Hike #1188; Thompson to Union Dale

Hike #1188; Thompson to Union Dale

12/30/18 Thompson to Union Dale with Janet Lynn McCourt-Finsen, Mr. Buckett (Jim Mathews), Russ Nelson, Ewa Wdzieczak-Smering, Eric Pace, David Goldberg, Jessica Anne, Stephen Goldberg, Jennifer Berndt, Michael Krejsa, Daniel Trump, Shane Blische, Brandan Jermyn, Jennifer Tull, Sarah Jones, Jack Lowry, Pete G. Wilcox, Kellie Kegan, and Timothy Kovich

Our next hike would be a point to point on the former Delaware and Hudson Railroad between Thompson and Union Dale, with a little section at the start in The Nature Conservancy’s Florence Shelly Preserve.

D&H caboose at Cable's Deli in Union Dale

We had been going with the Delaware and Hudson series for some time now, in the main original route on the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which connected Honesdale with the Hudson River, and the Gravity Railroad which connected there to the Lackawanna River valley.
For this particular month, Matt Davis was unsure of his availability. Because he was the one to suggest this series, and because only he, Russ, Ewa, and I have done every hike in the series, we are not willing to continue the main route without him.
Ewa brought it up on the previous one that she really wants to be sure that we continue to do at least one of these things per month, and so I had the idea of doing this one anyway. In the event of having heavy snow cover, this trail section would be very easy to walk anyway, because it would be packed down by snowmobiles and cross country skiers.

Paddington Blische at Florence Shelly

Also, Janet lives literally right on the trail, on what happened to be the next section of it I hadn’t done. She’d been traveling huge distances to do so many of the hikes, and so it was a nice thing to give her this very close to home thing. There’s really not much up in this area. It’s the definition of “middle of nowhere”.
The last time I had done any of the Delaware and Hudson’s Pennsylvania main line was a few years back. Some sections of it are still active in the area of Carbondale and Olyphant. We’d done a little of those again, but they weren’t part of the main theme.

Florence Shelly Preserve

The last official D&H hike on this line was probably the biggest screw up I’d ever done in terms of mileage.
I had planned out two loop hikes, both out and back utilizing the D&H as well as the parallel New York, Ontario, and Western’s Scranton Branch. The first one was a loop from Carbondale to Forest City and back, and the second was to be a loop from Forest City to Union Dale and back. That hike started out pretty normally, but not a mile into it we met a guy named Matt Zuk, a brewer. He had a brewery going (which has since been renamed Ironheart), and he invited us to come after the hike. When I said I didn’t know the time, he invited us that moment to come in and do a sampling (at 9 in the morning).

Florence Shelly Preserve

Half the group ended up buying growlers, and Matt gave some of us some free bottles. It was a really great stop, but in no time we were feeling pretty loopy.

Florence Shelly Preserve

We ended up stopping for lunch in Forest City, but then I wasn’t thinking and we overshot the turn back point. I didn’t realize until we were already just about to Forest City what I had done.
Fortunately, on that one Mr. Buckett and Eric had met late, so they had a car the shorter distance back. Most of the group cut out at that point, but Jillane, Tim, Justin, Sarah, John D and I decided to do the entire loop, the distance of two hikes (thirty miles) all at once.
It ended up being a pretty fun time, and it made the last trip on this line pretty memorable.
We returned to Union Dale again, but not to do the D&H. We continued northbound and had a couple of great trips on the parallel O&W line, which at this point starts moving off further to the east to reach Hancock NY and the O&W main line. It’s not reasonably close enough for loop hiking any further north than Herrick Center, just north of Union Dale.

Florence Shelly Preserve

I scaled off two new hikes on the D&H in this area. One would connect Thompson and Union Dale, and the other would be a point to point to the north of there toward Starrucca.
For this one, I noted that the Florence Shelly Preserve was very close to the start, and I’d have no other reason to ever go up to that area. When I find a preserve like that, I absolutely must include it in another series because I don’t want to miss anything, but I also don’t want to go that far north and do that with a repeat of something else tacked onto it.

