Hike #1238; Port Jervis to Westbrookville

Hike #1238; Port Jervis to Westbrookville

7/21/19 Port Jervis to Westbrookville with Matthew Davis, Russ Nelson, Ewa Wdzieczak-Smering, Jennifer Berndt, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, Mike Heaney, Don Mayberry, James Quinn, and Buddy V Mayberry

This next hike would be the next in the main Delaware and Hudson series we have been working on for so long. The last time out, we had covered the canal route from near Barryville down along the Delaware to Port Jervis. Now, we would head up the Neversink valley.

View from Elks Brox Park

I tried to trace the canal route up to Westbrookville, which would give us a good point to point, and set us up for a loop at the Basha Kill wetlands I had run twice before in the past.

Old truck we saw

Something that should have been relatively easy, casual stroll type of hike, ended up being the most brutally long and draining hike we’d done yet this year. I still loved it.
I figured it wasn’t enough distance, and I’d found out that a lot of new trails had been added to Elks Brox Park on the hillside above Port Jervis, which connected through all of their water authority properties. I figured we could do some of that, and then the rest of it would be the canal to get out fifteen miles.
Well, it ended up going over. I suppose the twists and turns of the mountain bikers routes was a bit more than I could ever have scaled them off to be. Also, what looked like straight canal sections before ended up being a little less so.
If all of this wasn’t enough, this was probably the most brutally hot day of the entire year. It was the hottest hike I’d been on in a very long time. Because of that, we took much longer breaks than we normally would.

Watershed area

This would also be a sort of memorial thing, at least for me. I didn’t make as huge a deal of it this time because it was pretty fresh to me, but I had just found out that David Barber, the man who authored the guide books I use for both the Delaware and Hudson Canal and the Lehigh Canal, had passed away just the end of this past year.
Thanks to mutual friend Bob Barth, I was able to meet this great man, who had painstakingly searched the deepest parts of the Lehigh Gorge and places like the Hawks Nest Cliffs tracing these canals.

Bob contacted me one day, knowing that I was a big fan of Mr. Barber’s work, and graciously invited me on their upcoming hike on the Delaware Canal. I got to have some wonderful discussions with him, and it was really a day to remember.
I won’t be bringing my irreplaceable signed copies of these books out any more.

Yum

We met at the end point, at the Pinekill Deli in Westbrookville. There isn’t a lot of parking here, and so we headed out into a long driveway for Basha Kill Wildlife Management Area to leave cars. After a breakfast stop at the deli, we headed down to Port Jervis where I parked along the edge of Reservoir Avenue.
I was hoping to find some swimming spots at the reservoirs. This would have been welcome early on even. Just getting out of the van was brutal. Russ and Ewa took to the street to walk toward the canal where the rest of us would end up after a little bit so they could do a little less mileage. I was planning on hitting the vistas.

Skyline Drive

Skyline Trail follows the old Skyline Drive route from the east end and gradually climbs. It was never that steep, but it felt brutal in the heat. We made a couple of corner cuts on what I think was Hula Hubbard Trail, which then takes us out and around to the overlook over Port Jervis.
This was cool because we could clearly see the whole town, the Erie railroad depot, the Delaware River, the confluence with the Neversink River, and all the way to the Pocono Rim to our right High Point NJ in the center, and down the Shawangunk Ridge into NY.

View on Mt William

The view is one of the best we have visited in a long while. I’d only arranged one hike in the past to this location, and at that time, none of the formal trails were in place yet at all. We just used the roads to climb up, and explored an abandoned lipstick factory.

Top of Mt William

The park is actually called Elks-Charles Brox Park, and the mountain is called Mount William. The viewpoint where the road and trails come together is called Point Peter.

View in the park

I guess it was the Elks Club in 1914 that raised the initial money to preserve the land on Mt. William as a park. By 1932, a substantial donation was made in memory of Charles Brox, and it was renamed with his name attached. The city purchased the property after that, and in years to follow it was used as a girl scout camp, public camp, and picnic grounds.

A series of mountain bike paths leading down to the access road was my planned route. Turntable Trail, Towpath Trail, and Broken Ties Trail. Of course, these routes were far from the things they were named for, but apparently take their names from what is in view along them.
We followed Turntable Trail as it weaved through the woods. It was obvious it was built by mountain bikers, because it didn’t go anywhere direct. It eventually came out to another rock outcropping, this time with an obvious view of the old Erie Railroad turntable. An outstanding little spot.
We continued along this trail, which weaved around, and then there was a giant metal framework of some sort up there. I figure that must have been one of those places they’d have a star or something at Christmas time, but it has long since grown in completely.

