Hike #1222; Fairmount to Whitehouse

Hike #1222; Fairmount to Whitehouse

5/15/19 Fairmount to Whitehouse with Celeste Fondaco Martin

This next hike would be a point to point between Fairmount and Whitehouse, both in Hunterdon County. The route would take us through Tewksbury and Readington Townships.

Fairmount Presbyterian Church

The concept of this hike goes back. Way back. Back to before I even worked for the state, and I got to know some of the back roads of Tewksbury Township working at Works Data for Vance Calvin.
Vance and I would take these odd routes around because of where his clients were located for phone installations, and often times we’d be traveling between Califon, Fairmount, Oldwick, and others to these corporate offices, and at one point to the private home of Greg Frankel who owned the Massage Envy chain to wire up his house. The back roads we traveled were stunning.

Fairmount Presbyterian Church

I have fond memories of those travels through the area. We’d stop in Oldwick and checked out check out the cars sometimes. They had a two of a kind BMW M1 GTO David Hobbes Special, a famous race car for sale for exactly one million dollars during that time, 2007.

A possible descendant from War of 1812

I was always looking for a way of putting together another hike, and the backroads out that way were well worth walking. There was also a bit of lesser known state land here and there. I figured one of these days I would put something together.
I at one point did a hike through a little town that Vance and I both liked, called Mountainville, which is a very European feeling little hamlet in the deep woods, but I never really did much of the land north of Oldwick. There was Cold Brook Reserve, and areas south, but the rest of Tewksbury Township was relatively free of open space.

Some said the reason we didn’t see any county park land in Tewksbury Township was because of George Melick, former Hunterdon County Freeholder and longest running Freeholder in state history.
Melick was no friend to parks, and was quoted as saying he didn’t know why they had a parks department. He was always very critical, and it sounded pretty bad coming from a man who owned so many acres. He was also involved in some very sketchy deals, including the Sliker tract in Lebanon Township. Louise Sliker was a family friend who wanted the land to be park land.

At Fairmount Cemetery

After she passed away, the freeholders canceled the acquisition and Melick purchased the property for himself for his daughter. The “Sliker Activity Fields” as they were to be named were no more. They also for a decade canceled an important piece that was necessary to complete a greenway between Point Mountain and Teetertown.
Because of the lack of open space, Tewksbury was alway slow on my radar, but much of that has changed in recent years. Non profits and other groups have stepped up to preserve a greater amount of land than ever before.

Historic Fairmount Church

When I started working at Spruce Run Recreation Area in 2011, we’d have to go to Hacklebarney State Park and took back roads to get there. In doing so, I would go by places such as Christi Hoffman Park, which apparently had trails in it. I’d never incorporated this into a hike before, but I figured I’d look at ways of doing it now.
Going over the maps and trying to find a way of putting Christi Hoffman Park into a hike, I ended up finding out about two more significan tracts of land, and then a potential place to park at the Fairmount Presbyterian Church. This was something to work with. I’d have to put a hike together from that start point and find an end point somewhere that would work.
I came up with a great route partially using stuff I’d done before, but much new stuff, from Fairmount to where we had started another somewhat recent hike in the town of Whitehouse, just off of Rt 22.

Fairmount Presbyterian Church

I chose a point near the general store in Whitehouse as the meeting point, and we’d shuttle to the Fairmount Presbyterian Church and cemetery, just north of the Fairmount light, Tewksbury Township, Hunterdon County.

Fairmount Cemetery

The church was constructed in 1851 to replace the earlier ones, starting with a log one erected around 1727 as a German Reformed church.
The 1851 structure was remodeled in 1902.
When I arrived at the meeting point, I was disappointed to see that no one had showed up. I was fully prepared to just head home, or head up Point Mountain by myself or something, when all of a sudden Celeste called me.
I was really happy she called. I wanted so much to see these properties, but without a second vehicle to shuttle, it wasn’t really possible to go through and explore them easily.

Pickle...is next to Teets, with D. P. in between...

Since Celeste showed up, it seemed like it was likely we’d have someone else meet up with us late. I thought we might get Red Sean, but no one came out. It didn’t matter though, it was really a pretty good hike anyway.

