Hike #1218; Belfast to Easton

Hike #1218; Belfast to Easton

5/2/19 Belfast and Forks Township Loop with Justin Gurbisz, Jennifer Tull, Jennifer Berndt, Ken Zaruni, and Carolyn Gockel Gordon

This next hike would be a point to point between Belfast and Easton PA. We had recently done the one between Nazareth and Easton, and it inspired me to do more.

Big tree in Belfast

When we had walked onto the old Lackawanna Railroad bed toward Belfast Junction, we spotted on our left a sort of makeshift foot bridge out at the Bushkill Creek as well as a park kiosk that I’d never known was there.

Boulton Historic Site

Commando Tom, who is local town manager, told us that some work had gone into doing a connector trail he was responsible for planning between Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center and the rail trails at Belfast Junction.
I figured what we had seen on this other trip must certainly be part of that new trail, so I planned a hike where a portion of it would be utilizing this connector from Jacobsburg south.
Aerial images revealed that there looked to be a new parking area or trail had going in at Filetown Road to the north. I was optimistic that this would work rather well.

yummies

We met at the end point, which was a spot I’d never used before, near the end of Penn’s Grant Path, the Crown shopping center. There, we could easily walk Penn’s Grant Path out of the woods and end up pretty much right at the cars. Some of the stores are closed, so it made it an easy meeting point.
Only Justin and Jenny showed up here. Others were going to meet late, but Ken didn’t show. He was RSVP’d on Meetup, which typically means he’ll be there. I found it strange that he wasn’t. We waited for him a bit, and just didn’t see him. I was a bit concerned, so I sent off a text message to him but got no initial reply.
We shuttled north in my van to a park and ride in Belfast, right along Rt 33 at the intersection of Henry Road and Belfast Road, where the on ramps are. There was a ton of contractors equipment parked there on this occasion, which made me wonder if we could park there at all, but we managed to squeeze in.

Old mill race at Henry site

From there, we turned to the left to follow Henry Road under the highway and head toward Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center.
I’ve always loved this park; it’s named for a former town that once existed in the north part of the park. Today, only foundations exist of that settlement.
The southern portion of the park is at least as interesting, the Boulton Historic Site.
William Henry II established his gun manufacturing facility in 1792 in Jacobsburg. A forge was constructed at the site for this purpose.

Historic marker with Henry family dam

Henry Rifles were once a huge deal. They played major roles in the War of 1812 and other skirmishes. The needs for guns grew with the Civil War, and three generations of the Henry family operated the business at Jacobsburg.

Henry family dam site now

We got up on the grass and walked along a bit, then found a crushed stone path that went around the back of an old house on the path, then into a parking area.

Historic gun factory

The parking area was strangely closed off to public altogether. I’d never seen this closed before. A foot bridge went from the house to the parking area, but they had orange mesh fence blocking it off.

Boulton Historic Site

We made our way close to the road, and then turned back to the right to follow the trail, which ran very closely to the old mill race associated with the Boulton Gun Factory. At the next intersection, we took the trail that went left through Henry’s Woods, and to a prefabricated foot bridge across the Bushkill Creek just barely down stream from the site of the old dam.
The edges of the dam were still visible, though it was breached in 1926. There were a few people walking around in this area, but not too many. We moved on across the bridge, then turned left toward the homestead.

Daniel Cornelius Meinert ("D.C.M.") was in the Lehigh Valley from 1907-1908, during which he took this photograph of the abandoned Henry Gun Factory at Boulton. The infant in the foreground (left) is likely Mary Henry Stites (1907-1989).

The gun factory used to sit right in this area, near the bridge over the Bushkill Creek. The original one in the pictures was a pony truss, but the last one that existed prior to the one that’s there today washed out in the flood in September 2004.

Pony truss at Boulton Historic Site, 11/2004

I had hiked by the old pony truss before it was removed and replaced with the current structure. I hate seeing those old bridges go. There’s not many left.

View of the dam pond at the Henry site, early 1900s

We continued toward the homestead building at the park, which is in good shape. Several barn buildings still remain there as well.

Boulton Historic Site

We walked between the barns and to the front of the house, then through the grass out toward Henry Road. Once we got to Henry Road, we turned briefly to the right, then went to the left on Schoeneck Ave.
There’s an awesome old tree along the road with a curling low branch we used to be able to sit on, but I believe it grew up too high at this point. I’m just glad that it’s still hanging down like that and that no one cut it off despite likely burden of mowing.
The historic sites on the left ended and we were in residential area heading south. Schoeneck Road is usually not so busy, but this was the time of day people were heading home, so it was a bit busier. We followed this to the end, at Filetown Road.

