Hike #1216; Linvale to New Hope

Hike #1216; Linvale to New Hope

4/20/19 Linvale NJ to New Hope PA with Shane Blische, Brittany Audrey, Ellie Zabeth, David Goldberg, Jennifer Tull, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Michael Krejsa, and Anthony ?

This next point to point hike would be a Saturday night hike, the first of my crap schedule where I’m stuck working weekends. Fortunately, I make the best of it.

Amwell Lake

Shane and I had been talking about different hikes we could do in the area around Ringoes and heading back to his area in New Hope. We had a lot of ideas of stuff we could do, and the main thing I wanted to see was the Pryde’s Point Preserve with the abandoned house in it.
I had first heard about the old house from a Facebook friend, Gillian Carr several years back and I’d just not gotten to it yet.
As these things go, I start looking around and realize there is a lot more stuff in these areas I’ve not incorporated into hikes yet. I started piecing them together with short road walks and came up with something I thought would be interesting.

Amwell Lake

Shane knows the roads around there pretty well and said that Alexauken Creek Road was not that busy, and could easily be used for a good hike in the later portion.
One of the big problems I had to work with at the start was where to park. We might have been able to work something out in downtwon Ringoes, but nothing looked that great, and I didn’t have the time prior to this time figure out where I could go.

Amwell Lake

In searching for more parking spots, I ended up spotting a few other preserves I had not utilized as part of hikes before, which started me looking closer at other stuff.
Three more preserves in direct vicinity to the Pine Creek Liquors, miniature golf area, and ice cream place, which has a large parking lot, came into view.
The area is an unincorporated little village known as Linvale on the far southern side of Hunterdon County. Very close to here was Amwell Lake Wildlife Management Area.

Amwell Lake

I realized there was a little more land associated with this state property than I’d previously thought, and while I could find no official trails, there might be something.
Next, there was the Laport Reserve.
I’d never really hiked Laport on one of the hikes. The best I can recall is that I used it for parking for something once. There is a blue blazed loop trail through the reserve, which is one of the properties I used to work on when employed by Hunterdon County Parks.

At Amwell Lake WMA

For whatever reason, I’d never used this trail on one of my group hikes before.
The final unexpected preserve was Omick Woods, which I’d never heard of until it just appeared on google maps one day and I looked it up.
These three preserves would make up only short distances of the hike, but add a lot of diversity.
We made the meeting point the New Hope Shopping Center, just west of Shane’s house.

Amwell Lake WMA

I got out of work at 3:30, and I picked Shane up at his job at Black River and Western Railrod in Ringoes, and we headed down to the meeting point.
I was very happy to have a good showing for this one. It was the night before Easter, which I figured could be a hit or miss, I just never know.
Once we had everyone together, we shuttled with my van and Brittany’s car to the starting point at Linvale and the liquor store. I went in and got myself some of the Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron.

Amwell Lake WMA

Brittany I think was following Mike’s directions, which were far smarter, because they arrived before my van load, and we took the weird back roads to get there.

Amwell Lake

We got to the store and wandered around a bit, and then started walking a bit of Rt 31 heading north past the Quick Chek. We crossed just after that to a farm area, where the entrance to Amwell Lake Wildlife Management Area is a driveway adjacent to it. Brittany had to run back to lock her car, and so we waited alongside the road.
My buddy and boss Bruce Hockenbury was driving by while we were there and offered Brittany a ride, but didn’t recognize him out of uniform. He stopped and said hi to the group.

Amwell Lake WMA

We made our way off of 31 through the wet grasses headed toward Amwell Lake, and then cut to the left to the access road when it started getting really messy.
The lake was rather pretty, but not really what I expected.
I was kind of expecting a grassy mess and a couple of little fishing access sites, but about two thirds of the lake shore was clear and mowed. There were tons of people everywhere fishing along it’s shore. The dam was totally clear and mowed, and a private home overlooked the lake.