Mowed trail at Fairmount North

We took my van to the start point, and then walked into the old cemetery. I immediately found a grave of a Trimmer, which was my grandmother’s maiden name. I could be related, but not really sure. I haven’t managed to trace the Trimmers back that far yet.
We checked out the handsome old church, then crossed over the Old Turnpike, jogged down that slightly, and turned left into the newer cemetery lands.
The newer cemetery is on a slope and heads up to an area with a pretty nice overlook.

Mowed

We headed up hill among the tomb stones, and I had to get a photo of the stones reading “Pickle”, “Teets”, and “DP” all together, and I sent it to Mark M of Weird NJ.
There was someone working in the far side of the cemetery, probably digging a hole or something. We went to the back o the plots where my plan was to cut directly in to the property known as Fairmount North.
Fairmount North is another property I did not know existed until I started looking over the maps. This is a sixty five acre tract with a trail passing through the entire thing.

Yums

This property makes up contiguous open space with the Pascale Farm Park and Pottersville Reservoir lands, which would be a major part of this hike.
We managed to get around the fence at the end of the cemetery, and then had to bully through some high grasses for a bit, but then emerged on a very nice mowed path.
We turned left on this, and emerged in a large mowed area with a picnic bench, and another path going off to the right.

Fairmount North

We followed this path slightly down hill, and the Autumn Olive plants were encroaching on it pretty badly. The trail then turned to go slightly up hill, and turned again. It ended up taking us right back to the same picnic clearing we’d started in. Celeste said “Well what was the point of that trail!”
I suppose they just put it there for casual walkers. We headed back down from the clearing to a more main trail, which heads out of the fields with the active recreation section of the park, and head toward the woods.

Herzog Brook

The trail was pretty nice at first because it stayed mowed as long as it was out in the open, but when it got to the woods, it became a bit more muddy. We descended a bit, and came to some wetlands. Branches of the Black River I understand start in this area.
The first one of these we came to was the springs that feed into the Herzog Brook. The trail meandered a bit, and reached an intersection where another trail went left. That looked on my map to be a dead end, so we continued to the right a bit.

We started reaching a field clearing, and kept to the right of it. More woods roads would go off other ways, but we stayed along the south side of the fields. Near the far side, we cut to the right onto another trail, more of a foot path this time, and took it over the Herzog Brook by way of a brief rock hop. There was another field up ahead on the slope from there. Once across, the trail went to the left parallel with it, and then started to ascent a bit parallel with the field through woods. We actually passed two other guys back there hiking, with rather surprised me.

Old dam ruin

The trail cut to the right and crossed a branch of Herzog Brook again, and there was an old stone dam ruin hidden among the weeds.

Pond view at Pascale Farm Park

We continued past this, and started to ascend a bit more on a much wider old woods road. This took us quite obviously up hill, and the trail continued straight when the route of the road went left. This took us almost directly into a spot for parking and a little kiosk located on Fairmount Road East.
From here, the map shows that the connecting trail to the Pascale Farm Park follows along the edge of the opposite side of Fairmount Road. Rather than do this, we crossed and cut into the woods directly. I figured we could go further into the park immediately.

Entering Pascale Farm Park

We didn’t have to go too far into the woods before we came to a grassy clearing.
We could have continued further in the Fairmount North Preserve, because another trail apparently continues and comes out further down Fairmount Road East, but I don’t know of a way of continuing from there.
None of these trails had been marked in any way, nor do they have any signs telling us which way to go to get where. We just had to kind of compare the map to the aerial images.

Pascale Farm Park

The field we entered was the slope below a couple of baseball diamonds adjacent to the local elementary school. We continued directly south from where we came out, along the bottom of a slope below these ball fields as to not be in view from anyone. There were tons of kids out there playing ball at this point.
We cut hard to the right after the second baseball diamond, passed a parking area, and then came to the entrance road to the school. We crossed, and there was a pretty little pond.

Pascale Farm Park

There was a kiosk there by the pond, but there didn’t seem to be a trail really going anywhere. We walked to the south, parallel with the access road, and then past another parking area before getting to the official start of the Pascale Farm Park.
The first part was just a sort of access road going south from the area intended for parking. The preserve is rather hidden behind the school.
The 140 acre parcel is said to be a very minimal impact area with it’s trails, but this one was far worse to follow than the Fairmount North ones. There was literally nothing to go by.

