Hike #1193; Monmouth Junction to Skillman
1/16/19 Monmouth Junction to Skillman with Dan Asnis and Jennifer Berndt
This next hike would be another point to point night hike, this time between Monmouth Junction and Hopewell. I’d done a few hikes out of the Hopewell area in the past few years and really loved them, but there was a ton more to do to the east of there.
Walkin'
I laid out a route that looked like it would be pretty good, encompassing all sorts of parks that I have and haven’t walked between a point near Skillman, outside of Hopewell, and the South Brunswick Square shopping center at Monmouth Junction area.
There was really no good end point, so I made the meeting point right in Hopewell, and we would shuttle vehicles a short distance to the start after meeting.
Only Dan showed up to the start of the hike. I was hoping we’d get a lot more, but maybe the cold weather or something was scaring people off. It actually ended up being a really nice night for a hike, so they all missed out.
We headed from Hopewell to a development around a golf course known as the Bedens Brook Club. It was a really huge course, and so I figured this would be a really great section to walk through during the dark hours of the hike. We could actually get a few hikes would of stuff out of it, it’s so huge.
We left my car on a lollipop loop road off of Rolling Hill Road known as Colfax Road.
Kingston Lock
Dan and I headed to the start point, and then walked along to the liquor store on the east side. I was happy to see they had some Weyerbacher, and I really needed a drink, so I bought some.
We continued from there along the back of the shopping center to the west.
After a short while, we headed to the right through a swath of woods that took us out to a parking area for an apartment complex. We followed that out to Wynnwood Drive to the west, and turned to the right following it to the north. We remained off in the grass or lots rather than in the road for a bit, and continued to the far back of the complex. Once there, I heard from Jen that she was going to meet us soon. There was a trail off the back of this complex I was planning to use, so we waited for her to come out because it’d be impossible to join if we went into those woods.
Carnegie Lake and mill
A path cut off of the last loop, Sassafrass Lane, and over to the next apartment complex. We turned here, and there was one tree down blocking the other side’s entrance. We turned right when we reached that complex on another path that went behind houses to the north.
We continued and crossed the Heathcote Brook, and then turned to the left on another trail, which appeared to follow a sort of utility clearing. That path continued where we had to cross a couple of small tributaries to Heathcote Brook, but it was alright. It led us out to Princeton Gate Blvd. We turned right on that which led out to Promenade Blvd. We turned right here for just a bit.
Soon, we made a left turn on Courtside Lane. We followed that to it’s end, where there was a path at the cul de sac out to Sandor Drive. We turned left on that and followed it out to Raymond Blvd where we continued straight across on Deerpark Blvd.
The road led out through an industrial area. I had done this section once before on a past night hike. It wasn’t too hard then. We continued along the back of one of the industrial buildings when we got there, and continued around a retention pond on the other side.
I had done this section on a night hike before. Once on the far side of the retention pond, an informal trail led out to the fields of Heathcote Park. Once there, we kept to the left.
Heathcote Park is contiguous with the Cook’s Creek Natural Area, which is administered by Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park. There is a trail that continues from Heathcote Park out to the west, as well as a parallel abandoned portion of the Pennsylvania Railroad, originally part of the Camden and Amboy. That line connects the section that used to follow the berm side of the canal through Princeton. It remained in service for many years later to access the spur to Rocky Hill.
We continued along the lawn section to the west until eventually a connecting road went ot the left out to the old railroad bed. We reached it just before where it turned to cross over Route 1. It crosses that road at grade, which is not easy to cross and requires going out and around. This time, we were only following it west, so it wasn’t a problem.
We continued on the grade out across Sassman Lane, then out further to Ridge Road. When we crossed, there was a cop there. I thought for sure he was going to ask what we were doing because it had gotten dark, but he didn’t ask anything. He seemed preoccupied with something and we just walked by.
Just ahead, we passed by the old house that I had taken a photo of when in bad shape (I went inside it too at that time). It’s since been well restored and added onto. One would never think it was the same building at all.
We continued along the rail bed out to the Princeton Nurseries property. The buildings are still standing, but we couldn’t go in them. We came out to Mapleton Road after the buildings. There was a residence off to the left that I’d remembered being lived in, but it seemed vacant this time. We turned right on Mapleton Road only to cross the Heathcote Brook, then stepped over the guide rail and down to the connecting trail toward the D&R Canal. It picks up the former Rocky Hill spur track right of way. We walked it a little bit too far because there’s a bridge missing over a finger of the canal just as we were reaching Kingston. We didn’t have to go too far back though.
Soon, we reached the Kingston Lock on the canal and crossed the upper end of it. The Christmas tree at the lock still had it’s lights on it. We walked right by it, out to Old Lincoln Highway adjacent to Route 27. We turned left there and headed out to the old mill and the view at the base of Carnegie Lake, funded by Andrew Carnegie as a gift to Princeton University. It was really cool looking in the dark.
The bridge was part of the old main highway, but we couldn’t get further through. We had to go up steps from the mill to get up to 27, then climb down hill on the other side to reach church property. We cut across this, and then paralleled River Road for a bit.
