time or something. He met up with us on the Ironton Trail near the Thomas Ironworks before.
We came back down to the trail and headed west. It splits just east of Rt 145, and we continued to the west under the highway. The other leg of it we had followed previously to the south.
This way was pretty interesting.
Immediately on the other side of the bridge was a large former rail yard that was in service through the 1980s. To the right, there was an old passenger car set on cinder blocks that was used as a yard office in more recent years. It was in horrible shape, but interesting.
There was also an abandoned building just past that to the right. It had a metal roof full of holes that let light just shine in with a nice ambiance. On the other side of the rail grade was another building frame of concrete. Some of these were other concrete plants, but I didn't know anything of what their numbers were at the time.
Another ruin was missing its roof, but stabilized enough to be utilized as a wildlife observation blind. It had an 1891 date on it. Just past that, there was another old stone building with arched doorways. I was later told it had once been a fire house associated with these works.
There was another old concrete building, and then another one that looked like it had been refurbished and used for another business. Boyko Petroleum Services took over the area, and I'm not sure if they were active there at the time, but the highlight of the property was the fact that they had all of these antique gas pumps outside.
We crossed Chestnut Street and paralleled another road to our right. We then crossed Reliance Street. I think some of the group cut out in this area when Mr. Buckett or someone picked them up. We made our way across Reliance and then there was yet another abandoned and giant old concrete facility on the left, just across the Coplay Creek. The area here was known as Egypt.
The next little settlement ahead was a line of row houses, with the first three sets of them or so completely vacant. They were only abandoned somewhat recently. The community was known as "Mill A". These houses each had outhouses in the back because they never had running water or plumbing.
I had found them while hiking with Cathy a few months back.
Of course, we had to go have a look.
The houses were loaded with stuff completely. It was kind of like a more modern home, certainly lived in through the 1980s because there was an original Nintendo in it. But floors were collapsing and they were certainly all condemned. There were several other of these houses in the Mill A row, and the others were more modernized.
The houses were so bad and condemned, no one was ever going to come back for anything. People grabbed stuff here and there, and Amanda grabbed the original Nintendo, which pissed me off because she got sick of carrying it and left it alongside the road ahead later.
The railroad bed ahead went into some private land on the right (which later became part of the trail), but we had to walk Quarry Street for a bit closer to Ranger Lake, which is an old quarry.
Just before the village of Ironton, there was a junction. The Ironton Railroad main route went into Ironton, but there was a branch that went out to a location known as Orefield, and I wanted to get that one done because it was longer.
This was a time that I'd fully embraced the concept of using aerial images for hike scouting, and I went a little crazy on it at first, going into properties I would not attempt to traverse with a big group now.
I found the junction site and the first bit wasn't bad in terms of private land, but it was a sloppy mess. I think either the railroad bed or land right next to it was flooded. The whole woods were puddles and such, and we had to bushwhack through. Kyle and I were in the water much of this.
Kyle and Wyatt looked particularly ridiculous, covered in caution tape they'd found in the house and Kyle was wearing a hair net or something.
We reached and crossed Mauch Chunk Road, and then skirted a tree line that was the old rail grade to the south, then headed more west. We crossed the Coplay Creek on an old rail bridge, and then headed through a very open field, but obvious where the railroad had been.
I was a little nervous going through this, and there was a giant hunting stand at a tree line that was more of a tree house, but we had no trouble.
We soon came out to Iron Lakes Country Club where the railroad bed is a sort of service road. We went right out the main entrance to the golf facility and onto Shankweiler Road.
There was some sort of big metal ball out in a field we never figured out what it was too.
From there, it was the sketchiest part for us to walk through, but we did it with no incidents.
The Jaindl Farms place owns a long stretch of where the railroad was, and I can't be sure if we were on it or not, but it looked as though it had been just below and to the north of the main service road through the facility.
This place deals in a lot of chickens, and there was even a chicken foot laying in the middle of the pavement of the road as we went through.
No one bothered us, we walked out onto Coffeetown Road.
I think from there we must have walked north to Schnecksville. The railroad went into Orefield proper, which was just to the southeast, but I don't think I was able to find parking there and we'd used on street in Schnecksville or something.
I was in a bad mood because Jillane was giving me a hard time, but overall it was a really cool and fun hike with a lot of high energy and stuff to see.
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