Pascale Farm Park

We walked back the drive a bit, and came to a building just ahead. The woods road continued, but I figured this was not part of the trail system. I know now that it actually was, but there were just no signs. It’s the way we actually should have gone.
Another trail is intended to turn right just before the building, but it was not obvious at all. At this point, I was only going by the aerial images and GPS.
We turned right, and then left along the edges of more fields heading to the east.

Pascale Farm Park

After the field clearing, the trail continued into the woods. This was just an old farm access road, and the other one joined in from the left after a muddy section.

Pascale Farm Park

We skirted the upper end of yet another field, passed through another section of woods, and then emerged into much larger fields.
As per the trail map, we could have gone straight to the south, or left which was east. The very corner of the field where the so called “trail” emerged was a huge muddy mess.
I chose to go to the left at this point, so we had to do our best to get over the mud by stepping on grassy tufts, hoping they didn’t collapse into the muck.

Pascale Farm Park

The north end, which was the down hill side, was pretty muddy, but gave way to pretty high grass. There was still nothing to go by, and a power line section just to the east of us. We were heading for that.
By the time we got to the edge of the field and the power line, we emerged onto mowed paths. There was one mowed path on either side of the line of trees separating the fields.
We chose to take the one on the farther east side this time, and turned right going up hill.

Fox Hill Road

There were some pretty nice pastoral views in this area. When we got to the top, there was also a view through the line of trees out to a home and some farm area to the west.
Overhead, the clouds were getting thicker. It was looking like we would have an inevitable thunder storm coming through. That’s probably what scared so many others off from joining this one.
The clouds made for some really beautiful skies, with the sun shining through with striations. When we got to the top of the hill, we turned to the left, east, and passed through a line of trees to another field.

Historic home

Celeste commented that if she ever came back here, there was no way she could ever make it through this property. There was nothing to say we were even on public land, let alone a trail marker.
Still, we pushed along, and soon made it to the far corner of the preserve where it came out on Hollow Brook Road.
I pointed out an historic house to the right, which appeared to have sections built in three, maybe four different centuries. One section was obviously very old, and I assume possibly 1700s. Another section was frame home that could be 1800s.

Nice narrow road

Other sections appeared to be much newer. It was an interesting piece.
Where we emerged onto Hollow Brook Road was almost at the intersection with Fox Hill Road, which was my next planned route for this hike.

Lance Farm

Fox Hill Road is a beautiful little back road with only light traffic that I knew would work out well for our hike.
The narrowness of the road much appealed to me.
We started heading down hill on the weaving road. On the way down, there was a historic home on the left. Large trees lined the edges of the road.
As we came to some fields on the right, I was surprised to see that it was public. This was the 37 acre Fox Hill Preserve, of the Tewksbury Land Trust, also known as the Lance Farm (probably a relation to Leonard Lance, who knew my grandfather).

Fox Hill Preserve/Lance Farm

We continued down hill, and soon go to one of those old stone arch bridges. I’m always happy to see these structures that are so special to Hunterdon County.

Stone arch

Hunterdon County is home to over two hundred of these stone arches, which is more than anywhere else in North America.
I have been very critical about how Hunterdon had handled it’s parks department over the years with cut backs and such, but I give credit where it is due, and I must say that the Hunterdon County Bridge Department does a good job of maintaining these little stone arches.
I’ve seen the crews working out in the freezing cold with mortar and trowels, and really respect them for it. These are one of the main things that characterize the county to me.

The stone arch

The stone arch on Fox Hill Road looked like one of the typical historic ones at first, and probably utilizes much of the old stone, but upon inspection I found it was from 2009.

The public land around Fox Hill

I was kind of shocked, because it really did look old. The arch was the same shape as the old ones, but it had what looked to be a new concrete pipe inside.
Whoever reworked this bridge deserves some credit, because it’s really so well done, one wouldn’t know it was rebuilt without close inspection.
Just on the other side of the bridge, I was surprised to see an information kiosk about the Tewsbury Land Trust Fox Hill Preserve/Lance Farm. It turns out the preserve has loop trails through it that I did not know existed. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time this time.

Information at Fox Hill

The trail went off toward the field, but there is a good amount of upland property that can be used for a hike. An overview of some of the public lands now available was surprising.