Erie Turntable from above

Turntable Trail had the great view of the Erie turntable, but as we moved on, the Towpath Trail clearly was more above where the canal was, and had a view of that, although none of it would be discernible if we didn’t know what we were looking for.
We came out to the Skyline Drive which leads to the top, turned to the left, and then cut back into the woods on the Broken Ties Trail. Turntable and Towpath connected with one another.
There was a somewhat new trail that connected the Towpath and Broken Ties, but I can’t remember the name of it. We ended up turning onto that because Broken Ties I think stayed on a power line clearing, while the other one went down in the woods in the direction we needed to go.
The trail continued along and started to closely parallel Skyline Drive. When we got close enough to it, rather than continue out to the road, we took a shortcut down hill to get directly to it. Along the way, Matt found an old tire.
Now, it should be known that Matt is deadly with tires. Back in December of 2009, he rolled one down from Columbia II Junkyard in Mansfield Township toward me and nearly took me out, which was quite funny but could have been nasty. Rolling tires down hills can always be pretty humorous.
Matt rolled one, and I think I did another I’d found. Matt managed to get his to roll across the road and down into the woods beyond.
When we got to the road, we noted that the woods were still pretty clear, so we could just continue straight down and skip the switchback in Skyline Drive. This would take us down to Skyline Drive at another bend.
We continued down hill and continued to roll the tires the entire way. As we got closer to the bottom, Matt and I were both rolling them, and I’m not sure who else. We had crossed Skyline Drive a second time and continued through woods to reach it a third time. Beyond, there were some private yards, and there was a guy doing some gardening or something out there.
As we reached that last road crossing, Matt’s tire went out across the road, jumped the edge, and continued down through the woods and landed in the guy’s yard near the garden. I gritted my teeth, ready to go in and grab the thing. The guy didn’t say a word, and I wonder if he even noticed. We just turned to the left on the road and kept walking, probably all of us gritting our teeth. It only became immensely funny when we were well out of sight.
Skyline Drive took us out on Rt 97. At that point, I just went straight across and into the woods. Directly below us was the Delaware and Hudson Canal in a section that is now trail.
This odd section was part of the last hike, but everyone missed it because they were walking the highway. I climbed down. This time, we all went down.

The canal

The section of trail is really odd because it did the bare minimum allowable for ADA accessibility. That is, thirt six inches wide, widening to five feet once every one thousand feet, apparently for passing wheel chairs. We saw no one in wheel chairs using this, but it is an interesting thing. There’s just a flat pad every so often along the way.
We turned left to follow the eastbound canal, which at this point was actually more south than anything else. The prism is pretty well intact through this area, with one abutment to a bridge that used to cross. We came across the sometimes wet bed of it on a filled area.
Russ and Ewa met up with us where the trail came out to South Main Street. Ahead, the trail continues but without the pavement, on a grassy swath below the bend in West Main.
We had walked this the last time, and a trail ramps down at an industrial site where we had turned to the right to go to the old Erie turntable.
At this point, I noticed that a path sort of continued following where the canal would have gone. Some of the shelf it followed through here had been destroyed, but it was easy enough to follow. I decided to give it a go.
Sure enough, this was trail. It didn’t go all that far before the canal remnant disappeared, but then there were nice wooden steps leading slightly down hill. A good view out to the Erie turntable was here, and the trail continued to the left on a side hill, and then made it’s way out to the end of Delaware Street. We followed that street to the north to Main Street, and turned right one block to where the canal used to continue on the aptly named Canal Street.

Goofin off

An historic marker denoted that this was the former boat yard in Port Jervis, and that it was the early center of business for the town.
Everyone was getting hungry. We had gone a longer way up on Mount William than we had anticipated, and so everyone started looking up places to stop for lunch.
We settled on Roy’s Family Diner and Pizzeria. It really wasn’t like a regular pizza place. It was actually a good little diner we quite enjoyed.
We were all seated in the place, which was much cooler than it was outside, and they allowed us to bring Don’s dog Buddy inside. That’d have been problematic if he wasn’t allowed.
It took a while for us to get our food, but we were happy to be there.
I had purchased a can of Four Loco, and had it at the table. Justin put a bunch of straws together and was drinking it that way from across the table. The people at the table behind us must have been mortified at how silly we were. They didn’t look too amused, while others did. The important part was that the waitress thought we were great.

