Hike #1220; Somerset to Manville

Hike #1220; Somerset to Manville

5/9/19 Somerset to Manville with Jennifer Berndt, Michael Krejsa, Brittany Audrey, Justin Gurbisz, Karen Lee, and Dan Asnis

This next hike would be a point to point stringing together a lot of park areas I’d been looking at for quite some time. There is a lot of land in Franklin Township, Somerset County.

Seeley Run near the school

I’d been wanting to see these lands for a long time. Whenever I’d drive through the area, there was tons of land surrounding Six Mile Run State Park, but then also a lot of lands surrounding that owned by Franklin Township.
Somewhat recently, I did a search for the trails associated with that, after Susie Duncan mentioned to me that there was some sort of trail system close to where she lived.
Upon looking closer, I found maps for tons of other properties I could incorporated into the hikes. I didn’t even know where to begin for sure, but I was looking.

Collapsing wall along Seely Run

In looking for the stuff, I ended up having another look at Six Mile Run itself. I’d done hikes there dating back to 2004 time period, but the system had changed quite a lot since I started with it. I did a couple more recently, mostly on the south side, and then the east side where the trail was extended, but there was so much more I’d not done.
For this one, I started looking at the north side of the park, where the trail system had been changed a lot from when I first hiked it. In doing so, I found several historic or abandoned houses through the area. I needed to see more.

Trail behind Conerly Road School

The first of the Franklin Township properties I looked at, which was close to Six Mile Run, was the Negri-Nepote Native Grasslands Preserve. It had trails very close to where I was planning, so it seemed natural to add this. I found an area we could get away with parking just to the north of it.
On the west side of Six Mile Run, for the after dark stuff, we could do the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath to the north, back to where we had left off in Manville on one of the recent night hikes.

Rocky slope at Inman Park

Beyond there, I figured we could have a nice walk right through Manville and use the Walmart there as the meeting point.
I wanted to have the start point be something near the Negri-Nepote trails, but then it wasn’t quite the distance I wanted yet. I considered some stuff around Somerville or Raritan, but then realized there were a couple of other parks close by I could incorporate with short road walks.
With these, and a few apartment paths and pleasant back roads, I figured I had a pretty good hike worked out.

Crossing East Branch of Seeley Run

I made the meeting point the end point, at the Walmart plaza in Manville NJ.
We had recently hiked through this area, and I realized it was a pretty good meeting/end point.
Once we were all there, we shuttled to the Stop and Shop shopping center at the corner of Easton Avenue and John F. Kennedy Blvd in Somerset NJ.
My original plan from here was to cut directly out of the plaza and onto the sidewalks and such of the adjacent apartment complex, but there was no way in.

Inman Park

Instead, we had to walk south to JFK Blvd, then turned left on the road to the south a bit. When we got close to the apartments, we followed the sidewalks around buildings and sort of parallel with the road for a bit.
When we reached the end of the apartments, we were near the intersection with Winston Drive. We turned to the left here.
The next right turn was on Drake Road, which led to the intersection with Conerly Road, which was by the yard of the Conerly Elementary School.

View of the wetlands of Seeleys Run East Branch

I had seen somewhere on a map that there was a trail out behind this school. We walked onto the grass and out along the north side of the school to where it seemed like a path went into a line of trees. We walked along, and then got to where we could see the East Branch of the Seeley Brook down in a low area.

Crossing East Branch of Seeley Brook

An informal path went along the brook for a bit, which had high slope on the opposite side, but a nice gradual grade on the near side. We were able to follow it upstream.

Path along JFK

There was a large brick retaining wall along a section of the brook which looked as though it was about ready to fall.
I questioned whether we were on the correct route, because the foot path was more like a deer trail and not looking too good. Eventually, I went back up hill and there was a better old woods road clearing that we probably were supposed to be on to begin with.
The woods road let out to a clearing at the far southeast side of the school yard, which continued out to Drake Road a different way, with a private home on the right and the brook on the left.

