Hike #1058; Chester to Gladstone

Hike #1058; Chester to Gladstone

7/19/17 Chester to Gladstone with Chris "Cupcake" Kroschinski, Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Kralc Leahcim (Lerch), Jennifer Berndt, Lowell Perkins, Varsha Reddy, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, and Dan Asnis

Our next hike would be a point to point between Chester and Gladstone. I had done this hike, for the most part, back in 2010 shortly after the fire, when I was in rough shape, only we did it in the opposite direction. I felt we could do it again and improve upon it.

Chester Hill Branch, now Patriot's Path

We met at the Gladstone train station and parked cars there. We then shuttled to the north, to Chester Hill Mall, which was where the little railroad yard was for the Chester Hill Branch of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The line came to what is now the parking lot, and the Chester Mine Branch continued on to the east, across what is now Route 206, and to mines on the east side of the town of Chester. The Patriot’s path now follows the Chester Hill Branch off to the west of town down a rather steep slope. We’ve used it for hikes on many occasions now, but I never get tired of these great sections.

Historic image of the Chester train station on the former Central Railroad of NJ. This site is now the Chester Hill Mall parking lot.

We stopped in the Krauszers I recall for refreshments before starting off along the trail. I forget if it was this day or another that Lowell and I spent at Hacklebarney working, but regardless I was doing a lot of physical labor stuff and feeling pretty tired at this point.

Historic 1939 image near the end of the life of the Chester Branch. Howard Johnston photo, from North Jersey NRHS Collection

We crossed the road and began heading down hill on the old Chester Hill Branch, which took us across two old mine pits. We crossed over a utility right of way and continued down hill a bit, as the main white blazed Patriot’s Path exited on a foot path to the right.

Along Black River wetlands

We continued ahead on the rail bed a short time longer, now on the blue blazed branch of the Patriot’s Path, on maps as Black River Trail in this area. It took us left through the woods, intersected with the spur trail to Chubb Park, and then continued down to beside the Black River itself. The beautiful section passes by marsh lands and some giant concrete pipes that have been there for years. We crossed the access road to a municipal road department, so it was probably left there by them some years ago I would imagine.

Black River

We continued across the utility right of way once more, and the foot path hugged the bending Black River out toward Route 24 and 513. There’s an arced dam just before reaching the roads, and a pedestrian tunnel that leads to the other side of the highway to the Cooper Grist Mill.
The mill is a beautiful structure, still working after all of these years, and an historic site open to visitation through Morris County Park Commission.
The trail passes through the tunnel, then to the left of the mill down steps to the water wheel.

Then and Now: Cooper Grist Mill on Rt 24

We continued past the water wheel, and the trail entered woods and went over little foot bridges, over the mill raceway and spring channels from the Black River. It was kind of muddy back in there on this occasion, but soon we ascended to reach the right of way of the long abandoned Hacklebarney Mine Railroad.

Cooper Mill Wheel

I pointed out to everyone where the railroad used to cross over the Black River. The abutments are in bad shape, but still in place, and the fill on either side is there.

Hacklebarney Mine Railroad abutment

The Hacklebarney Mine Railroad was built in the 1870s to access the iron ore from the Hacklebarney Mine and some other secondary mines in the area of what is now Kay’s Pond. The trail follows the rail bed along Kay’s Pond, named for early horticulturist Elizabeth D. Kay, who’s estate, known as Hidden River Farm, was up hill from us. It is now the Elizabeth D. Kay Environmental Education Center, and it has offices of The Nature Conservancy.
We continued south along the railroad bed, to where the Hacklebarney Mine was behind the chain link fences to the left. We continued on around that, and the trail continued on the right of way of the Langdon Mine Railroad, which was only in operation for three years in the 1880s as far as the Langdon Mine a bit further south.

Historic image depicting the mines at Hacklebarney

This entire area is quite fascinating. I in fact wrote an article in Skylands Visitor Magazine on this and the Sussex Branch back in 2004, a version of which (truncated it seems) is still available on line here: http://www.njskylands.com/odhikerail

Langdon Mine Railroad bed

We made our way south a bit more, on the Langdon Mine Railroad bed until it crossed the Black River, and then followed the blue blazes toward the Kay Center.
I was rather surprised to see that this time, the paths leading to Kay’s pool in the river had been blazed. In the past, there were only a few faint green blazes leading the way to the pool and ruins of the pool house, but it was much more prominent by this time. I believe the trail was now blazed orange from the green trail.
We followed it down and across the Black River on the easy woods road bridge, then took the steps down hill to the former pool house, which stands without a roof.