Old stone work at Florence Shelly Preserve

Florence Shelly Preserve is named for it’s donor, who spearheaded it’s protection and assembled a team of citizen naturalists and volunteer professionals from SUNY Binghampton to inventory biodiversity.
The peculiar floating bog lands, rare alga, and sundew and pitcher plants merited it’s preservation.
The Shelly family donated the land to The Nature Conservancy in the 1980s, and the later addition of Plew’s Swamp completed the preserve.
I figured it’d be easy to just slap an out and back into the start of this hike.

Florence Shelly Preserve

We met in Union Dale at Cable’s General store, a great little deli and market directly along the rail trail. I picked up Brandan on the way, and we actually arrived a little bit early.
They had, since my last visit, put an old Delaware and Hudson caboose on display at the trailhead, which was pretty cool. When Shane arrived, he climbed up on top of it.
We shuttled in as few cars as we could including my van to the starting point just above Thompson at the preserve. The parking lot we used was at Stack Road and Route 171 just north of the town.

Old farm road at Florence Shelly

The Nature Conservancy seems to fall short in a lot of areas, and their website is one of them. There are no maps of this place anywhere except maybe Alltrails website, and it says it’s just an out and back, or the one I looked at was. I figured we would just get there and do the out and back.
Upon arrival, I was rather surprised at the level of maintenance. My experience with Nature Conservancy properties is that their land management is absolute crap. The Eldora Nature Preserve in south Jersey was probably the last one I went to, and it ended up being a pretty bad experience.

View at Florence Shelly Preserve

This preserve had well marked trails, and a lot of very nice routed signs. Everything was pretty clear, unlike other preserves where everything is grown in. The only complaint about this one was how wet it was. It was nearly impossible to get through some of the watery areas, but such is acceptable when they’re trying to bring you close to what they want to showcase.
We followed a trail that meandered down hill through woods from the parking lot. It wasn’t by any means direct, because we would just look back up at the lot not far above us for a while.

Thompson Station

The trail was marked originally with some sloppy paint blazes, but it was done with standard turn blazes with little white plastic markers, so at least we knew where to turn.

Historic view of Thompson Station

The trail continued to weave down hill, passed through a stone row, and then came to an intersection with an old woods road. I decided that this would be our return route.

Thompson Station

We still turned to the right, further into the preserve on the white blazed trail. This took us into a bit of a meadow area with a small brook running through it.

Whistle marker in Thompson

We crossed over a foot bridge and continued further into the meadow, closer to the brook, but walking was getting more difficult. I walked into the stream to see how feasible it was to continue on through it all.
By this point, we had gone further than I was anticipating going anyway. I figured there was much too much more to this preserve to explore at this point than I had thought.
I decided we would turn back, and then try to make our way back on that old woods road.

Old trail sign

The nice routed signs pointed to different areas in the preserve. It looked like that trail continued much further than I had anticipated it might. Maybe it even connects with another parking area somewhere else. It will merit further exploration, and I’m thinking I’ll just have to tack exploring more of this onto the next hike we do on the northbound Delaware and Hudson Railroad.
We made our way back across the bridge and onto the woods road. We started seeing some green blazes, which was sort of a surprise. One of the trails was called simply “reroute” on the sign. We continued on that woods road up hill when green blazes continued to the right to somewhere unknown. Again, The Nature Conservancy has no map of the property shown anywhere, and there is nothing available on line. They website actually has one map link shown, but it’s a dead link that comes up with “not found”.

Along the D&H in Thompson

More white blazes continued on the woods road, then went into the woods to the left. I think that was the reroute, to avoid a wet spot in the road. It came back again to a woods road and then another section of nice routed signs where we had more turning choices. I was more glad I’d decided to cut this trek short here, because there’s just too much.
We made a left turn where blazes didn’t actually go. Still, the sign pointed that this was the way back to where we had started at the intersection with Stack Road. The woods road route was so obvious that blazing wasn’t really necessary anyway.