Fox Hill Face Tree

This hike made me realize that we could do an almost entirely different version of the same hike and include all sorts of other stuff. I’ll certainly have to come back for more.
There was a tree with a face affixed onto it at the entrance to the TLT preserve. We headed down hill further along the road from here, and Palatine Road went off to the left.
This road was quite pretty, and I knew there was more land down that way, but I wasn’t sure there was any kind of way through, so I resisted the urge to go that way. It would be a bit out of the way.
Still, Palatine Road is a dirt road that would have been quite pleasant for walking.
We didn’t go all that much further before signs started appearing along the left side.
The signs read “Private Land-Public Use”. At first glance, one would think they were simply no trespassing signs, but this was the Fox Hill Preserve of Raritan Headwaters Association.

Private Land-Public Use

The sign read that the property was open to fishing, canoeing, hiking, nature study, and photography.
We continued on along the road for a bit more, and I was quite surprised to see a very nice new parking lot on the left side. This was apparently part of a new Eagle Scout project from what I’ve read.
There was a map in a kiosk which showed that if we had taken Palatine Road, we could have walked on through to this spot without a problem. And so, that will be the route of the next hike down this way.

Map of Fox Hill Preserve

I could actually do the trails in this preserve two different ways, but that’ll have to wait until yet another time.
We continued down the road a bit, and were soon treated to a very nice view out over the valley to the left of us.
Storms had just come to areas surrounding us, but somehow we just got away without almost any precipitation. To the east of us though, it was obviously pouring rain, as we could tell from the clouds.
It looked like the First Watchung Mountain was in view to the east of us, which was kind of impressive. Celeste said that her husband used to talk about being able to see the Watchungs from where he used to live, and so it was funny that now we could see them.
Beyond the view of the Watchungs, there was a beautiful old farmstead on the slope.

It looked like all of the old stone work had recently been redone nicely.
We continued on along the road, and the view to the left just kept on getting better.
We could see more of the Watchungs, which sort of loop around in a weird fashion.
The road took us right past the beautiful farm area and curved off to the right a bit.
We started heading down hill on the road, and there was a big estate on the right with an outstanding view from it’s front.

More of the public land of the Fox Hill Preserve was on the left, but it doesn’t have trails. In the future, I can probably continue on from the trail system through this tract to get to Fox Hill Road sooner. I stepped over into the fields briefly to have a look at the view, and it was exceptional here as well.
Cars coming up the road were infrequent, but moved too fast when they did. It still wasn’t a bad walk.
We passed below the mansion house and continued to descend with more views.

View of the Watchungs

Most of the land appeared to be preserved, but it’s used as private hunting preserve.

View of the Watchungs

Soon, we came to the intersection with Homestead Road, a slightly busier but still small rural road. We passed an animal hospital where employees were getting out of work, and then a nice farm on the right.
We soon reached Rt 517, Old Turnpike Road. Directly across was Hill and Dale Road, the route I planned to walk next.
At the corner, there was an interesting stone epitaph I’d seen before but never bothered to go over and have a look. It turned out to be a grave stone!

View of the Watchungs

The grave was that of Dr. Francis Asbury Farley, apparently a descendant of the Melick family. It was hard to read the inscription on the thing, but I think I saw the name there.

Rain coming down in the distance

I found it odd that the grave was alongside the road, because my understanding was that people were buried alongside the road when they were murderers or unworthy of being put in a regular cemetery. This seemed to be an upstanding citizen to have such a large stone, surrounded by wrought iron fencing.
We headed across onto Hill and Dale, and there was a Melick farm right there.
We walked just a little bit further, and there was a driveway on the left with one of those signs saying not only not to turn around there, but not to even think about it.

Historic farmstead on Fox Hill

We continued on down the road through farm lands for a little bit, and we came to the north entrance to the Cold Brook Reserve, a Hunterdon County Park.

Watchung view

Cold Brook Reserve is always one of the places I’d worked that I love to shove in people’s faces when they disagree with trail blazing.
I had marked and cleared trails back in this park in 2008, and today almost all of the plastic blazes they had put up with nails are gone (I did see maybe two tops), and only my paint blazes remain to show the way. They’ve been holding on 11 years.
Cold Brook Reserve is a 180 acre piece of land that had been one of the great peach orchards dating back to the 1850s, when Hunterdon County was the peach capital of the world.