Old road in Amwell Lake WMA

The lawn of the private home was contiguous with the state land, which made it seem kind of unwelcoming on that side. I was a bit concerned because my planned route was an off trail thing on the state land heading from the lake out to Linvale Road.
I checked and found no way around the north side of the lake, so we followed around the shore to the south, and then the east. We walked the berm of the dam past the house and reached the wood line where I was surprised to see puncheons over the wet woods.

Laport Reserve

While it wasn’t a marked “official” trail, there were far more pucheons than I’d expected to find. There were also not enough of them because crossing them wasn’t in the least bit easy without getting wet.
Still, we managed to get across them to some dry ground and some nice views out over the lake.
Once we got to a certain point however, we had to turn inland from the lake. This took us back into more wetlands, and back across the same springs that fed the wetlands we had just crossed.

Laport Reserve

The woods opened up, and there was a sort of makeshift woods road cutting to the right. “Posted” signs lined the private land boundary to our left, and the woods road seemed to follow this boundary.
It looked like it was an insane thing for any vehicle to try to get through, but clearly they do it.
We continued on this road over the springs, and most of the entire length of it was a muddy mess. This was the kind of hell hole of a trail that makes people quit the hikes and never come back.

Laport Reserve

Amazingly, everyone handled it really very well without even complaining. I was impressed.

Orchard on Mountain Road

It was funny to see Anthony again, who did his first hike with us in the Ramapos and said his reason for showing up was that I’d labeled it “Super Fun” Ramapo hike. This time I think I labeled it “Super Happy”.
The shitty woods road emerged at a grassy opening where we came out to Linvale Road and turned to the left, heading gradually up hill.
There were lots of cyclists out this day, who went by us on Linvale Road. It wasn’t a busy road which made it much more pleasant. We continued on Linvale Road to Mountain Road

Omick Woods

Mountain Road was even less busy and pretty. We passed through lovely woods with only a few houses, and soon reached the entrance to the Laport Reserve.
The head ranger for Hunterdon Parks lives in Laport, Craig Evans, and I wondered if we would see him there. No one really hikes Laport, and everyone pretty much says he doesn’t want people in there. I’ve always gotten along with the guy, but there’s been some unrest with him within the parks over the past several years. I kind of hoped we didn’t have a run in.

Omick Woods

When I worked at Hunterdon, the lot was in crappy shape. This was totally different though.
The driveway, which when I worked there was gravel, was now paved, and there was a paved parking lot to the left. From there, we turned to the right to follow the blue blazed trail through the young growth woods to the east.
The trail took us to the end of the property, and was insanely wet. It was a grass path that’s mowed seasonally, but so muddy at this point that we could barely get through any of it without being soaked.

Omick Woods

Once we got to the east side, the trail turned left, to the north, and meandered through some more woods until coming out at the end of a large open meadow with some scrubby trees interspersed throughout.
We turned to the right, crossed a wet spot, and kept to the right side of the field heading north. More cultivated fields were on the adjacent property to the right, and when we got to the end of the tree line, the trail turned left to head to the west. This part of it was all dry and quite nice walking.

Omick Woods

The trail passed into another wooded section, and I was impressed at how many springs flowed down from the upper level of the property. We stepped over each and continued to where we could see Craig’s house above us on the left. His truck was there, so I know he was home, but no one came out.
We made our way through one more open field before making a left turn without seeing anyone back there. The trail emerged in the parking lot where we’d first turned off, and we closed the loop.

The Laport Reserve is named for it’s former owner, Edwin Laport, who was one of the most recognized experts in the field of radio wave communication. In the 1920s, he developed the circuitry necessary for airplanes recievers to communicate through radio.
Laport worked in radio in China for a time, and came back to America where he purchased the current reserve lands, and became chief engineer to RCA America. They practiced organic gardening at what is now the reserve. The Laport Reserve was bequeathed to Hunterdon County upon his wife, Gertrude’s death in 1991.