Lock #56

We headed out from here after a whopping two hour break. I didn’t even realize how far it set us behind.
We followed Canal Street to the north, and after a short bend, came to a series of snubbing posts on the right. These were usually located at locks. I’m not sure if they were something moved from the boat yard, or if they were somehow moved from the locks to the west of there and put in place.
Canal Street weaved around a bit through neighborhoods, and then continued out of town with trees lining either side, but not enough to provide a great amount of shade. There was a gate where it said not to continue, but I had read that the canal is supposed to be public land across Orange County, so we continued anyway.
The road on the canal became gravel and continued into some sort of municipal road department or something. The main route bent to the left a bit, and Russ and Ewa continued straight to actually find the towpath. I had to turn to the right through a mess of weeds to get back over to them.
From there, the route was actually pretty good for a bit. It was clear and very pronounced. We followed this until it was eventually purged by a quarry operation. The road pierced through the towpath and continued to the quarry, and we could see some towpath remnant on the other side. It didn’t look too clear, and I planned to cut toward the quarry anyway and regain it on the other side. I knew a section was full of water as per aerial images, so I wanted to take advantage if we could.
It was better than I’d expected. This deep quarry pit was perfect. We put our gear in the shade of a giant machine, and all of us but Buddy got into it (surprising a dog that doesn’t like the water!). No one was around because the quarry was closed for Sunday.

Lock #55

We spent at least an hour in this place because it was so refreshing.
After our swim, we walked through the remainder of the quarry clearing, and then found our way over to the towpath which was again totally intact, save for one more quarry road that made it’s way through a cut in it.
Tri States Camp Road was on the right of it, but we didn’t need to walk that. The towpath was totally clear, and then moved away from the road.
It just got clearer as we went. It was like it was a perfect trail for a good long while, and in wonderful shade. It couldn’t really have been any better than this section.

Lock #54

The relaxing route had some good rip rap rock lining the berm side, and sweeping curves that made it pleasant but interesting.
There was a lot of stuff to see out there which was of significance, but is really nothing now. There was a sloped bank that was created after a major blow out in 1869. There were a couple of bridge sites. There was a large rock to the left, which I guess was Bird’s Nest Rock. There was a wider area known as Hornbeck’s Basin. I photographed all of them, but it was hard to keep track of. There was a stone abutment to the left that was the site of Joseph Cuddeback’s Bridge.
Just past this bridge site was a blow out in the canal, where towpath and berm were both gone. It was up on a fill. This was the former site of Hornbeck’s Culvert, which carried Culvert Brook beneath the canal. We easily went down and up over this spot.

Lock #53

We passed through another nice section of woods, and then there was another breach in the towpath with a small brook flowing through. There was some nice rip rap rock here on the towpath side. We took a break there, and I laid down in the water to cool off. This was badly needed.
We continued on from here, and the towpath resumed nicely. The area ahead was the site of Hugernot Basin, which had two dry docks for working on canal boats. We didn’t see much of anything in this area, and just concentrated on the nice towpath and canal remnant itself.
We emerged on a road known as Peenpack Trail and turned to the right, in the village of Huguenot. The settlement was named for the Huguenot families of Gumaer and Cuddeback who settled the area in 1698. There were several signs for “Indian Raid” from when Colonel Brandt and his army of Mohawk and Tory Raiders traveled to the Battle of Minisink to the north. Brittany went on about how she hated those signs and what they meant to the native people.
A general store from canal days still stands where we came out, and the canal continued ahead, but we went out to Rt 209 and followed it northbound.
There was an abandoned industry to the right, C&D Technologies, all fenced in, and the canal came across 209 in this area. We continud to walk to where the parking lot ended, and I was able to get back on the historic route of the canal without much problem beyond.
No one followed me here. They just stayed on parallel Rt 209. I figured they just wanted to take that route, even though what we’d followed already wasn’t too hard.