View on Fox HIll

Benjamin and Emma Van Doran purchased the property around that time and had planted five thousand peach trees.

Fox Hill Road

Sadly, the blight came in 1890 and decimated the entire peach tree population in Hunterdon County, and it never really recovered.
John Van Doren, son of Benjamin and Emma, took over the farm in 1900 and switched to dairy operations. They were one of the first dairy farms in the area to have automatic milking machines.
John Jr. took over for his father in 1955 and planted 400 apple trees in addition to other crops.
The Van Dorens held onto the farm until selling in 1973. The property was then sold to a developer. Fortunately, NJ Conservation Foundation was able to acquire it first.

Fox Hill view

NJCF added additional acreabe to the preserve, and it was purchased from them by Hunterdon County in 1984.
When I worked there, I was told that it was not protected open spaces, and that the difference between a “preserve” and a “reserve” was that the county could sell this off should they decide to. I know that while I worked there, there was additional land across 517 from the existing preserve, and they did sell that. I would imagine it should have been a stipulation that it couldn’t have been developed when NJCF sold it. I figure this all wasn’t true.

Fox Hill view

The county holds conservation easements on an additional 111 acres of private land with no public access, and so that is preserved. I feel as though Cold Brook is pretty safe.

Fox Hill view

Preserves with so many fields are very hard to blaze. They require posts and such to show where turns are. I installed some of these up there, but they have all been removed now.

Big house on Fox Hill. I like the pavilion with lattice which is what I wanted to do at Spruce Run

The wooded sections of the property though still have the blazing in place.
We entered the property on what is supposed to be the red trail on the map, but there are no markings. This is just another one of many ways Hunterdon is failing. There are some good people there, but they are far too short staffed to take care of these places. The maintenance guys that remain, and even the gardeners have to spend a lot of time mowing huge trail systems along the South Branch of the Raritan, in Deer Path Park, the arboretum, and many more. It’s an enormous job for a fraction of the former staff.

Scene near Oldwick

At the first intersection, my yellow paint blazes were still visible. We turned right on this to follow the trail farthest to the west side of the preserve. The trail maps shows this being marked yellow and blue, but there is not a single blue blaze out there.
It actually makes me angry to think that these incorrect maps have been out there for a decade now. The current one even reads “revised 2017” and is still horribly inaccurate. If anyone went into the preserve trying to follow the map, they’d get lost...on only two miles of trails. They really need someone to take care of it, but they don’t hire anyone.

The grave along Old Turnpike

We continud through the woods, and the trail was kept pretty clear. There was horse dung just about everywhere, so I know it was the equestrian contingent that keeps this open.

Don't even think about it....thought police

At the next intersection, we turned to the right and crossed a small tributary to Cold Brook. We then climbed to the edge of the fields to continue.
We had gotten a little bit of rain while in this area, but barely anything. It wasn’t a problem.
When we emerged in the field, we were treated to a stunning double rainbow. I couldn’t believe more people didn’t want to be out on this hike, because it was absolutely a beautiful route, but they were apparently all too afraid of the weather.

Trail blazes holding strong since 2008

We turned to the left to skirt the fields, walking toward the double rainbow. It didn’t last all that long, and the second one started to dissipate fast, as rainbows tend to do.

By the time we reached the little pond, which was part of a wetland restoration project, the other rainbow had almost completely disappeared save for the section at the very bottom.
We continued along the farm access road, which is officially part of the yellow trail despite the complete lack of any marking, and took a little break at the top of a hill with nice views all around.
Once finished here, we continued down to the parking area on Rt 517. We turned to the right there and headed toward Oldwick.

Rainbow at Cold Brook

I started telling Celeste about the crazy past hikes I’d done in the area with Kyle Zalinsky before he passed away, and all the fun we had around the church and the Magic Shop.

Rainbow in Cold Brook

On the left after the Magic Shop was the historic Oldwick NJ Zion Lutheran Church. This was the oldest Lutheran Parish in New Jersey dating back to 1700s. I can’t recall when the church that stands there today was built, but I want to say early 1800s.
The settlement was originally known as New Germantown. Like other German named towns, it was changed to Oldwick due to the anti German sentiment of the World Wars.
We turned to the left into the cemetery around the church, then came out on Church Road on the other side and turned left again. This road changes names to Vliettetown Road shortly.
I’d hiked this road back when I was hosting hikes for Appalachian Mountain Club around 2005, when I was making an effort to hike the route of the old Rockaway Valley Railroad which came to the area in 1888 to haul peaches.