Rock in Omick Woods

We walked back up the driveway from the parking area and turned to the right to continue on Mountain Road from there. We passed an orchard on the pretty road walk, and turned left on Rocktown Road at the next intersection.
A short distance from here is the entrance to the Omick Woods Preserve. Like Laport, I planned on just a loop hike of 1.5 mile within this preserve, and then we’d continue on our way.

We're all pointing at Anthony for not being in the photo

The preserve is apparently part of D&R Greenways in some sort of partnership with the Amwell Township group or something. D&R Greenways maintains it.

View at the top of Omick Woods

Just as we were ready to start walking into the preserve, we heard a great crash out in the woods. A tree had apparently fallen.
As we walked further in, sure enough a giant tree, I think a birch, had landed the entire length on the trail. We were waiting or Brittany for something, so she might have saved our lives there.
The entire stump of the tree was rotten and full of carpenter ants like crazy.

Old cemetery

The trail system here was the most impressive we’d seen yet on this trip. There were some nice steps down from the parking area immediately into the woods.
While the rest of the parks were totally full of mud, this one had “turnpiking” and more substantial puncheons that kept our feet quite dry.
The area was still wet, they just had enough infrastructure to keep us dry.
The trail passed along the edge of the Black Brook, a particularly lovely little stream. We weaved back and forth, and new Skunk Cabbage was coming up through the woods.

Forgotten cemetery

The trail moved away from the brook as we went counter clockwise around the looping trail. It gained some elevation near the north side, and passed a large boulder adjacent to fields still in cultivation to the north of us.
The trail reached a spot with a picnic bench, split rail fence, and a little path to a vantage point out over the area of Rt 31 and toward the Rutgers landscaping place.

Old cemetery

Once everyone had caught up, we started heading slightly down hill along the rest of the loop. I was up front, but then spotted something to the left of the trail that looked like an unnatural pile of rocks. I needed to take a quick side trip to see what it was.

Old dam in Omick Woods

As I approached the area, the stones had been piled and it looked like dirt had been brought in.
I immediately recognized that this site was a long forgotten cemetery. A single brownstone grave with obvious rounded top was in the middle, and several other field stone markers were vertical throughout the area. I would say there are over twenty interments at this site.
I checked every stone I could find, but none of them had any legible epitaph on them. The cemetery is not on any map of the preserve, and I can’t find any mention of it anywhere save for one mention on the minutes of an Amwell Township meeting.

Old breached dam

Everyone joined me in the graveyard. I’d bet this spot dates back to before the American Revolution. Some say it was a slave cemetery, but I’d bet it was more a family plot.
After looking around in amazement, we started heading back down hill through the preserve.
The trail work was really nice. There were little sections of stairs and improved surfaces everywhere.
We came to a point where a side trail went to the right. It was only a short distance out to the former site of a farm pond dam, which apparently also served some mills.
The hamlet just to the west of Omick Woods is Rocktown, which occupies an area that was once the native American village of Wishelemensey, on their Mayayelick Trail. Most of their old trails make up today’s road system such as Rt 31 and the Old York Road/Rt 202. The first mills at the settlement to the west opened in 1727, at which point the settlement was known as Dawlis Mill, for the first miller, William Dawlis.

Old mill ruins?

There used to be a lot more in the Amwell Village complex including seven mills. There was a blacksmith shop, a wheelwright shop, and more. These enterprises saw their peak around 1780 and started to taper off after. The last mill in the area closed around 1920.
The trail out to the old dam site had a good level footway of rock created along it, and then it followed the berm to where it was purged. I looked and believe I spotted an old raceway, and looking down stream from the dam I could see some stone ruins. That must have been one of the mills. I pointed it out to everyone, but at the time I still did not know much of the history of this preserve.
We continued back the way we came, because this trail was an out and back dead end.
The trail took us across the Black Brook again, and then came back out to where we started.

Omick Woods

We checked out the 1930 and modern areal photo comparisons in the kiosk again, and I think I saw what could be the cemetery on that, at a line of trees that suddenly widens. Back in 1930, much of the preserve was still fields and pastures.
We followed Rocktown Road to the west from the parking area and soon crossed over Rt 31. This took us right into he center of what must have been the hamlet of Rocktown.