Kay Pool House

It’s just a beautiful, serene spot on the river that still fewer people seem to know about. I only see it getting worse as time goes by and people discover it.
This time though, we were on our own down there and no one was around to bother us.
Lerch and Jen were both coming to meet up with us, and parked at the lot at the side of Hacklebarney where the township parks their vehicles, and they walked on to the Conifer Pass Trail, which is the red blazed one, from Pottersville Road to meet up with us. We hung out at the Kay Pool for a while being silly to give them some time to catch up with us.

Kay's Pool, Hidden River Farm historic image

Everyone had to wade across the top of the dam, where in Kay’s day there would have been another little foot bridge, according to the historic photo. Once on the other side, most of us went in. I went to climb the dam immediately, which was fun.

Hidden River Farm pool today

After I climbed up the thing, everyone except for Dan gave it a try. No one got up it quite as fast as I did, but everyone else managed it just fine. Uncle Soup couldn’t resist the try either, and he of course came right up with us.

We made our way out of the water and then continued on the trail along the river, the green trail followed by the red Conifer Pass Trail. Part of this had been rerouted to remain closer to the river for longer than it had been before. It was really quite nice to find a new section like this that I’d never done before.
The trail officially went by a nice abandoned building site I had been to in the past, before it was part of the trail. It was only a chimney and foundation left, but a pretty cool site nonetheless.

Goofing off

Soon, Lerch and Jen caught up with us and we continued on the trail. I watched my phone GPS, because I wanted to get down from the trail a bit earlier. There are open woods in the area, so it’s really easy to walk through. We turned right through these woods and it took us out to Hacklebarney Road rather easily, with only a bit of steep slope as we reached the dirt surface road.
We turned right heading down the road, and passed by the old Hacklebarney Grist Mill. The stone mill possibly dates back as far as 1828. I’ve always loved this section of road with it’s old mills.

Kay pool dam

It has signs that it’s impassable to large trucks, though some still try to get through anyway. The original entrance to Hacklebarney State Park was on this road, just past the mill, on the left side. The original donation of land to the park was by Adolph Borie, and the entrance was near his home at this location. Later, he donated more land and money to create the entrance where it exists today. We continued up the hill from the mill, and made the next left onto State Park Road. There’s another beautiful old house on the corner that I would bet also dates back to the early 1800s.

Ruins on the River Acres site

We continued along the road for a little while,and stopped along the way to pick some Japanese Wine Berries that were growing along the private lands to the left. One of the reasons I had posted this hike for this particular date was because it would be on or at least close to the peak for the berries, and Hacklebarney is always outstanding for them.
We continued along the road only until a swath of the state park appeared on the left side. We had cut in through this way in the past, but it was dark the last time I did it.

Historic view of Hacklebarney Grist Mill

We followed the informal trail through the woods parallel with Trout Brook, one of the small streams that flows into the Black River further down. It wasn’t too long before we got to the red blazed trail.
I had recently reworked all of the trails at Hacklebarney with appropriate blazing, which had been a long time coming. Prior to that, all of the trails in the park were either blue or yellow, except the white Main Trail, and the yellow Windy Ridge Trail.
We turned right past the beat up old picnic sites, with broken tables, grills, and fallen trees all over them. Everything is far behind in the park because there are only four full time employees staying too busy with Spruce Run and Voorhees as it is.
We walked up the long flight of lovely stone steps built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1920s, and then headed to the right, to the restroom building. Everyone could use the facilities if they needed to, and the bushes behind the structure were growing crazy amounts of berries. We hung out here for a bit.

Old Hacklebarney Mill in the 1920s. Chester Historical Society Photo

Jen had an extra zip lock bag to offer me, so I ate a ton of the berries, but also was able to bag a lot of them because I wanted to bring some home to the pet possums we have there. They love berries and such (and they loved these ones as well).

Hacklebarney Grist Mill, which may date to 1828

Once we had exhausted much of the berries around the restroom, we headed to the left out through an open field parallel with the parking area. Bushes to the right also had more berries on them, so we headed down this to the intersection with Playground Trail.

The stone steps

I didn’t want to take too long, so we didn’t do too many curves through the park. We followed along the Playground Trail I believe until we got to the red trail again. I believe we looped around on this, and then followed it down along the Black River. We then walked along the river up stream. We stopped to pick more berries along the way, but I wanted to try to get through the Hacklebarney section well before it started to get too dark.
We followed the red trail until it turned away, then we followed the informal trail off of park property barely to the old pool constructed by the CCC when the section was still parkland.

