Hike #1280; Beattystown to Point Mountain Area
12/14/19 Beattystown to Point Mountain/Changewater with Justin Gurbisz, Ken Zaruni, Ellie Zabeth, John DiFiore, and Robin Deitz
Abandoned Brantwood Terrace
This next hike would be another point to point this time my annual hike where we pass by my grandfather’s house in Lebanon Township.
There are certain hikes that I will do every year. They are not repeats, but rather hikes that hit a couple of key points annually. Only the anniversary hike is intended to be the same route.
We have the Musikfest hike that ends at the festival, Michele V’s hootenanny that ends at her house, Holiday NY City that focuses somewhere on the city, and then there’s this one. We can do it in so many different directions, so I change it up.
Abandoned Brantwood Terrace
I pretty much started this tradition of bringing the hike to my grandfather in 2005. The first one was starting at the service at his church, although at the time I couldn’t get anyone to attend the service other than me and we hiked from there after.
After that, the hikes all either started, ended at, or passed by his house. Last year I actually did the New Years Day hike so that it would end at his place. It’s always gone over pretty well, and everyone gets to know me a little better and where I came from.
Abandoned Brantwood Terrace
Running these hikes to the same place every year for 14 years, one would think I would be running out of places to go that are now. It’s true, it’s harder to put together totally new hikes, but we still manage to add something completely new every time we do it.
These ones always take me longer to plan, because I have to string together something that people would find enjoyable, that I would want to do.
Abandoned "ore mine" in Diamond Hill, as per 1874 atlas
Like the hike that ends at Michele’s house, I skimmed over maps for hours trying to figure out exactly which way to go. I had to try to figure out what was best to do for the weekend we were having it.
I decided on one that was less through back woods because it was the last day of deer hunting for a bit, and it can be dangerous to be out in those woods during those times. We’ve happened upon people on this hike before, and even though they don’t say anything to us, we can see they’re annoyed.
Watters Road farmland view
I wanted to try to avoid that as much as I could, so I chose the route that would be more reliant on road walking, but would also cover possibly the most new ground.
Barns were usually built on the opposite side of the road from the homestead to avoid potential fire from spreading. Hay is very combustable.
We had hiked from the Mansfield area in the past, and focused on the Musconetcong River as well as Old Turnpike, but this time I figured we could focus on the Warren County side a bit more, because there are stunningly beautiful roads through the farmlands there.
There was also a large swath of state wildlife management area that I’d never bothered to walk through. Because safety zones were close, I figured we’d be safe to walk some of that.
I also decided we would revisit some of the Port Murray Preserve and the Morris Canal. I had worked on that trail with Matt Davis, Sandy Westermann and her kids, and others, but we had pretty much started ignoring it because it didn’t yet connect to anything.
Moo Moos.
My friend and former class officer Jared Weirzbicki from High School is one of the builders associated with the adjacent Ryan Homes development on the other side of the railroad tracks from the preserve, and I’d communicated with him a bit about working together on having a trail connection to there. It made sense that I should scout it.
I also had not covered all of the Wattles Stewardship Center of the Audubon Society, which is across the Musconetcong River from Point Mountain. I decided to add that.
Moo Moo pasture
Finally, it had been a long time since I had taken the group to the waterfall, which we are calling “Fritch Falls”, that was behind my dad’s house where he grew up. I had found some stuff back there recently when running around on my own that I wanted to share with the group. That would get us out to Mountaintop Road, which was the route of my very first hike with my grandfather when I was only three years old. I like bringing people on that.
Hances Brook in Mansfield
I visited my grandfather earlier in the week and talked over the plan, but unfortunately it was the same night as a barbershop chorus event he had tickets to, so he wouldn’t be around for it. He would at least be at the meet point though to give out words of wisdom to the group.
The meeting point was the end point, his house on Mountain Top Road where I spent much of my time growing up. I was there every weekend, and it was like a second home. I had my own bedroom there, all my own toys and stuff. I would get picked up Friday nights and stay until Sunday night.
Watters Road view
My grandfather was still asleep when I got there. I was surprised at that. I was there only fifteen minutes early or so, and he is always up before that time.
View from Watters Road
Even though he worked for himself as a licensed land surveyor, he was always regimented about getting up at about 7 am every day. He always had a little white clock that wound up, and buzzed loudly when it went off, and he never failed to set it.