Homestead at Boulton Historic Site

Once on Filetown Road, we turned to the let briefly. This road was re-aligned when Rt 33 was constructed many years ago. It used to weave around a bit and cross the Bushkill Creek at a lower level.

Homestead at Boulton Historic Site

I assumed that because this route was a rather obvious way of going about it, that Old Filetown Road would become part of this new connecting trail system. I wasn’t sure, but figured we’d follow it anyway.
Old Filetown Road is now a dead end and breaks off from current Filetown Road a short distance from Schoeneck Street. We went down it, and it leads out to one house at the end. There’s a pony truss bridge over the Bushkill Creek which leads to that last house, but the road still appears to be public to it. It does look like the pony truss, although one lane, might be a replacement for the original one. It’s brightly painted white and lacks the bolts old ones have.

Boulton Historic Site

We walked across the bridge, and the road turned to the right, but then ends at a heap of debris that blocks it off ahead. New Filetown Road is at such a higher grade that it would have been impractical to have connected it again.
A small creek, or maybe an old mill race, flows into the Bushkill here. The bridge that carried Old Filetown Road across it is gone, so we had to go down and cross on stones, then bushwhacked up to where I thought the new trail head would be along Filetown Road next to Rt 33.
There were coffer dams in place, and it was obviously graded, but not what I was looking for.

Curling tree

I walked across the road and looked down. Apparently, the trail will eventually continue in this narrow area caked between the creek and Rt 33.
I had remembered when I saw it the last time, there was the foot bridge that appeared to be over the creek from the east side, not the west. I assumed at that moment that we needed to be on the other side of the creek.
We walked back across the Bushkill Creek on the new Filetown Road alignment, and reached the other side where a faint path led down along the edge.
This was certainly not a formal trail, but I figured we could follow it and we’d eventually hit the one we were looking for. This turned out to be a big mistake and I should not have tried to do this section at all because of how far behind it had set us. Still, it was a pretty cool experience, and with only three of us it was the best we could have made of it.

Old Filetown Road bridge

We got down along the creek and navigated through the flood plain which was’t bad at first. The undergrowth had not grown in very much yet, so it was just kind of wandering through the woods and walking around light shrubbery.
Eventually, we got to a point where the creek turned to the right and there was just a rock face on the west side of it. There would be really no choice but to wade over. I figured at this point that we might not find a trail like we were expecting to.

Bushkill Creek looking toward New Filetown Road bridge

I waded across; I was wearing the crummy shoes that I’d gotten when Dan Lurie left them in the parking area on the Sussex Branch Trail because they were so full of ticks. I took a photo of them to send to Dan to say “Hey, I think the ticks are gone, you want them back?”

Dan's old shoes

Justin decided not to try to cross right away. He took his boots off, but walked along the cliff faces barefoot, which can be quite slippery.
The water kept getting deeper as we continued on. The trench of the main current was over my hips in depth, and I checked it for Justin before he attempted to cross. He ended up having to wade quite a ways down the stream before he could cross without getting substantially wet.
Once he was across, I stayed in the creek walking down stream while he and Jenny followed the shore.
The flood plain kept shifting from the west side to the east side which made walking it harder. Eventually, we decided to get away from the current and the weeds and just try to walk the parallel Rt 33. Others were planning on meeting up with us, and so it made sense to try to get to that area a bit more quickly.

Old Filetown Road

While I was walking in the water, I was getting text messages. Jen was getting closer. There was traffic and such, but she’d arrive around 6 pm. Carolyn sent me a similar message about arriving at about the same time. I told them to park at Devery’s Pub in Stockertown, which is just barely a little south of where we would come out of the woods.
Just after that I got a text message from Ken. It turned out that he had come out looking for us, but he had forgotten to bring his cell phone.

Old Filetown Road

He’d driven all the way out, but thought that Crown would be a hotel or something and went right by it a couple of times. Justin did the same thing, but he had his phone.
After getting home, he told me he was just going to try to walk to Stephens State Park and home from there or something, but I invited him to drive back on out if he wanted and we could easily help him meet up.
I don’t think he was going to do it at first, but then he asked if “that Frutchey Hill trestle” was one of the places we were going. He’d hiked with me there before.

Pretty spring time

The fact that we had taken on this crazy water section seriously put us behind where we were going to be, which worked out in favor of everyone meeting late.
I told Ken to simply head toward Belfast, and that if he wanted to park the same as the others, I could give him the street names where he could cut us off at the pass walking if he wanted. His arrival time turned out would be about the same time as Jen and Carolyn. He said he’d probably be able to meet up with us in about sixty minutes.