Sectional tool house

We returned to the parking area where Eric was waiting for us, and together we all headed down Route 171 with open lands around us heading down hill. We kept to the shoulder as best we could heading into the little settlement where the Delaware and Hudson Railroad used to cross.
The little station stop town was named for Susquehanna County associate Judge William Thompson. It was never a huge town, but boasted some mills in the mid 1800s. We walked to the grade, and met Russ and Ewa at the old railroad station, the only surviving station on this D&H line.

Rails inside sectional tool house

The Delaware and Hudson Railway was a follow up to what originated as the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. The forward thinking company ran it’s last freight on it’s canal in 1898 and dropped the “canal” from it’s name, recognizing that railroads were the future of transportation.
The next step was to create the Jefferson Railroad, chartered in 1864. The line was built by the Erie Railroad from Carbondale to Lanesboro and opened in 1872. The D&H and the Erie had a partnership; the Erie had trackage rights over the Delaware and Hudson’s Honesdale Branch, which utilized some of the old gravity railroad grade from Honesdale to Carbondale, and the D&H had trackage rights over the Erie’s Jefferson Railroad from Carbondale to Lanesboro.

Old rail yard and mill

The Erie had it’s line along the Lackawaxen River, the Wyoming Division, to the east, which we’ve seen on our other recent hikes.
The Delaware and Hudson acquired trackage rights and leases on other lines further up into New York, and within another twenty years had connections into Albany, Schenectady, up into the Adirondacks, and all the way into Canada.
It’s amazing that this railroad, the first to ever operate a steam locomotive in the United States, remained such a hugely viable enterprise at the forefront for so long.

Some sort of ruins

Like all of the other railroads, the Delaware and Hudson went through reoganizations and mergers. Coal was on the decline, and passenger service gave way to the automobile. Lines were abandoned nearly as fast as they were originally constructed.
This particular branch remained in service until the 1980s and was then scrapped.
Thompson is pretty quiet today. An ice cream parlor occupies the old station, which was unfortunately closed when we arrived on this occasion.

Old grain mill

When in service, this branch of the D&H had stations at Forest City, Union Dale, Herrick Center, Ararat, Starrucca, and Brandt as well. There also used to be a hotel known as the Jefferson Inn next to the tracks in Thompson, which is now sadly gone.
We started following the railroad bed southbound, which at this point is actually east. There was a beat up wooden sign along it that pointed us in the directions of different towns along the line, but it was now barely legible. There was also a very nice white painted whistle marker along the right of way still standing strong.

Industrial spur

We continued a bit further ahead, and then came upon an old sectional tool house form the Delaware and Hudson. Maintenance carts were stored in this two bay structure, and there were still rails when we looked inside. The other side once had a pot belly stove, which means workers might have slept there when necessary.
The entire area was dug up pretty badly, and there were earth movers in place parked there. It looked like they might have been getting ready to tear something down there, but one would think they’d try to preserve what little history remains.

Grain mill siding

The area of the sectional tool house was a very big former rail yard. The D&H was double tracked the entire distance we’d be following it, but there were likely more than six at this point.
Out away from us to the south a bit was a siding that moved off toward an abandoned building that we spent some time trying to identify.
As it turns out, this building was an old grain mill. We at first was thinking it was some sort of coaling building, because we observed chutes going down from the base of it that would have fit right along the edge of where the cars pulled up.

I have since confirmed that this was a mill. Mike and Russ had both said that they thought the chutes were a bit too small for coal, but also acknowledged that demand for it would not have been as much in such a small town.

Old mill spur

I have since confirmed that these chutes were actually for grain, which explains it.
We were surprised to see there were still rains in place next to the grain mill. Russ brought up the fact that the sidings were not owned by the railroad, but rather the industries they served, so when the railroad was torn out, they did not have the right to pull up rails to these industries.
There was a put with some stone work between the mill siding and the main through route that I don’t know what it could have been.