Historic 1930s compared with today's aerials

In the Amwell Village we were above, one of the old stone mills and a couple of stone houses still stand down below, not visible from where we were. We didn’t see those.

Rocktown

In Rocktown’s likely main intersection, Rocktown Road, Rocktown-Lambertville Road, and Rocktown Hill Road (predecessor to Rt 31) there would have at one time been a store, a school and a tavern.
One of the Rocktown stone houses dates back to 1739.
We continued through the little settlement and followed Rocktown Lambertville Road through a light residential area. There was a farm pond on the right, and when the area of houses ended, we reached where Alexauken Creek Wildlife Management Area state signs were on the right.

A pond along Rocktown Lambertville Rd

This preserve is rather interesting in management. It is a combination of the state owned Alexauken Creek Wildlife Management, and Pryde’s Point Preserve, which is private land with public trail access permitted. The common trail system doesn’t really say where any boundaries are on the maps.
The orange blazed Pond Trail followed through an old road on state land to the north. We wandered in through here, and several other informal looking paths went every which way. I wasn’t sure where to turn.

Old cottage

Fortunately, Shane was very familiar with the property not because he had hiked it before, but because he had had family friends who used to live in the abandoned house down at the bottom of the old roadway. He’d said he’d been in the house back when he was little (not all that long ago). It’s sad that it’s ended up in the shape that it’s in.
The trail went down hill to the house, which was off to the right. The house is a Revolutionary War era dwelling, which makes it all the more sad it’s going to collapse. The state plans to demolish it when funds become available which is even worse.

The old house

The maps refer to the place as a “cottage”, probably to scare off those who might be interested in exploring it, but the truth is, it’s a full house.

Fireplace

The house is actually larger than the one I grew up in in Port Colden. The thing was totally opened up and there wasn’t a single sign saying to stay out of it.

The old house

Inside the very front was a handsome old fireplace, and to the right of it a “Jersey Winder” wooden staircase in quite good shape.
Upstairs, the “cottage” had two bathrooms at the one end of the building. It was really quite a nice old place.
The main upper room was alright, but the room farthest to the west had a hole through the roof, which had already worked it’s way through the floor into the lower level on that side. It’s still certainly salvagable, but it would take a lot of work to get it back in condition where it could be lived in.

Jersey Winder

I figured the place was old, but I had no idea that it dated back to the 1700s.
We went back out the rear of the building and regrouped to move on.
It was starting to get dark, so we’d have to be careful to continue. There are a lot more trails out along the Alexauken Creek below, certainly enough to justify doing another hike through here and beyond.
We went down hill, and there was a set of stone steps that led down to the edge of the creek, as well as what was probably an old spring house ruin. There was also reportedly an old saw mill and flax seed mill on the creek in this area. The purged out ruin of a dam is crumbling just up stream from where we reached the steps.
The trail turns to the right and uses a stepping stone crossing to get across the Alexauken Creek. The water was a bit high, so I just walked on through it. The others took some time and tried different ways.

Abandoned

Anthony went the way I did and didn’t really have a problem. I wasn’t on the correct trail. Shane crossed that way, and had no real trouble either. Some of the others crossed that way, but some of them went up and down the stream looking for another way to go.

The roof coming in

Eventually everyone made it across one way or another. The trails were hard to see by this point, and the goal was to just get to the north side of the property as easily as possible.
We followed the orange blazed pond trail up stream and to the old dam site which still holds back somewhat of a pond, and then continued up hill a bit to the intersection with the blue blazed Northern Hill Trail. We continued straight on that, which took us up hill to a fork where initially we went to the left.
This trail took us out behind someone’s private home. We hurried back the way we came, and then took the other fork which kept us along the edges of some fields.
The trail went past a barn building down below the private house, so we hurried on past it and emerged on the driveway to the place. The trail follows that to the north toward where there is parking much closer to Gulick Road. Next time we’ll take the Hedgerow Trail which comes out a little further up and away from the private home.