Often times, he would be up before it would ever go off. I would be sitting in the kitchen with him when it would go off, and he would ask me to run and turn it off for him, which was just the press of a metal button. There was really nothing electronic about this clock I would imagine. All mechanical.
BLEAU ROAD
Since he retired earlier this year, he stopped getting up at 7 am.
Ken showed up first, followed by Robin. The forecast the night before was calling for rain just about all day, so a lot of people who would have come initially dropped off. There ended up being only six of us, but it barely rained at all the entire day. Only at the very end did we end up getting a little wet, and the temperature was in the high fifties, so it was never cold until that time.
We shuttled to the start in my van, except we dropped Robin’s car off at Point Mountain. She had a fun ride out to Kennedy Airport at 10 pm to pick up her daughter, which she was not much looking forward to doing, so she wanted to get out of the hike a little early if possible.
We then took my van to Mansfield, and I made a stop in at Bottle King where I got myself a four pack of Dogfishhead’s Palo Santo Marron, a delicious Santo wood aged brown ale.
I don't know the name of this brook off Watters Road
I’m still taking the doxycycline for my Lyme Disease, which doesn’t go well with alcohol, but I don’t overdo it, and I make sure that I don’t have anything until two hours after taking the medication, and only if I’d also had some kind of food.
We headed from there over to the Walmart where we met Justin. Since he lived so close and we had enough vehicles, he could just meet us there.
We started walking at the Wallymart, and I went in to get myself some kind of snack.
Rockport WMA view
I found a candy cane container full of Reeces cups as well as a dark chocolate king size Kit Kat, and I was ready to go.
I got in line, and the cashier was Dottie, who worked at Walmart the same time I was there, up until early 2004 (although I stayed working one hour photo until 2005 at night).
Dot was an old black woman, who shared my love of chocolate, and would often share her favorites with me, little chocolate covered cashews called “Turtles”. She was always laughing and brightened up the place.
Hiking Rockport WMA
I remember her telling me she also loved Molson Ice, which was one of the beers I’d drink most often when wandering through the Oxford Tunnel or something.
When I was in the line, I wasn’t sure if it was her until I read her name tag. She’s aged a lot, and it’s probably been a decade since I’ve seen her.
She saw me, but I’m sure didnt’ recognize me, but asked “You got any of those for me?”, looking at my Peanutbutter cups.
View in Rockport WMA
“But you like those Turtle things...I didn’t know you liked these!” I said to her. I then asked her if she remembered sharing them with me those years ago, and we began talking.
She said “Yeah, we used to have fun working here. It ain’t the same any more”.
View in Rockport WMA
She was right; it wasn’t the same at all. When I had walked in, there were automatic gate things that opened up. I wondered if I would have trouble wearing my backpack in.
BURN!
I opened up my peanutbutter cup container and gave one to Dot.
Aside from her and two of the cart pushers, I don’t recognize anyone there any more. We really did have fun at the place. When it started getting stupid, we would literally just do the dumbest things because it was a job that barely anyone took seriously.
I said goodbye to Dot, and headed out of the store to the rest of the group waiting for me in the front. We walked to the left, then around the store out to Airport Road and turned right up the hill a little bit.
Morris Canal near Rockport
After just a little bit, the blocked off end of Brantwood Terrace, from the never completed extension to the Diamond Hill development, was on the left. We stepped over the dirt and pipes blocking the end of it and started walking the road to the west.
I had done this route once before on the other hike from Mansfield, only we turned to follow the river.
This time, we continued on Brantwood to a right turn on Ridgewood Terrace to the right.
Morris Canal along Rockport Road
At the bottom of the hill, there was a path to an old quarry, now all filled with water, in the middle of the development. I’d never had a close look at it before, so it was good to walk by it.
The quarry was never served by rail or anything, and it was already holding water way back to the late 1800s, so it was quarried out quite early on. We continued from here to the left on Brookside Ave and turned to the left. We walked this just a little bit, then turned to the left up hill on Meadow Lane.
Pig eating pumpkins in the Morris Canal
We followed this to a left turn on Claremont Road, a little more up hill.
At the top, we reached Rt 57 and turned right only a very short distance, and then right again heading down on Hazen Road into a very nice area of farm land. I pointed out the farm with homestead on the right and barn on the left, which was done so that barn fires would not catch the house as well.
We continued down to the intersection with Watters Road, which was more straight, and Hazen Road went to the right. We crossed Hances Brook and went up hill.
