3/1/9 Morris Canal; Rockaway-Mountainview with Shelly Janes, Fred Hafale, "DJ Ray" Cordts, "Naaron" Young, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews
Part 5 in our Morris Canal series was a bit better than the latter portion of part 4, but we missed quite a bit of it again that we'd hit on future ones. We also hit a section we missed on the later one however.
The original journal for this one was also lost to the fire, and then lost again via facebook. I'm hoping it turns up one day, but for now I'm stuck rewriting it again.
In retrospect, I was losing interest in the Morris Canal series as much because Jillane had no interest in it. She'd done two of them, but by part 4 she only did part and didn't care for it. I was, however, obligated. After all, I'd gotten the newspaper, NYNJ Trail Conference, and other groups involved. Warren County Board of Recreation liked my doing it as well.
I did want to do it, but I just wasn't excited. I pushed myself along, and my interest in it grew stronger.
This time, we met at Mountainview NJ Transit station, which was at that point originally the Greenwood Lake Branch of the Erie Railroad (NJ Transit shifted when the Boonton Branch of the Lackawanna through Paterson was torn up, and passenger service uses pieces of both branches). We shuttled from there to the starting point, where we'd left off in Rockaway.
We started by walking some streets, where the canal was an obvious route through yards on the slope, to Friendship Field. There, an old canal culvert/aqueduct was still in place carrying the park access road.
We crossed Wall Street onto Dock Street, which is built onto the canal, and then followed a short trail section through Memorial Park.
A church parking lot, Devine Mercy Academy, is now built over much of the former Inclined Plane #6 East, on an obvious slope. We headed down that and around some side streets, and were able to get back on the canal at Union Street.
Just ahead, the bridge that carried the Hibernia Mine Railroad over the Morris Canal is still in place.This took us out to Fireman's Field where there used to be an aqueduct to carry the canal over the Beaver Brook. We had to climb over a real pain of a fence in this area and head out to Gill Avenue to get across the brook without getting wet. We then climbed beneath the Gill Avenue bridge to get on through.
Just about on the east side of Beaver Brook, there used to be a canal feeder that brought water into the canal. Although it was not navigable, and informal trail followed along tha feeder for a while, so we walked up it and back. A nice stretch.
We got back to the main canal which skirted some sort of business at first, and then appeared as a formal trail for a good while. This very nice stretch took us the entire way parallel with the Rockaway River.
We continued to where it became obliterated by Rt 80, and passed beneath the Rt 80 bridge, skirted an apartment complex, and came out to Savage Road in Denville area.
On the other side of Savage, the canal is used as an access to the Church of the Savior, so we followed that on out to Morris Avenue. It continued on the other side from there on private property, so we remained on Morris Ave. We did take a side trip up Cedar Lake Road to see what was left of it there, and it looked to be in good condition. The section would eventually be opened as a trail, but not yet.
We continued on Morris Avenue to the La Cucina Restaurant, formerly the lock house for Lock #8 East, best known as Peer's Store, or E. C. Peer and Son's Store. The business was Samuel Peer in 1852, and E. C. Peer served as lock tender from 1862 until 1915.
We walked behind Peers, and then reached the former site of the Rockaway Aqueduct that carried the canal across the river. Three piers plus two abutments remained of the crossing. I believe all but one of those piers were removed by the township due to the idiotic claim that they impeded water flow in times of flooding. It really made no sense because on such a wide flood plain, it should have made nearly no difference.
It wasn't a big group, and so we made the ballsy decision to turn right onto the Rockaway River Country Club property and use their first bridge over the river, then head back to get on the canal again. We didn't have any trouble.
The towpath lane is built on the canal ahead of this spot, and we made our way right out into the neihborhood at the end of the segment out to Bush Road.
This was another problem spot for the canal greenway, because the lady that was living in the house along the canal blocks this end to public entry, despite the fact that Morris County has legal access to it. We paid it no mind and went through anyway, and had no trouble.
The next segment of the former canal is a nicely mowed greenway path that is a satellite piece of Morris County's Tourne Park.
We went farther than we were supposed to in this segment, but it wasn't signed. We ended up in a private farm facility, and headed back Meyer Farm lane to get to Old Denville Road to continue. The canal continues overgrown and then goes into difficult private property eastbound here.
We followed Old Denville Road to a right on Poweville Road out to the settlement of Powerville where the canal crossed the Rockaway River again.
This time, the crossing was on slack water behind a dam rather than on an aqueduct. The towpath crossed on a bridge that had an odd round pier holding it. The pier still stands out in the water today.