Histroic postcard image of the Hacklebarney entrance

We crossed a tributary on rocks, and then crossed a log over another channel, stepped over some branches and soon reached the old pool site. I didn’t hesitate to get in. The water felt just about perfect. I think everyone went in this time except for Dan again.

The old pool

Once we’d all cooled off, we headed back the way we came along the rough riverside. I was up front, and I heard after I got caught up that Dan had fallen off the log we crossed over the tributary. He was okay, because he caught back up. We then reached the large log across the Black River, and I went first across that. Once I was over, I watched the others get across. Dan was last, and somehow he slipped and fell off into the river! Justin and I looked at each other not knowing what to thing. I was ready to jump in and pull him up, but he stood right back up as if nothing had happened and made his way over to us. We then followed the trail the SCA had built up to the parking area and we were on our way.
We turned right onto Pottersville Road for a time, then left on Longview. These roads are great because they’re either dirt surfaced or very little used. We remained on Longview to where Patriot’s Path crossed, and turned to the right to follow it skirting fields.
The trail wasn’t as easy to follow as it had been in the past. It was getting rather overgrown in some spots. It got really rough for a time coming out of the field edges and into the woods heading down hill. Once we were too far in and committed, we came across some sort of trail closed sign, and I don’t know why. Why the sign was placed so far into the woods and not at the road crossing is a mystery to me, but I’ll have to look into it.
Regardless, we continued on, and left the actual Patriot’s Path route to keep closer to the south sides of the fields. We remained on nice mowed paths to the southeast side of the Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center area, and then somehow got onto a utility right of way and an old road. It took us to a former bridge site over the Herzog Brook, and I used this as a final time to take a dip and cool off again.
From there, we headed further ahead on the same clearing, and eventually came back to the blazed trail route. When we reached it, we turned right and reached the enclosure that goes around the Willowood Arboretum lands. We opened it and closed it behind us, and followed the lovely fields through the dark to the east.
When we neared Willowood Arboretum, the trail picked up the long abandoned right of way of the Rockaway Valley Railroad, abandoned since 1916. This was another line I had written an article about for Skylands Visitor Magazine, visible here: http://www.njskylands.com/odhikerailrock
The line was built between Whitehouse Station and Morristown (Watnong Station) in 1888 predominantly to haul peaches, as the area was then the Peach capital of the world.

Rockaway Valley Railroad historic image from Thomas Tabor book

Unfortunately, the blight killed off the peaches in 1890 and the railroad just couldn’t keep going. It went bankrupt a few times and struggled to remain in service. It was abandoned in 1913, and then one final effort was made to revive it, but it was decided to give up and sell the tracks off for World War I scrap.

Frank B. Allen and the Model T he used to tear up the tracks pose for a photo at Brookside.

When I wrote the article, I was trying to come up with a name for it. Tom Drake from NJ Skylands eventually titled it for me, but I had preferred the title my friend Fred Hafele came up with: “The Little Railroad That Couldn’t”.
We continued on the line to the north, and hurried across the main access road. We then had a nice swath of woods to the next deer fence, opened it and crossed over Longview Road. The next section went by quickly and was quite pleasant out to Daly Road.
On the previous hike, we followed Rt 206 for a bit, which really sucked. We were not doing that this time. It was only slightly longer to follow other parallel back roads. We turned right on Daly Road for a time, and came to Union Grove Road, where we continued straight. From there, a left turn led us out to Pottersville Road, which was a busier road, but at this point it really wasn’t that bad at all. We crossed 206 at the light.

Trestle on the Rockway Valley RR

The old rail line crossed 206 at about the same point, and there was once a large wooden trestle that carried the line across the little valley and the west fork of the Peapack Brook.
The Rockaway Valley Railroad, or as it was not affectionately called the “Rockabye Baby” because of poor grading and how the trains rocked, never connected with the Peapack-Gladstone Branch of the Lackawanna despite the fact that it came so close to it. Instead, it turned hard to the north, then headed east to parallel Roxiticus Road and later the Whippany River to Morristown.

1908 image of the Gladstone Station, from the Historical Society of Somerset Hills

After crossing the Peapack Brook ourselves on Pottersville Road, we turned right on Main Street to shortly reach the Gladstone Station, ending the hike.
This was really a great night with a lot to see and experience. Swimming, berries, history, and tom foolery in perfect balance. I can ask for nothing more.

F'in A-Right