Truffles the Pig
This was a beautiful little area with lovely pastoral views. The fields to the left were all full of cows, and one got closer to us out of some sort of curiosity, but didn’t come all the way over.
Morris Canal in Port Murray
We headed up hill on Watters Road, and it leveled off to become quite pleasant. It was getting warmer, and I was starting to sweat. There was no rain, and the forecast changed to where none was forecast until about 1 in the afternoon.
There was a bit of a nice view toward the Schooleys Mountain formation to the left, and we continued on the road to the west past the intersection with Blau Road, where I had Justin pretend that he was puking in front of it. I guess it means “blue” in German.
Port Murray Morris Canal Basin in the 1800s, harvesting ice
We continued along Watters Road, crossed a small stream, and passed by a crummy looking old farm on the right, where the house looked like an old hotel.
Port Murray basin now
There was a hay wagon out back that now had trees growing through it, a built in stone laid swimming pool in the stream, and lots of derelict vehicles and stuff.
Morris Canal in Port Murray
The house is quite beautiful, but the property is in pretty bad shape. At least the roof on it is metal, which will do a good job of preserving it.
There was a funny sign reading “bath house” pointing at a mucky wet swamp below it. At least they’re not without sense of humor.
We continued past the intersection with Heiser Road, and then turned right on Thomas Road.
Morris Canal in Port Murray cleared by Don
The road took us up hill a little bit more, past a couple of houses on the left, and then to where the property of Rockport Wildlife Management Area stars on the left.
Port Murray Church and canal behind it
These state wildlife management areas have literally tons of land, and so much that I have not begun to scrape the surface of yet. I really need to start doing more of it.
Port Murray Power House
We skirted the edge of the field heading to the west. It was a little bit muddy, but not too terrible.
We continued until the end of the property to the west, and then turned hard to the right following a line of trees down hill. There was a really nice view toward the hills to the north, with one of the clearings along a power line, and straight ahead we could see the Rockport Church through the trees.
We headed down hill, crossed over a drainage trench and an access to the private fields to the left, and then continued down hill toward a creek and Washburn Road.
When we reached the end of the field, there was no good way to get out to it at the corner. We had to cut through the woods, then down to the other access road to get out.
Power house remnant at Plane 5 West
We turned right and crossed over Trout Brook, as per the 1874 Beers Atlas of Warren County.
We then walked up hill slightly, and crossed over the former Morris and Essex Railroad.
Plane 5 back then...
There was a train parked up along the tracks farther away adjacent to the Borealis Plant, not moving.
We crossed the tracks, headed up hill a bit more, and reached the former Morris Canal crossing, which is at this point in the Rockport Game Farm property, and to the left is Warren County property.
The train did end up moving, because we heard it after a little bit.
We turned left to follow Rockport Road from here, which is closely parallel with the canal.
The section of Rockport Road is narrow, but we only needed to be on it a little bit.
While on Rockport Road, with the canal prism to the left loaded with dumped pumpkins and gourds, Robin pointed out that there was a pig. I figured she saw a toy pig or something like that, but when I looked down in the canal, there was an adult pig eating.
Plane 5 now
The pig was making a mess of the pumpkins, with it’s head almost completely inside the one of them and eating away. It was actually really funny to watch. It was haing a great time down in there.
We watched for a little bit, and a guy and girl pulled up to us and asked us if we contacted the owner. I said no, we had just walked up and seen it there. The guy pulled in to the driveway of the adjacent house, house and started honking his horn. When nothing happened, he and the girl got out and went up to the porch of the house. A guy eventually came out in his bath robe and said not to worry.
Historic view of the bottom of Plane 5
The owner came out and called the pig by it’s name, “Truffles”. He said that the pig knows not to go in the road, and even wouldn’t go up closer than to the edge of the driveway.
Plane 5, 1880s
He got down in the canal with the pig and said “C’mon Trufles. C’mon. Out.” trying to motion her to come up.
The pig started snorting or sort of growling louder.
“I’m making her mad now” he said. He grabbed a stick and tried to coerce her up the hill, but she was having none of it. He tried coercing her up the hill with one of the pumpkins as well, but when that didn’t work he gave up.
We stood and watched the pig eat for a little bit more, because it was mildly entertaining, and then continued on ahead.