When Jenny, Justin, and I reached Rt 33, I was ready for cops to just stop and ask what we were doing, but fortunately we had no problems like that at all.

Bushkill Creek

We followed along the highway through the grass, but turned off to the right when it started looking a little bit better. We followed a deer run along the base of the highway fill, and then eventually cut through some weeds back to the edge of the Bushkill Creek.
It was rough going along the edge again, so I just decided to walk through the water again.
It wasn’t too far past this place that we came to a dam. I had never known there to be one of those out in this secluded section. I got in the water and walked out to the edge, and then across the breast of it.

Log

This was not at all as I’d thought. The dam was to hold back the water to supply a mill race to the east, while the spillway was to the main creek heading south. The foot bridge I was looking for,which I was confused about because it seemed to come from the west side of the creek, actually was only crossing the race way after all.
I looked more closely between the raceway and the main river course, and could see the mowed down trail going off between there. That’s where we needed to be. Jenny waded over to get to me, while Justin bushwhacked the shore to go south.

Jenny and I followed the good path to the south, and soon came upon the foot bridge over the raceway.
The water was running pretty high after recent heavy rains, so it was spilling over the wood quite a bit. The structure withheld water, but also had a walkway. I’m not sure if this structure was built as a foot bridge, or if it was something for some other use.
Once across, we were on a mowed area of trail beside the former Lackawanna Railroad tracks. We tried following the clearing to the east toward Belfast, but it ended at a line of trees.

Bushkill rapids

We ended up having to backtrack and follow the railroad tracks under Rt 33 and then out to where it dead ends into the weeds just before Belfast Juction.
We walked around the outside of the tracks and on a parallel trail then out to Rt 191 at Belfast Junction.
Commando Tom told us that they’d like to develop that section, because it’s been used like a trail forever, but that Norfolk Southern will not allow them to put he trail under their underpass of Rt 33, so that’s stalled the project pretty badly.
Once at Belfast Junction, we turned right onto the former Easton and Northern Railroad, part of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and followed it almost to the back of Devery’s Pub where Jen was going to park. We hung out there and I found one four leaf, one five leaf clover.

Bushkill Creek

Jen came walking down the trail shortly. Carolyn said she was running behind more, so I gave her directions to park at a preschool place a little farther ahead to the north. I knew Ken would be close too, but he walks so fast that I’m not at all worreid about him being able to catch up.
We headed back to Belfast Junction and continued across onto Plainfield Township Rail Trail. This was more of the old Lackawanna Railroad right of way, and before that the Bangor and Portland Railroad.

Cliffs

We continued walking to the north, and the railroad bed goes onto a very high slope above the Little Bushkill Creek, which is quite lovely just below.

Bushkill Creek

At one point, there was a washout where some of the trail had gone off into the creek far below.
We crossed a driveway where there was a section of rail still in place, and just after that stopped for a break because the others were ready to catch up.
Ken soon came walking up the trail at a good clip. Once he was with us, I found out Carolyn had just arrived at Devery’s. She decided she’d drive up a little further and park, and then be able to catch us that much faster.

Bushkill Creek

Carolyn parked at the regular trail lot, which I thought might be a problem, but fortunately it wasn’t.
She soon showed up and we all continued to the north.
We crossed over Gall Road, and then continued up to reach Engler Road. There, we left the rail bed and continued walking the road to the east.
This was more stuff I’d never done before. The roads ended up being quite pretty. They went by some of the giant slate piles associated with the quarrying in the “Slate Belt”, which were on the left of us. The road took us gradually up hill with not very much traffic.

Bushkill Creek

I got a text from Jillane that it was pouring down where she was, which is not too far south of us. I was glad I’d brought my umbrella. The cumulus clouds were looking big and puffy, but fortunately we never got rained on more than a tiny bit of drizzle.
As we headed up hill on the road, there were some nice pastoral views with the Blue Ridge beyond to the north. We could see Wind Gap, and out toward the edge of Little Gap, with the sun setting beautifully beyond. We got to the fields with this view at the perfect time for it.

Kesslerville

These intersections and the homes there are the actual little settlement of Kesslerville.

Bushkill Creek

Once we reached the end of Engler Road, we turned to the left on Kesslerville Road, a much bigger and busier road. We had a good view of the sunset from there too, but fortunately didn’t have to go too far on it before turning to the right in Capp Road.
When I was scaling this hike off, I was looking at Mud Run Road, which looked narrow and beautiful, and figured I would use that. In doing so, I found Capp Road used to go through, but had a busted bridge at the bottom. It was still there, but closed to traffic. I absolutely had to use this road as part of the hike.