Pond at Cold Brook

The Rockaway Valley Railroad was nicknamed the “Rockabye Baby” because it was poorly graded and used little or no ballast, which meant trains would sway and rock.

Cold Brook Reserve

Because of the grading, it was known for frequent derailments. Never a success, the blight that took out the peaches took away the success of the railroad less than three years after it was completed between Whitehouse Station and Morristown. It failed and was reorganized several times, abandoned in 1913, and then had one final attempt to reinstate it in 1916. That didn’t happen, and the line was abandoned and torn up with an old ford rigged to run on the rails. The line has fallen into obscurity moreso than most other local railroads since it’s been gone so long.

Cold Brook Reserve

We continued to a right turn on Cold Brook Road, a lovely dirt and gravel road with hardly any traffic, one of my favorites in the area.

Cold Brook Reserve view

The Rockaway Valley Railroad used to cross at a line of trees not far from where the road starts. We continued on across that, and gradually up hill along the road.
We passed a few people walking on this road, surprisingly more than we did while walking on any of the trails.
It was starting to get darker as we walked the road. There was a very nice old Red Oak near the ed of it. We turned to the left on Lamington Road when we got to the end, but only briefly. Just before it crosses the Black River, we turned to the right on Felmley Road, another nice road, but paved.

Cold Brook Reserve view

There still weren’t that many cars. We continued on this road until we reached the intersection with Gulick Road. We turned to the left there, also not all that busy.
We followed the road south and over Rt 78 on a bridge.
I’d never walked this one before, so it was good to check out another. In the past, I was further to the west on trails or trying to trace the Rockaway Valley line.
Shortly after the crossing, the lands of the Fiddler’s Elbo Country Club were on the left side. My plan was to wander through here, and I nearly missed the turn off for it because the course wasn’t right there.

Cold Brook Reserve

We ended up cutting into the tree line and across a field a bit, but then came to an electric fence we had to get through. In the dark, I was not going to try to get under the thing.

Church in Oldwick

I figured we would have to try to follow the fence and hope to find something good. Fortunately, we found a gate that could be easily opened and closed back up, so that’s where we went in.
We walked the course heading to the east for quite a while. It was really pleasant walking.
We made it a good distance out through the course, and my original plan was to head out to River Road and then cut over to Lamington Road out to Whitehouse, but then I realized we could just go to the right, across the course, and then get out to Tree Top Road, which was another I’d never followed.

Cold Brook Road looking toward former rail crossing

We did just that. We walked up and down hill for a bit, then turned to the right after crossing an access road and ascending another little hill.

A nice swamp willow

It didn’t take all that long before we reached Tree Top Road, and there was no barrier here to get us out to it.
The road seemed more like a driveway than a public road, which was really nice. I was glad we chose this route. We could do one of the others on a future hike quite easily.
Tree Top took us down hill after a slight ascent, and then to Meadow Road. We turned to the left on Meadow briefly, and then cut to the right across a field in the dark. This took us out cutting a corner to Lamington Road. We emerged near a long driveway.

Moonlight over Fiddler's Elbo

The road took us down hill slightly, and then across the Rockaway Creek by way of an historic old truss bridge, which was quite nice. We then climbed again on the other side, and the farm lands gave way to light residential.
The road took us right back in to downtown Whitehouse, where a brief turn to the right led us to the fire house where we had parked on street just beyond.
I really liked this route, and was really happy to see that there could be at least three different versions of the same, as well as maybe others from different directions incorporating different segments of it. Tewksbury Township has come a long way from having very little hiking opportunity to now having a substantial amount, and I’m left with two more preserves I have to get back in to, and two others with more trails I have yet to do, all of which can be put together into the same hike.
People always ask me, and especially a lot lately, “haven’t you run out of places to hike in Jersey yet?”. The answer is always “NO. Not at all. There’s always more”. It’s hikes like this that prove that there really is so much more, even in the places closest to home.

HAM