Pennsylvania Railroad Millstone Branch

We continued along to the left on Drake Road, and then turned right soon onto Layne Road. This too was only for a short distance when there was a cul de sac to the left for Kyle Road.
I figured it was a gamble that we would be able to get through to Inman Park from one of these dead end streets, but I wanted to have a look anyway.
We headed up Kyle Road, and there at the end was a Green Acres sign and an access to Inman Park, with wooden posts on the sides of it.
This was really perfect. The entrance was a slope down hill to the main loop trail in Inman Park, blazed with red plastic markers. There was a sandy/rocky outcrop on the slope.

Pennsylvania Railroad Millstone Branch

When we got to the intersection with the main loop trail, I almost went to the right, but then realized it would probably be far more interesting to the left.
We turned left and soon crossed the East Fork of Seeleys Run on a rock hop crossing, and then ascended through woods to a sloped ledge where the creek is in swamp land below to the right.
There was a nice little outlook area just ahead on the right where we could overlook the swamp. The trail continued along the elevated hill for some time.

Nice big tree on JFK

The trail was surprisingly nice. It wasn’t always well marked, because I almost made a couple of wrong turns before seeing the red blazes continuing.
Eventually, we turned hard to the right, and the trail crossed the Seeley Run fork again, and emerged at the edge of some activity fields and a parking lot within Inman Park.
We turned to the left and skirted the edge of the ball fields where sports were going on. It was my hope to exit the park over this way, or by turning right at the end to get out to John F. Kennedy Boulevard. Unfortunately, there was a chain link fence.

Negri-Nepote Grasslands trail

When we got to the fence, we had no choice but to backtrack toward the main park entrance off of Leupp Lane. We did have to wait for Dan who fell a bit behind anyway.
When Dan caught up, we went out the entrance and turned to the left on Leupp which took us shortly to JFK Blvd. Across the street on JFK was the paved pathway that followed it.
We crossed and turned left on the paved pathway heading to the south, which took us across Berger Street and continued.

Negri-Nepote Grasslands Preserve

I had wanted to walk this trail for a long while. I’d visited New Brunswick many times from friends that had lived there, for work with Taylor Rental, hikes, and such.

Negri-Nepote Grassland Preserve

I don’t know why the trail is so far off of the road. It’s an interesting spot, because there’s a large swath of lawn separating the paved trail from the road. Usually this is because of a trolley bed or other right of way. Maybe a sanitary sewer or buried utility of some sort. I don’t know.
We were still discussing this after crossing Hamilton Street, and the name of our street changed to Clyde Road. There was an industry or something to the right that ended the pedestrian pathway, but it started up again soon on the other side, and there were two guys standing out along it when we got there.

Negri-Nepote Grasslands

We sort of walked in conversation and the guys heard is plainly. I asked them if they knew why it was so wide, but they didn’t seem to know.
The one guy said that he’d grown up in that area, and he’d remembered when the road we were walking was dirt. He also said that Hamilton Street, just behind us, when it was first paved was quite narrow. He described it as being angled on either side where the early cars would drive sort of slanted, and that it was so narrow that you could take off your mirror or someone else’s coming in the opposite direction if not careful.

Info on birds at Negri-Nepote

He also was talking about horses being out on the road. He said something about the current road grid not having been the same as it is now, and that there was a horse farm very close by to where we were standing. He described a lot of things, how they were through this area just east of the settlement of Middlebush.
The area apparently held onto much of this rural character until the 1960s and 70s when there was a major influx of development.
It was cool to talk to these people and get a mental image of what the place was like during a single lifetime.
We continued to the south, and soon passed the intersection with Susan Drive and Churchill Ave.
Just ahead, we crossed the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad’s Millstone Branch, which heads east to the town of Millstone through Middlebush, and had the connection with the Mercer and Somerset Railroad.

Dickcissel?