Soon, we cut to the left off of the road onto the Gulick Farm Trail. This would be too tough to go through in the dark. We had tried to go through this preserve on the previous Princeton hike and it was a muddy mess. It wasn’t cold enough to trust going through this time. We only followed a segment of it and then made our way north to reach Herrontown Road.
We followed Herrontown Road to the left for a bit, and a paved pathway started up eventually. This cut to the left into Barbara Smoyer Park, where we had walked on the previous trip. It was a nice easy walk to where the parking area was. From there, we started doing some stuff I’d never done before.
Creepy...
We followed the path along the access road to the Smoyer Park to the west, where previously we had used the trail to the south. We crossed over Snowden Road and followed another road directly across on the other side, and that led to the entrance to Herrontown Woods, in a section I had not done before.
There were a lot of trails in this preserve, but most were shown well on google maps. They were not blazed to standard, but they were clear enough to know where we were going, and the moon was out bright enough that we could see pretty well.
We kept somewhat to the right and headed very gradually up hill for a while.
Herrontown Woods was a gift to Mercer County by Princeton Mathematician Oswald Veblen and his wife Elizabeth in 1957. The preserve was extended upon with the acquisition of a former quarried section to the south in the 1970s.
Abandoned house
We came to a clearing known as the Cottage Clearing where I was surprised to find an abandoned house, which was apparently originally owned by the Veblens. There was also a barn there.
We looked inside the barn, and there was a skeleton mannequin sitting upright in a bathtub, kind of a creepy thing to happen upon in the dark woods.
We headed over to the old house and encircled it, but it was all secure so we couldn’t go in to have a look around, and we’re not the kind to break things.
Abandoned
We continued from this point along trails trying to head generally west northwest. There was only one good way to get out of the park, and I had to watch it pretty closely because there were so many trails coming together in this area. It was fortunate that the moon was so bright that it cast a shadow, because it made navigation that much easier.
Once we were on the correct route, we had to head out to the parking lot to Stone Hill Church Princeton. There was actually something going on at this moment, because the lot was full. It really didn’t have the appearance of a church, and Jen thought she had gone to the facility for a doctor’s appointment before because it looked so familiar to another place.
We continued through the lot, and then around the building to the east a bit. We descended slightly on steps, turned right on Bunn Drive, then reached the intersection with Herrontown Road. To the left, Herrontown Road is now abandoned and gated. This was our next route, a section I had never attempted to walk before.
Abandoned house
We made our way gradually down hill on the old road. Before reaching MacLucas Road, it became part of a driveway. We quietly made our way through and down past the houses to reach the regular road, then cut across to a parking lot just a bit further on Herrontown Road.
We opted to turn right on MacLucas because it had a paved trail following it, and we could then cut to the left and visit the CVS to get some snacks and such. We turned left on Princeton Ave, and then cut over to the store for the food. We had wanted hot food or something, but there was really nothing available in the area so we settled. We hung out in front pigging out for a while before moving on.
Next, we headed west on Cherry Valley Road through business parking lots to where Rutgers Lane went to the right into a development. It wasn’t too busy, so we wandered on through that, then made a left on Harvard Circle. We followed that to another left on Cornwell Way, and then turned right on Linton Drive.
It wasn’t far to where this road ended, and we continued at the end through grass behind people’s apartments. The route took us along the north side of a retention pond heading to the west. I had never done any of this before either, but figured this looked interesting.
We passed through a swath of trees and came out to another open field area, though not in cultivation. Away from the retention pond, we turned right along the fields following a trail.
The trail reached the end of the fields, and an opening that led to another trail intersection. There were a few in this area, which the google maps showed as “Hillaire”.
The area is officially known as the Cherry Brook Preserve. The land was originally the farm of the Nicholaysen family going back to the early 1700s.
Cherry Brook Preserve Map
We continued to the right, to the north through woods and then out to an open and cultivated field. The trail continued across the field to the north. There were “no trespassing” signs onto to the right, with the ambient lights coming to us from nearby Princeton Airport and Bloomberg facilities.
We continued until the trail ended at a road and Montgomery Township municipal parking lot for the trail. We followed the access road, Pine Brae Road, to the north to Georgetown Franklin Turnpike. We turned left here for a bit.
Along the road, we passed an historic marker for Washington Well Farm. This was where Washington marched to Monmoth on June 25, 1778.
We eventually came to an open field on the right, which was more municipal open space. We decided we would cut into the field, which had a good woods road following the east side of it for a while. The trail came to a small utility clearing and then turned to the right.
Washington Well Farm sign
We continued down hill gradually, and when we got to the bottom we found a nice old through truss bridge spanning Beden’s Brook. There seemed like there should not have been a bridge at that point, because there wasn’t much sign of a road. It was too substantial a bridge for it to just be sitting there for a trail, so what we were following must have been a through road at one time. I figure this must have been part of the Skillman facility that we would pass through next, on the other side of Burnt Hill Road, which was immediately on the other side of the bridge.
Dan had made a wrong turn or something at the top, so we had to wait for him to get down.