The mill building in Thompson

This section segmented the group a little bit. Those of us really into the historic ruins were checking it out for an extended time. I hurried ahead to catch up with everyone else. I had to watch to try to keep everyone together to some degree, because it would be easy to follow the obvious trail route right on through and never have the group together again.
I managed to get myself to the front of the group before moving ahead too far. We left the built up town area (if you want to call it “built up”), and entered a more rural and wooded area. The next point of interest, not too far ahead was the Thompson Curve. The mile long sweeping turn maintained the grade of the line.

Bob Thamsen photo of 1974 APR20 at Thompson Curve

The prominent feature was composed of lower grade coal that was not useful at the time of the railroad’s construction, but better processing existed at the time of abandonment.

Thompson Curve seen today

When the line was abandoned and torn up in 1982, the curve was mined away for the coal value, because the coal used was now something that could be processed.

1982 Mike Bischak photo showing the grade and wooden frame

I made my way onto the site of the former Thompson Curve and found a nice spot with some rocks that overlooked the wetlands to the southeast.

The grade approaching Thompson Curve

I figured this was a good spot to regroup and let everyone catch up. I wanted to give everyone the history of the curve and such, plus I didn’t want everyone getting too far separated because not everyone would know where to turn when we got to Janet’s house.
The undulating terrain of the curve left from the mining was one of the most uneven sections we’d see on this hike.
After our break, we continued on to the south, with wetlands on both sides, and crossed Route 1001. Russ brought up that this didn’t look to be an original railroad bridge because there was no lip on either side.

Crossing Rt 1001

We continued south and crossed Perry Road. Most of the roads we crossed on this route were very narrow, and many of them were dirt. It’s kind of funny that this is considered a trail, and yet just about every road we crossed was much narrower than the trail itself.
We weaved through a very nice cut, and I quietly walked behind Mr. Buckett and listened to the hilarious stuff he was saying. It’s always great on a level easy hike like this to just listen to the stuff he comes out with. It really makes the time go by.

Approaching Thompson Curve

We crossed a driveway followed by Ararat Road. Through this entire section, we were gradually heading up hill.
We crossed Ararat Road, followed by Sartell Road. At this point, the Starrucca Creek was coming in closely parallel with us. It passed beneath the grade, and there was a lot of beaver activity. Large dams were on both sides of the grade, and the water flowed for a good while in the grade itself.
Janet had met us in the morning at Union Dale, but then headed home.

Thompson Curve

She wanted to get things together a bit better before we actually all got there, and her plan was to walk backwards on the trail toward us when we arrived at Thompson Station.

At Thompson Curve

I texted her when we got to Thompson, and she told us she was heading out on the trail in 15 minutes.

Thompson Curve

We finally met up with her after walking through a section of the right of way that had a lot of water flowing through it. It was an abnormally warm day for the area, so I had no problem just walking on through it.
There was still some snow on the ground, and from what Janet was sending me in photos during the previous couple of weeks, there was full snow cover up until only a couple of days before this hike, so we got pretty lucky. Back home, it was much warmer than this area, but it was still in the forties, which was just fine with me.

Wetland at Thompson Curve

Janet joined us just in time to miss all of the wetland stuff. We moved ahead a bit here, and I wanted to let the group come back together again, so we took a long break.

Small cut north of Thompson

Of course, all of the biggest rail fans tend to fall behind because they notice all of the neat little things along the way. This line did have a few interesting mile markers still in place.
The area we stopped in was clearly a spot with many tracks at one time. Certainly a small yard.
We walked around and explored it a bit more and then theorized that we were approaching the Ararat Summit, the highest point of the Jefferson Railroad section, and they would have had to have places to pull trains over, as well as to switch so that they could connect helper engines and such.

The rail bed

The railroad had a “wye” in this area for turning around helper engines, and a map I have shows that this was a bit further to the south. I don’t remember seeing it when we went by there, but it can be seen on aerial images heading over toward what is known as Robert’s Pond.
We hung out at the former passing track or siding area for everyone else to catch up. Shane and Mike had checked out some culverts and looked at piles of ties, and so they fell behind a bit. They actually weren’t that far behind for how much time they took, and I really wanted to get a group shot soon.