The railroad was completed and opened in late 1854 as the Millstone and New Brunswick Railroad, which was soon leased by what became the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The Mercer and Somerset Railway opened in 1874, constructed at super speed to try to block the National Railroad from being constructed.
It didn’t work; the two railroads rivaled each other when the National Railroad was completed about 1876. The Pennsylvania Railroad operated Mercer and Somerset couldn’t complete, and the last train ran on the line in early 1880.

More Dickcissel?

It took only three days for all of the rails on the line to be removed.
The Millstone Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad lasted much longer. It still saw service out to East Millstone for many years, and the section from just west of the crossing where we found it to East Millstone was not removed till about 1980. Today, they’re quite grown over and even I wouldn’t enjoy trying to bushwhack through some of it. The sections to the west I’d already hiked previously.
We continued over the tracks south into some sort of corporate centers and were able to walk on the grass rather than on the road. There were some nice Pin Oaks and even a Scarlet Oak planted in front of the places.
We walked south to where the road curved to the left sharply. The next intersection was with Bennett’s Lane. It looked as though our road continued ahead, but it was Bennett’s Lane straight, as well as to our right.

Negri-Nepote

We turned right on Bennett and passed through a light residential area to the next curve. After that, the road was mostly out in the open farm lands. The lands to the left are apparently completely preserved.
I was looking for the entrance to a preserve called the Negri-Nepote Native Grasslands Preserve, a Franklin Township piece with several trails through it.
This was one of many parks I’d found by accident while going over township trail maps starting with ones near Princeton.

Van Liew-Suydam House

The 163 acre piece was preserved by the township in 2003 for not only the obvious native grasslands, but the existence of vernal pools in the wooded sections.
My map showed that the trail made connection to Bennett’s Lane. I almost had us going off into some crazy brush thinking it was the trail, but Justin pointed out a good brown trail sign just in the distance.
We headed to there, and then just into the woods was the intersection with the first trail.

Historic Van Liew-Suydam House

The trail system out there was not at all matching up with what was on the maps. The first one was supposed to be a “brown trail” and it turned out to be orange I think.

Abandoned near Middlebush

I don’t even now which route we took, but we didn’t go right like I was originally intending. I was thinking the trails might not match what are on the map at all. My goal was to get to teh field sections to the south and make our way to the state lands.
We passed by a few trail junctions that were kind of questionable, and then passed through a swampy vernal pool area with puncheons. The trail was really muddy even where there weren’t puncheons, but we got through it.
Soon, we came to a very wet trail junction at the north side of open fields.

Abandoned

It was obvious the trail was to the left and right of us, but it was far too wet for the township to mow the section where we came out. We had to trudge through the slop in order to reach the trail to the right.
There were interesting interpretive signs on this stretch of trail unlike I’d ever seen anywhere else. They were on birds, with wooden posts onto which they’d affixed wooden boards with plexiglass covering information on each species. On top of that, there was another wooden board with routed lettering that opened with a hinge to reveal the information. The lettering on the outside read the species of bird.

Abandoned

These signs lined the edge of the trail as we continued around the west side of the loop. This was supposed to be the yellow trail I think.
One of the signs read “Dickcissel”, so I took a photo of Justin pretending to put his dick in it, like it’s supposed to be some pleasure or torture device.
The trail led along the field edge to the south, and then had a spur that broke off into a section of woods. We turned to the right to follow this section. I’d hoped that maybe there was a new connection out to Skillmans Lane to the south, but there wasn’t.

Abandoned

I got kind of disoriented in this area. I couldn’t figure out which was was north/south and was trying to follow the GPS on my phone, which often takes some time to catch up to where we actually are.
The wooded section led us back out to more fields, but I was thinking we’d head through the field area to get out to Skillman Lane and cut a corner. It seemed like a smart move because I had a lot more I wanted to do before it got too dark. It ended up that I was walking the wrong direction, back to the north when we stepped over some fencing into fields.