We turned left on Cherry Tree Bend Road, which sort of parallels the canal, and walked a bit up hill. It was getting warmer, and the sun started to even come out a bit.
My then and now of plane 5
Robin asked me “What do you think? Should I ditch the rain pants?”
She was going to throw them off into the brush somewhere, and I asked her if she thought that was a good idea, because something might happen to them.
The plane tender at Plane 5 used water from the tail race to power his washing machine
Robin said “Oh don’t worry, this is my parents’ house!”.
We were walking right by her parents house, and she figured she would ditch some layers there in the driveway area. She said she couldn’t put it in the mail box, because it would turn into a twenty minute conversation with her mom about “Why would someone do that...”.
The towpath in Port Murray Preserve
We continued on from here along the road, and eventually we reached the steps to the trail that leads down to the canal on the left. The steps as well as two footbridges were made by Dave Deitrich and the Highlands Partnership with Warren County. Youth Corps and volunteers do a lot of work on the Morris Canal, and hae gotten an incredible amount of work done to open the greenway across the county. Theres a foot bridge over the entire somewhat wet canal prism before reaching the towpath as well.
Port Murray Preserve
Once we were down, we turned right to follow the nice clear towpath toward Port Murray. There is a nice kiosk, where it’s been renamed the Dennis Bertland Heritage Area, after the man who wrote the book on the architecture of Warren County and other things. I was honored to be there at the ribbon cutting for the place, because Bertland’s books were regularly checked out of the Port Colden School library by me grades 1-3.
Old underpass at Meadows at Mansfield
Just past the kiosk is the former canal basin. I had a historic photo of ice being harvested in the Winter off of it I wanted to set up a modern photo of, and then we moved on where the towpath becomes a driveway.
We continued out behind the old church, which is now for sale, and then out to Main Street of Port Murray, where the old canal store is still standing.
The property formerly owned by my grandfather’s friend Harry Pool is straight across, and it was recently cleared off beautifully by Don Mayberry. We checked out his work, then turned left down the road.
Culvert underpass
Don had initially signed up for this hike, but I guess he couldn’t get out of work for it.
I figured, since he couldn’t do the hike, we would bring the hike to him.
We were walking by Maybery’s Sales anyway, so we all went in the front door to say hi.
We chatted for a little bit, and talked about some of the trail work coming up.
We eventually moved on down the main street, and then turned to the right on Hoffman Road. I pointed out where the canal used to cross, and a guy peered out his front door at us as we walked by. I actually think it was Don’s brother that lives there, but I’m not sure.
Just ahead, we turned left into the parking lot for the Port Murray Preserve and started heading down the trail. I was glad not to have a run in with the lady that lives next door to it, because she’s always out to cause trouble for us with the park. She’s brought a bunch of people in to one of the Board of Rec meetings once, kind of with the idea that she was rallying them all against us, but we try to be good neighbors to all of them, and I get the feeling that they appreciate how we go out of the way.
The new development where a trail could connect
We walked down the trail for a bit, which follows an abandoned access road called Terracotta Lane. The road was once an alternative access to the brick yard at Pyronics, which is also accessible off of Brickyard Road on the other side. The canal is private land in the swath parallel toward the top of Inclined Plane #5 west.
We moved on down the trail, and then I stopped when we got to the abandoned road that turns off of the official trail to the left. The route leads more quickly to the old canal, where it is not an official trail as of yet.
New development
Here, I asked how many in the group had never seen the turbine chamber for the inclined plane. I do recall that both Ken and John for certain had not seen it, and so the decision was made that we were going to go over there.
We turned left, and bushwhacked a bit. The road got a bit overgrown.
It came out to the power line, which was about where the canal was, and we turned to the right. I pushed on through the underbrush and reached the top of where the power house used to be, then turned to the right. There is a slope with a big washout of clay there.
New development
The washout is almost exactly on the spot where the plane used to exist. We had come up this on a hike in the past, but I had never tried to go down it. It’s pretty steep.
This time, I started carefully making my way down, and before I got to the bottom, at the really steep spot, I fell righ ton my ass.
My hands hit the dirt, and I was covered in the thick clay mud. There were no puddles or anything nearby to wash it off on. I tried using some of the dead leaves that were arond, but even a lot of them seemed to have the clay crap on it. I ended up using my pants.