Abandoned

Gulick Road is another pleasant back road with hardly any traffic. Everyone freaked out when there was a car coming around the bend on the road and ran into the weeds because we figured it was a car coming in. I commended everyone for being so astute and knowing what to do, although at this point we were fine and out of the preserve. It was also still not very long after dark and I’m sure people get stuck out all the time.
We followed Gulick Road out to Route 179, directly across from South County Park, also known as the Hunterdon County Fairgrounds. This was another one I’d not really run any hikes through before.
This park has a pretty interesting history as well. It wasn’t always the fairgrounds; that distinction belongs to the former field lands that now have the Walmart and other crap in them in Flemington (I grew up going to that fair with my mom).

Abandoned

The original fairgrounds began to get developed over around 2006 or so as I recall. I led a hike through it at that time knowing it would likely be the last time I’d see any of it.
The original Agricultural Fair operated for 145 years at that original site, from 1855 until 2004 when it was moved to South County Park.
The fairgrounds today occupy the site of Hunterdon County’s only drive in movie theater, which county leaders created a business for and opened in 1950. It operated with some of the newest RCA technology (and I wonder if the same Mr. Laport who worked at RCA and lived in the present reserve had anything to do with it...).
The theater changed to the Ringoes Drive in in 1958, and it remained in business until 1976. It re-opened again from 1981 to 1986 under the name of Gem Theater, but after closing, the county eyed the site for the new county fairgrounds, which it purchased in 2002.

Jersey Winders

We headed directly across the road, and climbed the grassy slope into the park.
I recalled my times mowing this park when I worked for Hunterdon, and how wet it could be. There is a berm around a bit of it, and there were giant puddles down closer to the buildings. Obviously, we were going to stay high and dry along the berm. We couldn’t see it this time, but there’s also a nice little old farm pond just to the left of where we were, which I took upon myself to create a path around with an old Toro Groundsmaster when I worked there. At the time, it was pretty much impossible to get around the thing, but the brush wasn’t too heavy that the mower couldn’t handle it with the deck up.
We headed north to where the edge of the fairgrounds is right up along Route 202. My plan here was that we’d just dash across 202.

Hunterdon Drive In Theatre historic image

We had to go down a bit of a slope through some weeds, but it wasn’t too bad. Route 202 wasn’t that busy either. We got across all four lanes and median no problem.

Abandoned

Our route from here was the part I was looking least forward to, but it ended up being a lot nicer than I’d anticipated.
The Frontage Road along Rt 202 I was expecting to be a horrible, noisy route. I knew traffic wouldn’t be all that bad on the back road, but I figured it would be bad next to Rt 202.
It actually was away from 202 a bit more than I’d realized, and almost no cars went by the entire time we were walking it. I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Abandoned house

We continued along the road, which had a few houses along it and one medical center, but the bulk of the property was some sort of private land with a couple of large ponds on it along a branch of the Alexauken Creek.

The old house

I fell behind the rest of the group and kind of just enjoyed the solitude of it all while walking. We followed Frontage Road out to Queen Road where we turned to the right.

Old spring house

Queen Road is County Rt 605, and is a bit busier than the others we had been walking, but overall not too terrible. We followed it on a slope above the Alexauken Creek, and there was music blaring away on probably a farm property off to the west of us. We talked about crashing the party or something and what lunatics they’d think we were.
We continued along on Queen Road, and I brought up for probably the one millionth time about potentially following the old railroad, the Flemington Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, rather than road walk.

The spring house

Shane insisted that the route was far too dangerous because of work that had been going on, and that the bridges over the Alexauken Creek were in too poor shape to bring the group across, so we went with that and instead walked his suggestion of Alexauken Creek Road.

Old spring house and steps

I had walked some of this road before, but it was far nicer than I’d even remembered it. It ended up being the perfect route. Almost no cars went by the entire time on it.