Abandoned

We started heading back; Mike K was watching pretty closely and had a good idea of what direction we needed to go, so it was good that he was there to help me get coordinated again. Once I had it, I didn’t lose it again for the remainder of the hike.
We walked along the field edges heading to the east just a bit, then realized Skillman Lane was closely in view to the south. I could see a house off to the right, which I did not immediately recognize as the historic Van Liew-Suydam House. We followed directly through the fields to reach Skillman Lane and turned to the right.

Abandoned

I didn’t realize it at the time, but all of those fields we were in after leaving Negri-Nepote were actually state park land. We could have just followed the field boundary to the left without having to go on any roads. It was alright though, Skillman Lane is not that busy.
The Van Liew-Suydam House became more apparent to the north as we walked.
This historic home near Middlebush was first built in the 1700s by Peter Van Liew, on the nice little hill overlooking some of the valley of the Six Mile Run. He only built the smaller portion.

Abandoned

Joseph Suydam was the next significant land owner, who built the largest part of the house, in 1875.
The house passed through different owners, and the most recent long term private owner was the French family before it was purchased by the State of New Jersey as part of it’s Six Mile Run acquisitions after the Water Bond Act of 1958 which called for the creation of many reservoirs.
The tracts for Six Mile Run were acquired starting in 1970, but local oppositions to the reservoir plan as well as other projects kept ground from being broken on it.

Abandoned

The Van Liew-Suydam House is far enough up hill that it should not have been affected by the reservoir much, and so in 1988, the state of New Jersey sold the land to Franklin Township. It now serves as the headquarters for the Meadows Foundation and looks to be well restored and cared for.
The rest of Six Mile Run remained a “reservoir site” but was transferred to state parks for management in 1993. Even then, the maps for the site read “Six Mile Run Reservoir Site” for many years, and probably still do to some extent. It’s doubtful a reservoir will ever be built here I think.

Abandoned

The trail system at Six Mile Run used to be just a big loop, with woods on the south side along Six Mile Run, and field sections to the north. Things changed with off road biking groups took over and rerouted some of them. Additionally, the trail system was extended well to the east to the far end of the state land.
The only bad part about the current trail is that it no longer “officially” connects out to Canal Road to the west to make the full loop. The original trail is still there, but unmarked. It’s probably because there’s no parking and traffic can be bad at that end.
We followed Skillman Lane out to the very busy South Middlebush Road. We turned right, and then went shortly ahead to where we turned left on Blackwell Mills Road.
Jen pointed out that that the historic Wyckoff-Gerretsen House is only a short distance away, built in 1730 with some sections dating back to as early as 1709.

Abandoned

The farms here were where the first Wyckoffs in America lived. Originally named “Cleason”, it was pushed that Dutch colonists be given more easily identified surnames, and “Wyckoff” was meant Councilman or Magistrate of the Court, with “Wyk” meaning the prior, and “kof” meaning the latter.
After learning this information I had to send a message to my old friend Dustin Wyckoff because he could easily be a descendant from this early New Jersey settler. He probably is.
There was another abandoned building on the corner of Middlebush and Blackwell Mills, but I don’t know anything about that one. It looks to be old, but it’s probably one of those places that they’d rather not promote the history on. It will probably end up getting demolished, sadly.
We followed Blackwell Mills Road for a short bit, and then spotted an abandoned house that I’d forgotten was there. Of course, we had to go and check that out as well.

Abandoned farm

This one was certainly not very historic, but it did have an interesting layout about it. The place looked to be in not too terrible shape and could certainly be repaired, but it’s more likely that this one will come down as well.
From this point, we left and followed the road a bit more when I realized there was more state land to the north. We didn’t have to road walk this at all. We could just get up on the field edge and follow that parallel with the road almost the entire distance we needed to go to the west. It ended up being pretty nice.

Abandoned

My only problem in this stretch is that the plowed down crops still have stalks that stick up a bit, and I wore these beat old shoes that Dan Lurie had left in a parking lot full of ticks a couple of years ago, and I picked them up thinking he forgot them.
I’ve worn them hundreds of miles since then, but they had holes through the bottoms even when I first got them.
We got through it, and once had to get back out to the road, walk a short distance, and then go back onto the field edge heading to the west. In doing this, we came upon the next abandoned house.

