Hike #1237; Lehigh Gorge/Drake's Creek to White Haven

Hike #1237; Lehigh Gorge/Drake’s Creek to White Haven

7/18/19 Lehigh Gorge with Alyssa Lidman, Shane Blische, and Dan Asnis

This next hike would be a point to point in another section I’d been wanting to look at for a long while.
I had several plans potentially for the route, but wasn’t sure what quite to do. I was waiting for Pete Wilcox to be available before I’d do some stuff in the area, but he’d gotten injured.

Falls on Drake's Creek

I finally settled on a section of Lehigh Gorge that was substantial, but not as big a deal for the stuff I’d been working on prior.
I put together a route between White Haven and Drake’s Creek, an obscure access to the east side of Lehigh Gorge, and planned the main new thing I wanted to see as the original Lehigh Valley Railroad grade that existed prior to the construction of the Rockport Tunnel.
Some of this was also a step back in time to the past where I wanted to walk all rail lines, active or abandoned.
I had hiked the entire former Lehigh Valley Railroad right of way from Perth Amboy all the way to Penn Haven, but had not done above there. It’d be an easy section to do really.
We met at the trailhead at the north side of White Haven, and then shuttled in my van down to the start point at Drakes Creek.
This area was more obscure than even I thought it would be. The road down was a long way, and it turned dirt after a bit. I could have driven it all the way down to the railroad, but I instead chose to park at a safe looking spot near a dirt pile up top and then walk down the road. The road is so narrow that if anyone were to want to pass, it would be pretty difficult, and likely someone would have to back up.

Drake's Creek

We certainly chose the right time of year to be walking this stretch.
The Drakes Creek Road stayed above it’s namesake tributary for quite a while, but eventually descended to right beside it. The road was lined with beautiful Rhododendrons that were blooming with bright white flowers on the way down.
The creek flowed into lovely pools where Shane was the first to indulge in a dip.
We continued on down the creek and checked out a series of lovely little waterfalls along the way. The road crossed over the creek on a narrow bridge, then back over again a little further down with some nice cascades near the point of the crossing.
When we reached near to the base, there was a lovely stone arch culvert carrying the former Lehigh Valley Railroad over this bridge. I had seen this from the other side before.
We walked down to the creek, then up stream along it on a wide path, which led to the masonry ruins of some sort of an old mill. Another path led up from here to the road again.

Lehigh Valley culvert at Drake's Creek

There was also a sort of lowering mechanism for boats used by outfitters I suppose.
We walked through the old railroad culvert and out to the Lehigh in the stunning gorge.
This area is always amazing to see.
The water coming down Drake’s Creek was so crystal clear, it was like I could drink it right from there. I didn’t though.
We made our way back through the culvert and then to the right up steps to the road end and the tracks.
From here, we turned to the right to follow them to the north.
I watched the river as we walked on through, because in this area was where the Upper Division of the Lehigh Canal had it’s Dam #10. and Lock #18 on the other side. The entire Upper Division was abandoned after a great flood in 1862, and only the very lower portion of the Upper Division remained in service until later. Finding remnants of this division is always something special.
We continued ahead, and it wasn’t long before we came to Rockport Tunnel. The tunnel was part of an important era of improvement on the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

Rockport Tunnel

The Lehigh Valley Railroad opened it’s first section between Easton and Mauch Chunk in 1855. The incorporation of the 1836 Beaver Meadow Railroad to the north of there got it to Penn Haven, and then the Penn Haven and White Haven Railroad connected north to White Haven just after the canal was washed out in 1862.
The worst part of that right of way was the Rockport Bend, where the trains had to navigate a 333 degree bend around the edge of the gorge, and slow to basically a walking pace.
Work began on the Rockport Tunnel to bypass this corner in 1882. The 1,196 foot long tunnel was completed in 1884, and the old track around the bend was abandoned.

Tunnel

The tunnel didn’t look too narrow. We could certainly get through it, but I wanted to follow the earlier track bed.
We turned to the left, and it was very easy to follow at first. It was very obviously the rail bed.
There was a lot of moss and such, and surprisingly evidence of railroad ties even though it’s not been used for over 135 years.
There were large hunks of anthracite coal in the road bed, probably left over from the same time as abandonment. To the right, shortly past the tunnel, there were the stone remnants of a building. I remembered seeing similar structure at the Shawangunk/Highview Tunnel on the O&W Railroad near Wurtsboro NY, and it was used to hold dynamite during tunnel construction. I suppose this was probably somewhat similar.
The rail bed was sometimes pretty close to it’s original width, but other times had washouts where the slope had collapsed much over it leaving only a narrow bit of it. Shane found a really weird plate from the old tracks unlike anything we had seen before.
The coolest part of this stretch was an enormous rock cut through the farthest west portion of this old grade. It was deep enough that it could almost have been a tunnel itself. It was only single track wide, and had a lot of rock and such cluttered in it, but quite an amazing undertaking.
We made our way through, which was really pretty cool. Soon after coming out of the other side, the sky opened up and started pouring like crazy. I put my cell phone away and started using my old Pentax camera I’d gotten from Lerch a while back, because it’s waterproof.
We worked through this for a bit, and we got even more wet because of fighting through heavier Rhododendrons on this side of the cut.