New development
When we got to the bottom, and pretty much everyone did a better job descending than me, we turned to the left past a county installed gate, and then the turbine chamber was to the left. The tail race tunnel is still in place, although truncated thorugh exacavation associated with the brick factory. A large chunk of the west wall of the turbine chamber has been knocked out, which makes it possible to step inside. It sucks that this happened, but it makes it sort of like a dissection for public to see from afar.
I took this one when the development started work in 2017
We walked up and entered the turbine chamber, which is really a cool spot. When we developed the trail system for the Port Murray Preserve, we left this out because we haven’t quite figured out how we want to handle interpretation of the site, or security.
Development now
We walked down from this site, and then headed out to Brickyard Road, and I pointed out where the trolley tracks ended for the Easton-Washington Traction Company.
Plane 5 with the Katie Kellogg boat
The trolley line was supoposed to continue on to Hackettstown, but there were unwilling sellers in the land owners ahead, so it stopped there.
We continued up the road just a little bit more, and soon came to the regular trail access, where we would have come out if we’d not gone to the turbine chamber.
To the direct right of this is the actual base of Plane #5 West.
I pointed out the remainder of the cut where it was visible, and where there used to be a bridge over it. There was good rip rap rock still on the berm side.
Historic image swimming in the base of Plane 5
At this point, the trail actually continues down the private driveway used by Bill Haneszek, who is a really cool guy. I’d met up with him many times when I was building the trail ahead, and he was at first apprehensive about the trail, but we intentionally built it to move away from the canal where it becomes private as a neighborly gesture.
The other neighbor further up, Egnatz, was not so friendly and caused lots of problems. They would run their trucks high speed and tear up the road, and one time blew dirt and gravel on Sandy Westermann’s kids when they were there helping me do trail work.
The trail follows the driveway on the public land, but then goes down a steep slope. Dae Detrich made some nice steps with the Youth Corps kids to reach the switchback I put in, as well as one footbridge. Sandy and the kids helped me to build the trail from there down and along a creek to the west.
Meadows at Mansfield
Don Mayberry scouted it with me when the property was first acquired, and it was where he thought the trail should go, so I went with that.
We got it cleared to a nice wide open area where the brook bends and goes beneath the old trolley line fill, and Matt Davis and I built the section from there out to the trolley bed one day after we were both frustrated with work. Unfortunately, since that time, it has all badly grown in and we haven’t tried to keep it open because the canal greenway is not yet a through route. I’ll work on it again probably when it’s through.
Abandoned
When we turned onto the driveway, we paused at a concrete bridge crossing, where I pointed out that these were put in around 1927 after the canal was abandoned, by an engineer named Vermuele. The bridge does have drop slits that could have been used to keep the canal full however.
While we were there, a guy pulled up to the trail end in a pickup truck. We knew he didn’t belong there, because he turned around and hightailed it out of there after he saw us. There is no legal vehicle access to this site unless you’re volunteering or you live back the driveway at the end.
Musconetcong in Wattles Stewardship Center
We continued walking the driveway to the stairs, and then fought through the weeds heading down hill from the canal towpath to the base. A tree had fallen right up the middle of the trail at the bottom, and several more had fallen the rest of the way through. I figure this is probably why it was so badly overgrown. After the first one fell, if no one cleared it, it’s not going to stay open. We would need to go back there with chainsaws and open it up. It’s actually not a lot of work to open it all back up otherwise. Maybe a couple hours.
Stream in Wattles Center
We crossed the first foot bridge, reached the brook again and used a rock hop, then came to the pleasant open area. I at first tried to continue down the trail that Matt and I had built, and it was too awful to get through. We then climbed directly up the slope of the old trolley grade.
We turned right on the rail bed, and walked it to where a driveway turned off of it to reach the other private house. The canal is watered and in nice shape beyond, and directly parallel with the trolley bed, but we were not taking either of them this time. Instead, we turned to the left on an abandoned road going south.
The Musconetcong
Back in the canal days, and some days after, this would have been the main road to the last house out there. Today, the driveway to the last house is directly on the old trolley bed, but that would not have been the case when the trolley was active, and the house predates the trolley.
We followed the road and soon came to the stone arch underpass of the former Morris and Essex Railroad. It remains in pretty good shape, and might date back to the original 1860s construction of the line.
On the other side, the road is now long gone. The open area is fast turning into the Meadows at Mansfield Development, and it used to be the old Anema Farm.