Jack in the Pulpit

We followed Capp Road, which had a far more surprising amount of traffic coming off of it than anticipated for a road that has few houses and no other way out.
The traffic did die off, and this turned out to be a very pleasant road, down hill almost the entire way.
A small tributary started to form along the right and the road followed a shelf. Just when we got to the very last house, we reached the bridge, which was blocked off from traffic with only busted up and only partially standing plastic horses.
I could easily move these things and drive across this bridge. My van would fit. Only the downstream side of Mud Run had bridge collapse sections.
Clearly, it’s not a really safe bridge, but they haven’t seen any reason to fix it up I guess.

Creeking

I suppose the people who live there probably love it I would assume. There is no through traffic, and yet it is still a municipal road so they still benefit from municipal road service. Especially the last house really has it’s own private driveway with free maintenance.
We got across the bridge and turned right on Upper Mud Run Road. It was dark at this point, and there were barely any cars out on this road.
We passed by a very odd shaped house down along Mud Run that appears to be lifted, and dogs started going nuts as we walked high above the house
To our surprise, they crazy dogs ended up running all the way up to the top of the driveway to us, but did not follow us beyond that point.
This road was also a gradual down hill which made it quite comfortable walking. We passed Krausz Road on the left, and continued down hill to connect with Richard Garr Road.

Dam on the Bushkill

A little ways beyond there, we reached the intersection with Front Street, which is a more major, busy road. We had to turn right here and cross Mud Run on it’s bridge, then turned to the left on Lower Mud Run Road.
We immediately passed a seemingly vacant road, and then headed down hill gradually on this road.
Lower Mud Run Road was wider and a bit more used than it’s upper component, but it was still nice.
We passed some quarry entrance stuff, and then reached where there was a quarry road that went at almost the same grade a railroad would off to the right. I had walked this once before on a hike in 2013, but it wouldn’t be good in the dark.
We continued down Mud Run Road, and eventually came to where the Uhler Branch of the Lehigh and New England Railroad used to cross over.

Bushkill Creek dam

I had first followed this section on a hike with just my brother Tea Biscuit back in 2003, a day we did 31.75 miles. The Mud Run Trestle was half removed for clearance over Lower Mud Run Road, but the other half of it remains in place out in the weeds.

Bushkill raceway

We stood there with flashlights as I tried to point out where the ruin was, but it was hard to see in this dark.
In the past, I’d walked the Uhler Branch above to the south, but in the dark it would not be easy. I decided it best to forego that section and instead walk down hill to Route 611, then turn right and follow it north to Sandt’s Eddy and Frutchey Hill.
Rt 611 was the busiest road we’d be stuck walking, but fortunately it wasn’t for all that long. We stayed on it to the former site of the Mineral Springs Hotel, which sadly burned down just a few years back.

Bridge over the raceway

Jenny asked if this was the Mineral Springs. It turns out she used to go there and didn’t know it had burned down. We walked into the foundation ruin which was wide open.
The place was really old. It’s sad that it’s gone.
We reahched the intersection with Frutchey Hill Road just as a car was reading to turn off of 611. We stopped and waited for her since we were going the same way. She finally rolled down the window and said “I’m letting you go!”, to which I responded “Thanks but we’re not going that way”. She then turned and headed up the road briefly, then right into the vacant back of the Mineral Springs Hotel. She must have been there to do some hanky panky with a boyfriend or something.
Once we got a bit up the road, we could see the Sandt’s Eddy trestle pretty well. The Uhler Branch crosses it from where we were, and is the Forks Township Recreation Trail on the other side of it.

Graffiti under 33

The original access to the trestle has been closed for years. There was a foot bridge from Frutchey Hill Road and a set of steps that went up the east side of the trestle. The steps are still there, but the bridge is long gone.
We had to climb down and step over the brook below, then back up the other side to reach the steps.
Once at the top of the steps, we climbed over wooden railing put to block it, and checked out the first bit of the trestle that can be walked on up to the chain link fence that blocks the rest of it. The ties are pretty bad on this ting.

Old Lackawanna line, end of track

Once we were all up, we continued past a driveway, and then further along the old Uhler Branch (also sometimes known as the Martins Creek Branch).
I love the section because it’s natural and cinder surface, not some crushed stone aggregate, so it’s quite nice on the feet.
Jen did trip and fall on a tree root at one point, but she was alright.
The right of way follows an incredibly steep shelf above the Delaware River and Rt 611. It is really a crazy contrast when we think of the much lesser cliff along the Plainfield Township Trail, and they have very substantial fences blocking all of that.