Driveway crossing

Mike proudly showed that he had successfully removed some old date nails from some of the railroad ties they had found, dating from the 1940s to the 1920s. Very cool find.
Once we had everyone together, we got a nice group shot and moved on past some more swampy areas.
Just as we got to the area where the wye was supposed to be, we came across another old Sectional Toolhouse on the right side of the trail. This would have stored railroad cars and tools.

The group near Ararat Summit

These tool houses were often known as “Paddyshacks” by railroad workers. We saw two of the only three of these tool houses remaining on this part of the D&H on this hike.

Russ in the sectional tool house at Ararat

Somewhere in this area was where the station would have been as well, but I didn’t take note of anything anywhere that looked like the former site.

Wet grade

We continued on along the grade, and passed over a point where there used to be some sort of creek underpass. Either they piped it or blocked it in completely, because the thing was obviously quite filled in.
Soon, we passed through a deep cut, then a ramp was built where there would have once been a bridge to climb up to the level of Ararat Road.
This point was the highest elevation on this part of the Delaware and Hudson, at 2,040 feet above sea level.

Filled bridge at Ararat

Ararat Summit is 1,000 feet above Carbondale, and 1,400 above Scranton. It’s still the highest point on the trail, which is now higher than it would have been in railroad days.

YUM

Form this point, the character of the trail changed quite a lot. Until here, it was just original cinder and occasionally some ballast. It was not overdone like so many other rail trails. It wasn’t perfectly easy in spots like where we dealt with some of the flooding, but overall I liked it better that way.
From Ararat Road, there was another steep ramp going down back into the grade gradually. Janet pointed out that this was a very new development, and that all that used to be required was coming down a steeper slope at the bridge.
It was only somewhat recently that this section of trail had been done up into modern rail trail with crushed stone aggregate surfacing. It made for a much more manicured, easy walk.
We headed down the slope to continue into the cut from Ararat summit. Shane and Mike headed down into the cut the old route, to be purists and follow the actual grade.

Tool house

There was a portajohn at the top with the most disturbing looking cartoon toilet I’ve ever seen.
From this point, we were headed down the route that the helper engines worked. One of them would be in the front, and three “pushers” would be behind, including a “kicker” that would be released in Forest City to the south.
We headed down hill further, and soon came to the Sinkhole Swamp, a large pond off to the right side of the railroad bed. According to the history, there used to be a trestle that carried the rail line across the swamp, but there was no sign of it.

Sinkhole Swamp area

I suppose maybe the railroad filled in over the swamp in later years and the trestle was just an earlier thing. I can’t be sure on that one.

Near Ararat

Just after the Sinkhole Swamp, on the other side was Romobe Lake. These swamps and lakes are part of the headwaters of the West Branch of the Lackawanna River. A chain of lakes from Sinkhole Swamp to the south make up these head waters.
The third lake on the way south was Hathaway Lake.
From the 1870s through the 1930s when refrigeration became commonplace, ice harvesting was popular in this area. Between December and April, ice blocks were cut from these lakes and stored in sawdust locally, or hauled by train to other areas for refrigeration use.

Ararat Summit

The harvested ice was critical to the success of northeastern Pennsylvania’s dairies and creameries.
Hathaway Lake was a popular ice harvesting lake in the area we were now walking through.
This area was known as “Burnwood”, and the nearest parallel road to the rail bed still bears the name.
It was named for a nearby factory that produced charcoal, wood alcohol, and acetate of lime. Between the 1800s and the 1970s, there were more than seventy of these factories in northern Pennsylvania.

Ham

The product of these factories were used in the iron making processes.

Along the trail

We crossed Farm Road, followed by Cotrell Road, and came more closely parallel to Burnwood Road.
Soon, we came to Fiddle Lake Road, which bends hard to an angle at the point of the former crossing. We turned to go to Janet’s place there for a late extended lunch break.
Janet’s place was great. It’s a wonderful little spot that feels extremely cozy.
She prepared chili for us, as well as a bunch of other things I can’t quite recall.