Abandoned

This was a much bigger one, and curious that it was not more covered in graffiti or anything. It didn’t look to have been abandoned all that long, and there was not much barring any vehicle from getting back to it from the road.
We checked this area out, which had a large window porch off the back, what might have been a swimming pool area or a pond, and a wooden observation deck or something off the back.
This place would have really made an excellent nature center, but it’ll also probably go.

Abandoned

There was junk all over the place outside the building, but it otherwise was surprisingly not too terrible. We took a break here, and then moved on along my planned route.
We headed across the road, and almost directly across was shown another trail.
Actually a farm lane, it took us into some fields, and then into a former farm lane heading down hill toward the rest of the trail system. There were no markings on it, and the weeds were a bit higher than what I’d seen on most trails in this area.
After not too long, we reached the much more heavily used blue trail in the park.

Abandoned

The trail was much wider and well worn than anything we’d been on during this hike.
I know I’d followed components of this trail in the past, but much of it I’m pretty sure is very different from the trail I was on.
The first time I ever hiked the park and it’s trail system was in 2005. Then, there were two loops within the park, and I did each of them in conjunction with the Delaware and Raritan Canal, one time heading westbound, the other time heading eastbound, and it went well.

Abandoned

The trail on the south side is probably about the same, except with a few new bridges, but on the north side, it looks as though it weaves around a whole lot more than it does now. There also used to be a really rough crossing of the Six Mile Run mid way on the loop that was later bridged.
I think the field perimeters then were much different, and more of mowed walking paths. Now, it’s much more curvy.
We headed down hill, and soon came to a nice little foot bridge over Steep Hill Brook.

Abandoned

The trail then went up hill and followed a nice slope above the brook heading to the south.
The trail split in two in this area, with one fork heading into the woods directly above the brook, and another taking to the edge of the former farm fields. We took the farm field one for just a bit, and they both came right back together.
There was a picturesque farm still being used ahead that we could see. The trail headed from the field areas back into the woods to head to the west.

Viewing area

Google maps shows most of these trails all remaining on the edges of the fields, but they don’t do that at all. We headed into much deeper woods, which were quite beautiful and relaxing to walk.
The blue trail is by no means straight, but it’s a really pleasant, gently rolling walk. I was really enjoying this section.
It started getting a bit darker, but it was well enough that we could still see where we were going.
We had to take a couple of breaks when Dan ended up a bit behind. We were motoring along really fast, and then Dan took a short cut through brush because he could hear us.

Abandoned

The blue trail often doubles back on itself, and we can be a short distance from where we just were, so it helped him to catch back up with us.
We had a break and ate some pringles he’d given us, and then continued on.
The trail weaved around even more as we started getting closer to it’s western terminus. It opened up into some wide fields, where I recalled it should have remained to the left a bit, but this newer trail weaved all over the place heading north more.

Steep Hill Run crossing

I could see the headlights on the cars passing along Blackwell Mills Road to the north, and we were getting closer to them, but then turned back to the south yet again.

Steep Hill Run

We could soon see some of the maintenance buildings at Six Mile Run, which is where the northeastern part of D&R Canal State Park is run out of.

Farm scene

The trail kept away from this in the former fields, then passed through a swath of woods. Just before we got to the parking area, I waited for everyone to catch up. Once everyone was together, we turned right across the lawn rather than go out into the parking lot, and then paralleled Canal Road a short distance north to Blackwell Mills Road. We turned left there across the Delaware and Raritan Canal, then immediately turned right onto the towpath of the eastbound canal. It would all be easy from here on out, and the towpath in the dark is absolutely amazing.

Abandoned

The Delaware and Raritan Canal started development in 1830 and was completed in 1834, which opened navigation from the Delaware River to the Raritan Bay.
The canal was upgraded and built larger than most of the other area canals, so that steam vessels could pass through as well as the old towpath boats. Even the locks were powered in the later years.
The canal worked in conjunction with the Schuykill Canal in Pennsylvania, which used larger boats, but when the Pennsylvania Railroad eventually took control of it, it was part of what killed the Schuykill Navigation, because they were the competitor.