The group in northern Lambertville

The road gained some elevation above the Alexauken Creek making it a quite pretty route.
At one point, we came to where Hamp Road comes in from the right, and crosses what is probably the highest pony truss bridge in the county. The dirt road is actually a very nice one, and I’d like to make that part of the subject of a future hike as well one of these days. I have several more pocket parks yet to be used in that part of Hunterdon County, and I can easily slap something together for a trip with Shane’s cooperation in some of the areas he knows. There’s plenty more to do.

Along the railroad and canal in Lambertville

There are several more properties along the Alexauken Creek that we did not get into because it was too dark by this time, but we might explore again on a future trip.
As for the railroad, as much as I’d like to walk it, I had already done this section in the past when I was with Cathy one halloween many years ago. I didn’t really need to get back on it yet.
We continued on toward Lambertville, and came to Route 29. We turned to the right there and crossed Alexauken Creek, then turned left toward the Holcombe Jimison Farm. We were going to follow the tracks from here.

The Bel Del

Just as we were walking, a dog started going nuts, and Shane said it was best that we didn’t try to go through there.
Apparently some locals don’t want the railroad to go back in service. Black River and Western hopes to reinstate excursion trains right up to the Lambertville Station from Ringoes and Flemington, which would be a really cool excursion. One would think a living historic farm would want something like that and have it be a boon to their business, but I suppose not everyone sees it that way.

The railroad and canal in Lambertville

While we were walking, a police officer stopped and asked what we were doing, and I think one of the girls told him we were just hiking and ended up later than we’d thought. That was good enough for him apparently, because he just kept on going.
We got across the bridge over the canal, and then turned to the left to follow the tracks of the old Bel Del Railroad.
Here, the official state trail actually crosses the canal on this bridge and continues along the east side, where usually it’s on the west, but there is still a good path on the second track right of way of the Bel Del.

Lambertville Station

We started following that to the downtown.
I fell back from the group and looked up at the stars, which were coming out very nicely. I let them get ahead of me while I just meandered through.

Historic image of Lambertville Station

Brittany waited up for me just a bit ahead to ask me about the history of it, and we continued across the aqueduct that carries the canal next to the railroad bridge over the Alexauken Creek.
Everyone went a ways ahead, and they kind of missed the old baggage car that’s been sitting on the tracks since probably the 1990s. Brittany and I went up in it, and it was in the worst shape I’d ever seen it in. The first time I went in it was in April of 2001.

The baggage car on 4/22/1

It’s crazy that I was doing a hike at this same point two days short of eighteen years to the day I’d first visited this place. Now, the trees are taller than the rail car.

An historic map showing much of our route

Between 2004 and 2012, the thing got way worse and covered completely in graffiti. Attempts were made to shut it off, but to no avail. Now, it looks like someone has tried to set it ablaze, as there are large sections of the floor completely missing. I had to be careful not to fall completely through.
We climbed back down out of the car, and continued along the tracks back toward town. Shane surprised us out of nowhere as we were reaching the main crossing at Bridge Street.
The handsome stone station across from here is by far the most beautiful on the entire old Bel Del line from Trenton to Manunka Chunk.
The Bel Del first arrived in Lambertville about 1851 and had a different station, but the grand station we know today was completed in the 1870s by architect Thomas U. Walter.
Pennsylvania Railroad ended service to the station in 1960, and it opened up as a restaurant in 1982. The last excursion train ran to Lambertville in 1998, and Shane can say more accurately the last movement of equipment took place into town.
We turned to the right on Bridge Street and soon crossed the Delaware into New Hope.

Lambertville Station

We went right near Shane’s house by about a block, and he cut out there to head home. There had been talks of going to get something to eat, but everyone was pretty well spent and headed out at this point. I also had to be to work at 7 the next morning, so I didn’t mind so much.
It had been overall a really great hike, but both Shane and myself have a lot more stuff we’d like to showcase throughout the area both on the NJ and PA sides.