Old bridge at Skillman
We crossed the bridge and went almost directly over Burnt Hill Road into the lands of Skillman Park, a Somerset County Park.
This area was originally six large farms. They were purchased in 1898 by the state of New Jersey to create the “New Jersey State Village for Epileptics”.
It was one of the first facilities of this kind in the United States; a completely self contained village for the disease which at the time had no known treatment. There were residences, a power plant, hospital, farm school, maintenance area, theater, water treatment, cemetery, and land fill. The entire thing was sewn together with lovely landscapes designed by Charles W. Leavitt in 1901.
Historic Skillman postcard
Focus shifted in in 1952 and it became the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute. Then, from 1975 until 1998, it was the North Princeton Developmental Center, a Human Services facility.
Historic Skillman postcard
Things changed in the 2000s. There were over one hundred buildings in the village, which were now falling apart and neglected. Like so many other places, studies were done on creative reuses for the property, but most of the buildings ended up torn down anyway.
Historic Skillman image
The few buildings that remained and were thought to have a future ended up demolished by 2011 as well. As is to be expected, the Maplewood Cottage, possibly the oldest and and nicest of the buildings on the property, burned down suspiciously in the fall of 2011.
The property is now just a passive recreation park that retains much of the original landscape design, but all of the buildings are gone.
We walked up through some of these old roads, then turned to the left, along what used to be Lake Drive, heading west through the property adjacent to Sylvan Lake. These former village roads now make up much of the trail system. The first ones we were on were rather overgrown and unused, but closer to the main road, which now has an elementary school built along it, they are clear and wide open.
I was surprised to see that there were emergency call boxes along the way. They must have sunk a fortune into the development of this park.
When we reached the end of it, at Bell Meade-Blawenburg Road, I didn’t realize that we were really close to the old right of way of the Mercer and Somerset Railroad, the short lived line that was haphazardly constructed in order to block the National Railroad from going through in the late 1800s. It was only in service between the Bel Del Railroad north of Trenton and Millstone to the east for a few years before being dismantled. The National Railroad was built, and became part of the Reading Railroad system. It’s still active today. It even used to have a station stop for Skillman a short distance to the north.
Historic postcard image of the Skillman Station
We headed to the south, and soon reached the intersection with Georgetown Franklin Turnpike, in the center of the little settlement of Blawenburg.
Blawenburg takes it’s name from John Blaw, who settled the area in 1742 on land he purchased from New York merchant and significant land holder Abraham Van Horn. There were some businesses in town, but unfortunately it was too late to get any fresh food at this point.
We continued along Great Road just a short distance south of town, and then cut to the right into the Cherry Valley Country Club. This is such a huge golf course, and I want to hike it again in the future because we barely scraped the surface of how far it goes.
We stayed close to Great Road for the first bit, came back to Great Road, then continued through the course southwest to reach John Blaw Drive. We followed the road to the right just a little bit, and then a paved trail, open to public not only as a golf cart path, headed to the left. We used this to cross over the Beden Brook.
It took a little closer planning to get us to the end point through the course because of stream crossings. I wanted to get the most direct way. Jen was hurting and Dan was slowing down. It was already taking longer than I had anticipated.
We crossed the brook, then continued to the right, heading generally southwest.
We reached a management road, then turned to the right on it to where it ended. An unpaved extension continued through a rougher area, then reached another field area. We turned right to follow an access road within a line of trees heading north for just a bit. We had to go north slightly to continue through the course to the west. If we continued southwest, we would come to the club house followed by Rolling Hills Way. We needed to get to that road, but that point was a far south point from where we were going. It would be faster to get back through the course and come out directly on the road near the van.
We continued through the course, and then just after a man made knoll in the topography, a sandy path continued more southwest. I could see on the aerial images on my phone that this one was taking us toward the corner we needed to get to.
My friend Shane was messaging me while I was trying to use the maps, and I had to tell him to cut it out because I was down to three percent power. He was a bit annoyed about it, but I needed to stay focused until we were for sure on the right course.
Fortunately, we got out to the corner on Rolling Hills Way and only had to walk a short distance to the intersection with Colfax Road. My van was on the corner to the right at the start of the lollipop loop on that road. We piled in and started heading back.
The fuzz
No sooner did I reach Province Line Road at the end of the development, a car was behind me. I turned right on Georgetown-Franklin Turnpike, and then got pulled over.
It turns out, even though I wasn’t parked in front of anyone’s house, people were reporting my van sitting there as suspicious. There were no signs saying “no parking” either.
The officer wasn’t a jerk about it. I just told him we were doing a night hike. We do the regular trails earlier and only easier stuff later. I gave him my website and such, and we waited in the van a bit. He was back pretty quick and just said to have a nice night.
I suppose this will continue to happen; it’s already happened so many times after night hikes, or during. Fortunately, we have always had good experiences with the police everywhere we go.
I would love to explore more of this area again in the future, but of course we’ll have to not park in this particular development again. It’s too bad too, because it was the perfect place to just plop out of the course and be done. I think I see a way of working this out of St. Michael’s Farm Preserve, but will have to look into that one more in the future.
HAM
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