Major cut

When the rain stopped, we made our way down a really nice spot where the water of the Lehigh River was deep. It appears to be a section still holding onto some slack water that was associated with Dam #12, which worked with Lock #19 on the Lehigh Canal.
This was an absolutely perfect spot. We spent a while swimming here. We could hear people going by on the trail along the CNJ right of way on the other side clearly, close to the Rockport access, but couldn’t really see them. There wasn’t really any remnants of the canal towpath on the other side. Some of it might have been filled over for the railroad, or otherwise washed out in floods since abandonment. We swam across to the other side, because the current wasn’t too bad, and then back.
From here, we climbed back up to the right of way and continued walking around the bend to the east. The site of Dam #13 and Lock #20 was also along the way through here, but I don’t recall really noticing anything of the site.
The rail bed got harder to follow. At one point, it was completely washed out, and others were almost completed covered over by landslides. Much of it was inundated with Rhododendron worse than before. It was definitely the most difficult portion of the hike.
I got far ahead of the others heading toward the north portal of the tunnel. It was a bit confusing over there, because the original right of way was actually quite a lot higher up than the current one. I had to descend quite a lot to the left to get to it. It kind of surprised me because I figured they’d be at the same grade. It’d be curious to see how they accomplished the seamless transition from one grade to another when they were on different grades.
I waited for the others to catch up, and they ended up near the cliff top above the tunnel and had to turn harder left to get down.
Once we were all together, Shane, Alyssa, and I decided to check out the tunnel. I figured it’s not heavily used and there’s plenty of room, so we went all the way through it to where we were and back.
The inside was really different. It appeared to have some sort of odd shaped casing on the walls in addition to concrete and original laid stone.

Tunnel

It was surreal. Like walking from one type of tunnel to another, but all of the different facades fit into the frame of my sight. The masonry, the concrete, the odd shaped framework, all together.
We hurried on through and in no time got back to where we were when we first started following the older alignment. We then hurried back through the same way we came.
Once we were out the other side, all we had to do was head north for a while. It was still quite scenic through the gorge. I watched to the left for different canal remnants that might come into view. Dam #21 and Lock #14 were below in this area.

Tunnel

The next point of interest we came across was one of those old telephone shelters. This one was pretty badly deteriorated, and pretty far out there. It was on a slightly wider section of the railroad shelf than what we’d seen before. We continued from here a little farther up stream, and then came to the crossing of Mud Run. An impressive stone arch carried the LV line across the creek, wider than the one we had seen at Drake’s Creek. We went down to check it out, where there was a nice little stone bench.

Fun

We continued back to the tracks and found a path going up the run to the right. We started following that, thinking we were now in Hickory Run State Park, but we were not. The path had a side path back down to mud run, and then a gate and no trespassing signs ahead. We continued back the way we came and headed further north on the tracks. My aerial images as well as the map from the canal book by David Barber seemed to show that the next creek after Mud Run would be the one we wanted.
We walked up the tracks just a bit, and then found another woods road going up the next creek, which I don’t think has a name. This smaller creek I wrongfully assumed was the Hickory Run. I should have known that a prominently named creek would be something larger.
We walked up this creek, and the path started to peter out. It looked to me like the trail was supposed to go across the creek up stream, but we were taking a while to get to it. I figured we would get to Sand Spring Trail in the park this way. I still didn’t realize we were not yet at the correct creek.

Mud Run bridge

I figured if we went direct up hill to the left, we would reach this trail I was looking for. We were after all over the state park boundary, but not in the developed part.
I started bushwhacking up, and eventually I came to a woods road. I reassured everyone that there was a trail up there, and they bullied on through the mess to meet me.
I had thought that this was the Skyline Trail.
We followed the route to the left through woods. It was pleasant enough. It opened up a bit and there was scrubby growth. I realized in this area somewhere that we were not on the trail we had thought, but that we were heading to it anyway.
Soon enough, we lost some elevation, and then came to the much more prominent and easier to follow Sand Springs Trail. It descended quite a lot into a gorge near the Hickory Run. We followed this down stream, and the trail took us right back out to the tracks again, to a spot where a train can pull off to let passengers out at the trail. I think this is such a cool concept.
I thought the spur might have been an earlier alignment, but it just goes off ahead into the weeds. Nothing really to it.
We went right back out to the active tracks again, crossed the Hickory Run on the bridge, and then I saw another trail going up to the right. The Fireline Trail was just above us heading into more of the park, which looked like it’d be nice. I started heading up it, but the others didn’t look to enthused about it. As they were sort of hesitant at the base, I told them they could remain on the tracks if they wanted and I would follow the trail on the parallel slope.