Lock #52

The one hard part I had to deal with was a major breach section in the canal. The breach, which I thought was only one, was actually three consecutive breaches as per David Barber’s survey. I didn’t notice, because I climbed down to the floor of the valley to the right, then climbed back up on the other side. The towpath beyond was overgrown, but the prism was easy to walk. I was quite surprised to see an officially marked trail within the prism, complete with “D&H” trail markers. I was happy to be following this pleasant section that everyone else missed.
I continued walking, and then there was a bit of stone to the left. It turns out that this was an old bridge site over the canal. The towpath wall of it was gone, and the left side had it’s top covered over with fill from Rt 209 making it look unlike a bridge.
I passed a lovely giant Sycamore tree, and then came out to a farm road crossing. Beyond this, the trail resumed on the towpath, which also had power poles running on it.
I continued walking, and I had to turn my phone off of airplane mode in case the others were trying to meet up with me. They realized they were missing out at some point, and used the farm road to come down to the trail. I waited at a nice spot where there was an overlook of the Neverkink River valley, in a big field wetland. Soon, they all caught up with me and we continued on.
There was a rather open area and apparently a former bridge that crossed known as Van Etten’s Bridge (this is the same family as Van Natta in WarrenCounty, but different spelling). We continued on alon this nice stretch, slightly more overgrown than previous sections, but not too terrible.
We eventually came to a more developed area, and skirted the backof someone’s yard. The trail continued a bit until we got to Guymard Turnpike (sometimes called Graham Road, named for the Graham Cutoff of the Erie Railroad after some dispute with the local Guymard family). The settlement here is known as Goddefroy.
At Guymard Turnpike, we reached Lock #56, also known as Mineral Springs Lock, which had a lift of ten feet like most locks. This was the end of the long Port Jervis Level of the canal. There were no locks since the Hawks Nest Cliff well above Port Jervis. The canal had been at about 467 feet above sea level that entire time.
This was the first of six locks that lifted boats heading eastbound. Every other lock on the canal besides these ones lifted boats heading westbound.
A private house on our right is the former lock house. The lock itself was covered partially by the road, but was still recognizable and had some metal hardware in it.
Russ and Ewa headed up hill to look for the old Port Jervis Branch of the O&W Railroad, but that was down hill a bit from us.
We walked the towpath past the house and out to a cutoff road between Guymard Turnpike and Old Rt 209, and turned left on Old Rt 209.
I walked the road with everyone for a bit, but I knew that there were other locks coming up soon and I didn’t want to miss any. They were all pretty close together. I made my way through the crappy weeds and into the canal prism to keep walking.
I had to get up on the berm side to be able to walk through, and then came to Lock #55.
This lock was in awful shape. I was blown away that a lock that seemed to be so far above any river level would be so badly collapsed. The towpath wall was all distorted, but in much better shape than the rest of the lock. The berm side wall was in much better shape than the towpath. There is supposedly a house above that might be the lock house.
I got back in the canal prism on the other side and continued to walk.
It didn’t take all that long before I came to the ruins of Lock #54. This one was also in pretty bad shape, this time with the towpath side looking a bit better than the berm side, which might have been more heavily affected by Rt 209. One of the gate pockets on the towpath side, I think the upper one, was very recognizable.
I made my way up and around the lock, and then continued through the canal prism a bit more. This was getting really close to Rt 209, onto which I soon emerged.
Looking to the right, I could see the rest of the group already arriving at the edge of the highway’s bridge over the Neversink River. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to see more. Someone shouted something out to me, but I said I had to check this section out. They started heading out toward the canal park at the former Neversink Aqueduct site, and I dashed across the road and into the woods on a driveway, then right on what used to be the New York, Ontario, and Western Railroad’s branch to Monticello NY.

Neversink Aqueduct site, with old aqueduct abutment to right

It was clear enough walking for me, but it wasn’t what I was out to see this time. I had to cut down to the right to reach the canal, which was moving away from development pretty quickly.
David Barber’s survey said that the lock here was mostly intact, but I’m not sure if he was saying it was in good shape or what. Regardless, it was in crap shape now. It was very overgrown. I climbed down and managed to get in the upper end of it, and took a photo to match up an old one I’m rather certain was taken from the same location, because the railroad is seen in the photo to the left on the slope.
I continued through the prism a bit, and then got on the towpath, which wasn’t too terrible.

Old aqueduct abutment

Soon, I emerged at the back yard of a house. To the left, I could see down into Lock #52, one of the Neverink Locks. The house was the lock house and still lived in. I quietly moved on by, and shot a couple of photos into the lock which looked to be quite intact. I reached Prospect Hill Road, and got a nice view into the lock from there.
On the other side, the canal route continued out to the site of the Neversink Aqueduct.
The original aqueduct here was apparently a wooden trunk structure with a pier in the middle. There is a house on the south side of the Neversink River which makes use of the original west abutment. The trunk opening in the foundation can be seen as different than the rest of it. The Roebling aqueduct replaced this earlier structure. Construction on it began in June of 1849, and it was open in 1851. The span used no center pier and was 170 feet long. This was the third of the Roebling aqueduct sites we had visited in the series.

Locks 53 and 52

I climbed down to the Neversink and waded across at a point where it was shallow enough, and the others met me off of Hoag Road on the other side. This was a spot where we took another long break.

Lock 51 then...

We had to have spent another hour at this spot. The water was deep and it was just perfect. Russ and Ewa headed onward from here earlier in order to finish hopefully before it was too dark, and to come back and pick up Don and Buddy. Buddy was really pretty exhausted, and I was going to suggest we do that anyway. I’m glad we stayed to swim for longer though.
We kept climbing up stream and around the end of the east aqueduct pier, and then let the current carry us down stream.