Five leaf clover

I pointed out a trestle on the line that one wouldn’t even know we were going across if not pointed out.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t see much of the view of the Delaware because of the time we were there, but it was still a nice walk.
The rail bed moved away from the cliffs and into agricultural land just a head, and soon came to the crossing of Winchester Drive near the golf course.
Jen was breaking in new boots she had gotten from Erin Rapp, and they were bothering her feet, so we opted to take a break at the bench here.
Just as we were sitting there, a cop went by us and put his top lights on. I didn’t want to have any other problems, so we hurried along across the street before he had a chance to come back and question what we were doing out so late.

Plainfield Twp. Trail

The rail trail changes character completely at this site. It goes from being natural surface to being completely paved, and passes nearer to homes.

Plainfield Twp. Trail

We immediately crossed over Broadway Road, followed by Ramblewood Drive. From there, we were no longer walking within a line of trees that allowed for a degree of anonymity.
The trail continued straight across Ramblewood, but it leaves the railroad bed at this point. The rail bed turned off to the right and has been obscured through the development. The first time I walked this bit with my brother, the houses were still under construction. The journal for that one is here:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mke-helbing/hike-110/145309098814293/

Rails still in place on former Lackawanna

We continued on the trail across Brinker Lane, then out to where it ended on Winchester Drive. We turned left on the sidewalk, then left again on Sheffield Drive.
After a short distance, another paved trail turned off into the land between two houses heading west.
We followed this trail around a ninety degree bend, and then reached another intersection. Everyone was ahead of Justin and I because I was trying to dispose of a beer bottle by giving it a hat, and they all went the wrong way.
We continued the proper way between more homes and crossed the cul de sac at the end of Vista Court, followed by Lower Way, Middle Way, and Upper Way, and then came out to Winchester Drive again. The trail skirts it going to the left, heading west, for just a brief while. It then cuts off to the left to the left to skirt Vista Drive Park before crossing Vista Drive yet again.

Cumulus clouds

We crossed Richmond Drive next, and then headed out through the Meco Fields, which are activity fields with a power line right of way going near up the middle of them.

Little Bushkill Creek

The trail weaves around some ball fields generally heading west, but then cuts to the south out to Meco Road.
At this point, we turned right on Meco Road west, crossed over Sullivan Trail, and then soon turned to the right on the next bit of paved trail.
The trail turned ninety degrees to the left to continue west in the same way we had been before, still following close to the power line clearing. We were moving at a seriously breakneck pace during most of this time.

On the rail trail

This was actually the fastest paced consistent hike I’d done probably in a couple of years. We just didn’t really slow down at all save for a couple of breaks near the end.

Rail trail washout

The trail crossed over Wagon Wheel Drive and continued straight just a bit more before coming to an intersection.
The trail goes left and right, and follows the closed portion of Ben Jon Road. I’m not sure if this was a development road that never happened, or if it was actually a municipal road that was cut out. Roads both to the north and south are still called Ben Jon Road. Judging by what seems to be old pavement in some sections, I think it is a road that predated the current developments.

Rail Trail

We followed the trail to the right heading up hill through a line of trees, then turned left at an intersection just before where it became a road again.
We followed the trail to the west behind a long line of newer houses, parallel with Kesslerville Road. This is the same Kesslerville Road we crossed earlier, but it doesn’t connect in the middle where a farm field is in the way.
I suppose it was supposed to go through but was never completed. I know some of it is an old route, but not sure if this was.

Farm view

When the trail emerged on Kesslerville Road, we turned to the let and went off the road down the grassy slope toward Bushkill Drive.

View to Wind Gap

We crossed that road, and almost immediately across the street is the access to Penn’s Grant Path which leads across the old Easton and Northern Railroad bed, and then up hill to where we had started.

iBienvenidos en la clase de espanol!

There is a side path from the paved Penn’s Grant Path here that doesn’t go anywhere, and I just had to make sure that no one took that route because boy would they be pissed if they had to turn back at that point.
We arrived at the lot in short order, and Jenny drove Jen, Ken, and Carolyn back to where they had parked, and then me to my van up in Belfast, where even more construction vehicles had nearly blocked me in during the time that we were gallivanting around.
The hike went overall pretty well, and we finished at about the time that was to be expected, 11:30 as posted, despite taking so much extra time early on. I needed some Sheetz.

Sunset in Kesslerville

Eventually, we’ll have to get back up there and do a variation of this hike after the connecting trail is actually established. It looks like that might be a reality in a couple of years, but for the time being we won’t by trying any bushwhacking Bushkill Creek again.

HAM