Old mile marker

Jen and Jess had stayed over the night before and helped her with some stuff. We all hung out and had a really nice break. We were all so hungry that the chili was gone probably in no time at all, which was not anticipated I don’t believe! It was quite delicious!
We were doing really pretty well on timing up to this point, because the route was so easy save for the mud at the start. We had only maybe four miles more from this break point that was guaranteed to go pretty quickly. Dave’s brother opted to stay behind and hang out when the rest of us moved on ahead on the trail.

Hanging at Janet's

Just before leaving, Eric had discovered that he likes Irish cream liqueur, and we had to have some more of that. We eventually got underway on the trail again.

A toast at Janet's

The trail took us south on a bit of a shelf, through more woods than open farms than we were before. It was pleasant and easy walking.

Hanging at Janet's

Soon, someone pointed out a toilet laying in the woods to the left of the trail. Of course, we had to smash it before continuing on, and I knew I would have to tag Jason Itell in it because he is of course the master of smashing toilets (long story; not going to reiterate it here, you just have to look back through 1,100 other journal entries).
Shane threw a rock before me and ended up smashing it before me. I just finished the job with a cinder block I found.
We crossed over and paralleled Creek Road for a time. This section was the longest secluded bit of the entire hike. I figure we can do an entirely different version of this one just following back roads and it would still be great because most are unpaved.
The last settlement we came into before Union Dale was Herrick Center.

The rail bed

The first settlers arrived in Herrick Center in 1789. The area started to grow substantially when the Great Bend and Newburgh Turnpike, an extension of the Old Newburgh Turnpike, was constructed across the Lackawanna River at this point (the route is the main crossing in the middle of Herrick Center today). The road traveled from the Hudson River in Newburgh, New York across to northeastern Pennsylvania, to Binghampton NY. The twenty foot wide road was constructed of earth, lime, timber, and stone. It was completed in 1811, and is now much Routes 374 and 371.

Toilet

By 1825, Herrick Center was a major stage coach stop with a large tannery and hotels, as well as lumber and horse trade.
Because of the lumber and coal trade, the Jefferson Branch established a station stop at this point in 1871.
I thought I saw a siding as we approached Herrick Center, on ou right. It seemed to be a grade, but uncertain for sure what it was.
We continued on from Herrick Center into more woods. It really wasn’t far from this point to Union Dale at all.

Snow on the trail

It started getting darker as we neared Union Dale, another little former industrial village. It used to have a spur to Entrot’s Mill, a three story structure that burned down in 1958.
We could see the lights of town as we approached from a distance, and then could hear the loud sound the the pretty waterfall that emerges from beneath North Main Street to our west.
Soon, the silhouette of the caboose that had recently been moved to the area from the Carbondale vicinity was in view.

As everyone was arriving (we got separated pretty far apart again this stretch), some of us went into Cable’s Store to get some more snacks.

Herrick Center crossing old Newburgh Turnpike

Cable’s Store actually has a pretty interesting history as well.
It was built in 1898-99 to store wool during the Spanish-American War, but the war ended before it was complete, so it was converted to a meat market and hardware store, and still continues in similar capacity to this day. It also is home to a rails to trails council of northeaster PA.
I picked up some snacks myself including some sour cream and onion potato chips that Jen said were the best ever (they actually were pretty good).

Approaching Union Dale

Once we had everyone back together, we had to figure out who the drivers were that got to the start, and shuttled them back to the preserve above Thompson. The rest all headed back up the street to Janet’s to wait for us to come back with the cars.
Janet picked up some more snacks and such for us at Cable’s while we were there, and we hung out for a bit longer.
It was another great way to end the night, and we finished with a toast to the great year we had had. This was really a perfect way to close the final hike of 2018. It was relaxing overall, and just a nice time.

Hanging out at Janet's

It’s been a really great year we’ve had exploring so many new places, committing to series’ farther away in every direction than we’ve ever gone before. The extended hiker family is growing closer together all the time, and I love the feeling of it all.
I feel very confident that 2019 could still be the best year we’ve had yet. Already, we are planning events like those I’ve always wanted to do branching out in all directions.
This is going to be fantastic.

HAM