Fireline Trail scene

I should have told them to come up and do this part. It really was pretty fantastic.
Fireline Trail was out in the open with continuous views for a while into the gorge. It was so good that I am certain I’ll be doing it again. It went up and down a bit, and in one of the down areas, the Skyline Trail broke off to the left. I thought to stay on Fireline Trail, but Skyline looked like, although longer, would have better views.
This didn’t disappoint; I was treated to many more views of the valley that were outstanding.

Fireline Trail view with Hays Creek lookout

This was only my second time visiting any of Hickory Run State Park. I’d gone into a tiny piece of it with Pete Wilcox last year, and it hardly counts because were were off of it exploring railroad stuff mostly.
It’s one of those huge parks I’ve put off doing hikes through for a very long time for some reason. I know it’s quite popular, but I’ve had so many things of interest that it passed me by.
The park was first purchased in 1918 by millionaire Allentown General Harry Trexler for public recreation, and it was developed much during the 1930s as WPA projects like the Civilian Conservation Corps. Prior to that, there was a settlement called Hickory Run for the early industries. The area was rather clear cut for the tannery industry just to the north, which decimated the land of most of the hemlocks. There was a major forest fire that knocked out many homes and businesses in 1875, and it never really sprang back from it. On a future hike, we’ll have to explore the rest of the park in greater detail.
I continued to where Skyline Trail rejoined Fireline Trail, at an outstanding vista up the Lehigh River. This was a particular treat because I could plainly see the pier for the former Hays Creek Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which was one of the hikes I’d done with Pete the previous year.
I continued on Fireline Trail for a while, which just kept taking me further inland. I could hear the sound of Rt 534, and that was a bit out of the way. I needed to get back down.
The trail soon crossed over a small creek, and there was a woods road going off to the left. This unmarked trail looked like it was going the direction I needed to be going in, so I turned to follow it.
It had some downed branches and such, and wasn’t worn in, but it worked out fine. I was able to continue following this woods road out through an open area, and then down to Black Creek, near where it passed beneath the old Lehigh Valley Railroad main line.
The group was pretty close to me there, and I was able to catch up with them pretty soon. Just ahead, the old Hays Creek Branch bridge abutments were on either side of the tracks, and Shane had already climbed up the west side. He went looking for an old phone shelter I’d found up there, and didn’t find it.
I set up a then and now photo using one of the historic ones, and we moved on ahead along the tracks. I stopped when I got to about where the Hays Creek Junction was. There was a gate over the second right of way, and a spot where I could sit and wait. Dan was actually quite far ahead of us at this point. He went to Lehigh Tannery to wait.
As I sat, a long train went by, so I photographed it. Soon after it went by, Shane and Alyssa caught up. We all continued to Lehigh Tannery at Tannery Road.
I posed the question here that we could either cross the bridge over the Lehigh at Tannery Road and walk the former Jersey Centra/D&L Trail the rest of the way back, or we could continue on the Lehigh Valley tracks back to about the same point.
I was kind of hot on the Lehigh Valley tracks since I’d never followed it before, but the others preferred the Jersey Central. That would be easier on the feet anyway at this time.
Just before the bridge, we walked over to check out the ruins of Lehigh Tannery, which has a nice deck around it for viewing.

Hays Creek Branch bridge site

We crossed over the bridge, and I pointed out that Lehigh Canal Lock #27 was just to the upstream side of the bridge, though it’s terribly collapsed. This lock had a vertical lift of a whopping thirty feet, making it the largest lock I know of. We weren’t able to get down to it this time though.
We continued to the right on the CNJ grade heading north. There was a nice waterfall on the left, and then a side path led us down to the right to visit the much more intact Lehigh Canal Lock #28, which had an impressive lift of 22 feet. It was another biggie. This lock was tied directly into the dam that spanned the river here. The dam was 27 feet high and 293 feet long across the river. It’s amazing the stone work remains somewhat intact with all of the flooding over the years.
We continued back to the CNJ grade and passed beneath the Lehigh Valley Railroad bridge, and the parking for the rafter outfitter. The railroad bed then goes through a strip mall parking area as we reached the town of White Haven.
We were hungry, and there was an ice cream place there, so we stopped to get some. I was saying dumb stuff about Jesus and diarrhea as usual, and the two clerks inside were laughing to the point they almost couldn’t hold it together. I ordered their generic version of the Dairy Queen blizzard, which was really good, and I got very descriptive about how thickly I wanted it produced, which the guy thought was particularly funny. Something about I wanted it to be so dense that it is it’s own gravitational anomaly.
We were hanging out and having fun, and so Dan said he’d go back to get his car and pick us up. We’d already done well over the miles I was planning to do, so we didn’t need to walk back to where we were parked, and it was all connected at this point with the previous hikes.

Lock #28

This was a really particularly fun trip, and I immediately started looking to the Lehigh River southbound for more exploration of that line and the old canal remnants.
I just wish more people were as interested in the history. So few have the inclination to engage in this crazy little missions like this. I feel like they’re missing out, and they probably just feel like I’m crazy.