Lock 51 now

I took a walk around and checked out the masonry abutment of the earlier aqueduct on this side as well. The canal prism was very recognizable on this side.
When we were finally ready to go, we followed Hoad Road parallel with the canal route to the right. There was soon an abandoned powerhouse on the right, which had it’s own power canal that confuses people regarding where the canal was. We went in and had a look before moving on.
We continued up Hoag Road, and I saw what I thought was the canal and what looked like a lock, with a house to the right. We passed the site, and there was a driveway across where I thought the lock should be. I didn’t have my book with me, so I couldn’t be sure.
To the right, it was obvious that the house was quite old. There was a guy sitting on the porch, so I thought I’d ask him about it.
The guy told us that the house was actually built in the 1700s, but that it became a lock house when the canal came through. That seemed pretty interesting. He told us though that the canal lock was actually right at the aqueduct, not up here. I figured that didn’t seem quite right, but didn’t argue it. We had a nice little discussion and then moved on. The canal ahead was in fine shape and the towpath was an official trail as the road moved off to the right.

Near Cuddebackville

I was glad I’d taken the photo I did, because it turned out to line up perfectly with an historic photo of Lock #51. Also known as the “Pie Lock”, it was the last of the Neverink locks that lifted boats heading eastbound. The lock is totally filled in at the point of the crossing driveway. Just past the driveway, we passed a snubbing post in the towpath.
We continued on the towpath ahead, and then came to a nice basin still holding some water on the left. The canal curved to the right there, and then passed another smaller basin, also holding water.
This very pleasant section continued out to Cuddebackville. We crossed Oakland Valley Road after the sweeping turns, where there was a nice old canal era store still standing. On the other side, the canal towpath was paved as a road, but it’s been closed for some time. We walked this section, and it took us out to Rt 209, which carried the canal beneath it through a culvert. It was surprising to see some of this still holding water.

Cuddebackville store

We crossed 209, and Oak Ridge Road follows the towpath route on the other side. This made for a nice pleasant walking experience as well.
Soon, we reached Comfort’s Basin, a large basin on the left side, larger I believe than any we had seen earlier.
The road along the towpath became unpaved at some point, and the last drivable section ramped down to the right as we headed into the woods on the clear towpath.
It was getting dark for this bit, which is kind of upsetting because it was so pretty and I wanted to see it and get more photos of it. I’ll have go go back to do it again in the fugure I suppose.
There were a couple of former bridge sites in this section that I couldn’t really document.
The next big thing was a crazy washout that completely eliminated the canal, down to below the canal floor. There was once another basin here, known as Van Inweigen’s Basin. There is nothing left of it now. We had to turn to the right on an ATV path that descended down to the creek below, and then climbed back up the other side to regain the towpath. This was a pretty obvious route, so it wasn’t a problem, and good stones were there to hop across the brook.

At Comfort's Basin

Eventually, we came to Port Orange Road. I figured the canal would be too bad to follow beyond here. We had it lucky so far, so I was prepared to follow parallel 209, but others wanted to stay on it. I was glad we did, because this too ended up being quite nice.
There was another stream breach in the towpath, not as bad, at the site of Staunten’s Basin. We were able to stay on nice towpath, with only slightly more vegetation on it, most of the way to the end at Westbrookville. It got a little problematic when we were parallel with Manor Lane and Apple Lane. There was a purge in the towpath, and no good way up toRt 209. It was too dark to navigate through, and I didn’t know where to go. No obvious route was taken by hikers from here. We were already over the Sullivan Count line, so the canal was not for certain all public in this section.
We decided to make our way to the nearest back yard, and try to quietly make our way out to the road. This worked pretty well, and we quickly moved to the left on Apple Lane. We followed this out to a left on Manor Lane, then another left on Otisville Road.
We followed that out to 209 and turned right, and then right into the driveway down into Basha Kill Wildlife Management Area, and the canal once crossed right there near the entrance to it. We were set up for the next hike well from here.

Near Comfort's Basin

This was the lastest I’d finished a day hike like this in forever. Probably about 10:30 pm. I would never have expected that it would have taken that long. I would never have expected that we’d be able to follow so much of this historic route in the dark without issue.
It was tiring and such a long day, but I really loved it. Getting to work at 7 the next day was no fun task, but I somehow still felt great about it. Justin and Brittany apparently were feeling similar despite the heat and time.
Fortunately, I don’t foresee hikes turning into what this one did, because it’s usually more predictable mileage and far cooler temperatures, but for what it was, I suppose it just made it more interesting.