Abandoned

The D&R Canal survived longer into the twentieth century than many other canals, but finally closed up in 1932.
The section between Trenton and Bordentown was partially filled in for highway projects, and the section at the east end in New Brunswick survived until 1984 when the Rt 18 extension was built over most of it.
The main bulk of the canal has been allowed to survive thanks to NJ Water Authority. It provides drinking water for a lot of people in central New Jersey.

Abandoned

The section we walked has a very pleasant and secluded feel, but it never gets so dark that you can’t see where you’re going.
Everyone seemed to be in more of a hurry than me, moving along pretty quickly. Justin and Brittany were going about the same speed as me, and Dan fell behind because he was messing with his phone trying to get a pod cast but forgot his earbuds. He ended up taking a while to figure out the speaker thing on it. It wasn’t a worry here though; he knows the place really well since he lives close, and there’s no mistaking where to turn at this point.

Abandoned

Canal Road was sometimes near to the other side, but also moved away to make it much more secluded. Only the occasional car went by on it.
This was Karen’s first real night hike. It had been a long time since she had been out on one of mine, but she really loved the canal at night particularly.
She was also in a hurry though, and asked the route I’d be taking when we got to the Manville Causeway. It was easy, pretty much the same way the Google maps would send us, so she went ahead to finish earlier while the rest of us waited for Dan.

Abandoned

I’m disappointed that I totally missed the spot along the way where the Mercer and Somerset Railroad used to cross the canal. I wanted to have a better look at the bridge abutments that still remain there. There’s a big one out in the river.
Some sources say that the bridge was never built across the river, but there’s plenty to say that it did. Someone’s book along the way has apparently made false claim that the railroad was never completed. Although it was never completed to the extent it was intended, across the Delaware River, the Mercer and Somerset component was.

Abandoned

We crossed the road in East Millstone, at an angle, and headed north.
The canal weaved away from development once more, and was a really beautiful section. There’s not a ton to see in this stretch. There are no locks. Just a calm bit. There was one access point at Colonial Park, which I’d considered using for this hike, but changed my mind along the way at some point.
We continued until we reached Manville Causeway, then turned to the left on the road.

Abandoned

We crossed over the Millstone River after a nice farm area, and then turned to the right through a closed former restaurant site.
We then followed along Main Street, and passed beneath the former Reading Railroad, which was originally the National Railroad that knocked out the Mercer and Somerset line. That one is still heavily active for freight.
On the other side, we made our way into downtown Manville.
I had not walked through Manville since 2005 also. It remembered it being a really cool little town with a lot of Polish culture.
Only Skyler Jermyn and I were on that one, and we ended up getting blasted on wine and stuff, and eating my picky little brother Bobo’s unwanted trick or treat candy the entire way.
When we had gotten to Manville, we took a side trip, and Skyler found it to be a cultural haven his family would love. He had to buy some gifts for his grandfather there.

Abandond

Skyler was even popular with the hot young Polish girls in town. We joked for a long time, way before he was married and during his single times that we needed to take him back to Manville.
Unfortunately, I didn’t notice a single Polish store this time. Now, it was mostly Spanish places, and almost nothing was open anyway.
We soon reached the former Lehigh Valley Railroad and passed beneath it on Main Street. That line is still heavily active for freight as well. Immediately on the other side was the parking lot to the Walmart and other businesses where we had parked.

Karen passed by us and honked as we went by her on the road, so we knew she made it safe.
I was glad to have done the urban finish to this one. It’s always great to walk through the little towns for a different kind of experience. I especially enjoy it at night.
Dan got us back to the start and got Taco Bell at the conveniently late opened one right by where my van was.
There’s so much more to do right in this area that would work perfectly for year round night hikes. I’m certainly going to have to consider more of them as we move forward.

HAM