We crossed over the river on the bridge on North Main Street, and checked out the canal route in Griffith Park.
There was a business on the other side of the road, but we were able to get on the towpath with semi watered canal for a bit ahead from here heading southeast. It was actually a pretty nice section.
I think maybe only DJ Ray and I did it at this time, and we had to climb up a slope to the left in order to get back up to Main. After a short distance of private homes, the canal greenway resumed, and it was very nice. The canal was watered and the towpath cleared heading into Boonton. One of the nicest sections of the entire 102 miles.
The canal became filled in at a government complex and little park adjacent to the senior center, with a large globe in it. We crossed over West Main, and then continued on the canal which was sort of a little greenway that soon gave way to a parking lot, above Grace Lord Park and the enormous Boonton Falls.
Boonton is still very much laid out as if the canal was still there, with all of the buildings and walkways descending to it, now parking areas. We continued through to the end of the lot, and then reached the former top of Inclined Plane #7 East. Today, some of this is now Plane Street, but the plane itself is actually sort of more to the right of the street.
The canal is much obliterated east of this point through Boonton. We had to follow Main Ave and headed under Rt 287, then Maple Ave past a school and then Park Ave out to Vreeland Ave to get back to the north side and Main Road heading east. There wasn't a lot of remnants to speak of through all of this. Inclined Plane #8 East is partly obliterated by the super highway, but we didn't have a way of really getting to it yet. We continued and found the top of Plane #9 East when we got back on the canal again where it crossed Main Road.
Main Road turned hard left, and we followed it to a good view of the lower end of Plane 9 East. It crossed and paralleled the road for a bit, and then crossed again before a sweeping turn where it was watered and nice, but we couldn't get on it. We had to stay on Main/202. We took it under 287, at a point near where the canal passed to the south side of it again, with no remnants visible. We just had to stay on 202 until we got to Changebridge Road.
This spot was so named because it was where the towpath switched sides of the canal from the south to the north. The canal is in good shape, sort of used as a retention pond for a modern development through the next section, and the edge of it is kept mowed. Both the towpath and berm sides can be walked through much of this.
We started on the south side and switched to the north after a ways, and hopped across at a spot with a few rocks. At the end of the stretch, we dashed across someone's yard and then made our way out to Canal Road.
The canal paralleled Canal Road and we were able to bushwhack along another little portion of it heading east toward Towaco. We then had to walk a bit of Canal Road to Whitehall Road. A short watered section was along the right side at a residential entrance along the way.
Soon, the canal crossed over 202/Whitehall Road and the railroad tracks, and so we had to continue ahead on the road toward Lincoln Park. Inclined Plane #10 East is in that section, and could be reached as a long out and back, but we didn't bother doing it at this time because it was so much out of the way, and couldn't be done as a greenway thing. It wouldn't be until my next Morris Canal series that I'd finally visit this plane.
At Lincoln Park, we passed through the ballfields at the Lincoln Park Library, and continued then east on 202 along the canal. This section was pretty easy to follow because the canal was immediately on the right side of the road.
It remained on the right side for a while, but when it got closer to some commercial buildings on the north side, it switched sides to follow the north side of 202. That was a bit of a bushwhack, and it looked like it had been dredged out as sort of a drainage thin there. We made our way down along it through woods, and then came out at Glendale Road. We dashed across the first yard, and then continued running across the first yard as not to be seen, and I did a jump roll over a fence to get out to the roadway segment.
We quickly made our way through and toward the Pequannock River, but I all of a sudden realized that a while back in that yard, I'd lost my keys. This wasn't just my car and house keys, but all of my keys to all of Hunterdon's county parks. I had to run back and find them.
Fortunately, that spot where I did the jump roll over the fence was where they fell out. I grabbed them up and ran all the way back to the others.
Soon, we reached the former site of the Pequannock River Aqueduct for the canal. There is really nothing left of the wooden trunk structure with multiple piers. It's almost impossible to see even where the canal approached on either side.
We had to turn to the right and crossed over the Pequannock on the adjacent Rt 202 bridge. Once there, the NJ Transit tracks, formerly the Greenwood Lake Branch of the Erie Railroad (when the Lackawanna Boonton Branch through Paterson, the passenger line shifted between the former Lackawanna and former Erie).
It was at about this location that the five mile long Pompton Feeder of the Morris Canal came in, which was also used for navigation. I wanted to include this in the series, and so the next hike would also have to include that, so this was a good spot to conclude this hike.
DJ Ray and I had a slappin contest on the station platform before heading out.
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