My friend Jared Weirzbicki from high school, who was also class Secretary (I was Vice President), is one of the builders, and I had discussed with him somewhat recently the prospect of having a formal trail connection between the new development and the Port Murray Preserve.
The falls
It seems to me a sensible way of going about it, because an easement was supposed to exist out through the Anema farm to get to the site, which the new development has ignored.
I told Jared I thought it would be a good thing to be able to have access to the park, and actually be a good selling point or potential buyers of the homes.
In addition to that, I am looking out for the friendly neighbors we have met who live back there. The problem is, if the bridge over the railroad tracks on the present Brickyard Road ever fails, the two or three landowners will be responsible.
At the falls
Back when the Lackawanna Railroad had it, if a bridge failed, they would replace it. Even when Erie Lackawanna and Conrail took over, they too would take care of the bridges. When Norfolk Southern took over for Conrail, they stopped repairing the bridges. The next bridge west of Brickyard Road, known as Hart’s Lane, was in need of replacement, and I understand the people who lived back there had to go to great expenses to have the bridge replaced. This is a huge cost, and some land owners might be forced out if such a cost were imposed on them.
The way I see it, if there is a legal access out by way of the culvert directly to Rt 57, it would be not only of value as park access, but for those residents back there should the bridge fail. Since this goes under the tracks rather than over, any problem with the culvert would be the responsibility of the railroad.
My grandfather has a survey that shows the easement, so hopefully something can be one that will be of benefit to everyone involved with the project.
"Fritch Falls"
We walked by way of the access road up into the development, which now has some houses up and lived in. I had gotten some photos there before any of them went up, and it’s quite different to see what it looks like now. There were people working on the landscape in front.
At the falls
There were a couple of earth movers and guys around. I texted Jared a photo of the potential connection, but as of now I have not gotten a response back from him.
We reached the entrance to the development on Rt 57, where there is a splendid view to the Anderson area to the left.
Andersontown was first settled in the 1700s, when Mr. Anderson built the hotel at the bottom of the hill that still stands, and is actually now used as a sort of breakfast deli place. I asked if anyone wanted to stop at the hotel for food or snack, and no one did, so we went across on Komar Road, past a couple of abandoned houses. I think my friend Tara used to live in one of them back my senior year in high school, but I can’t remember which one.
The falls
We turned right at the end of the very short road onto Asbury-Anderson Road, and walked up hill a bit. We cut into a field to the left, and then reached the driveway to the Wattles Stewardship Center of the Audubon Society.
There were still trails within this preserve I had never done before, and I figured this would be a good time to do them.
We continued to where there was a gated area to fields on the right. We turned there and skirted some more fields, and then cut into another one to the left, which ws full of pumpkins. I figure this was probabably left out as deer feed for some sort of lethal roundup. There is no public hunting there, but they might bring in sharp shooters like for some sort of deprivation permit. I’m not sure.
At the end of the field, we cut into woods on a small path, which skirted a partially knocked down deer exclosure fence. We then reached a wide cleared trail and turned right.
Old bottle dump in a former iron mine
The trail turned hard left and paralleled a small tributary all the way out to the Musconetcong River. It was running pretty heavily at almost flood level.
There was no bridge over the tributary, so we had to backtrack. We followed the stream back the way we had come, and then further toward the house in the Stewardship Center. We turned right over a bridge spanning the brook on a marked trail, and then skirted fields to close to the house. We turned right there, then left through a tree line, and then right along the other side. It was at this point we found blazes again.
The trail took us out toward the river once again, and then turned left to parallel it through the farm fields.
We continued to the end of this field, and there was a trail into the woods I don’t remember being there the last time I visited. It led into the woods to a plantation of young trees surrounded by little plastic tubes. I think the entire thing might be new.
An old bottle I found
The clear trail continued to the right side of the plantation, through a wooded area close to the Musconetcong. We left the far side of the plantation, and then the trail turned left and climbed a steep slope to the fields of Musconetcong Wildlife Management Area. The Audubon land appears to be just a small swath, and it’s surrounded by the state land.
There was a trail that remained close to the river, so we tried to follow that one a bit more. Unfortunately, that one disappeared pretty quickly, and there was a steep slope between the river and the hillside.
I decided I would try to climb to the top and see if there was a better way out of there.
It was a tough climb, but there was a nice shelf between the fields and woods up there.
We turned right at the top, and made our way out toward the Point Mountain Bridge, which had only recently been replaced.
The old bridge was one of the last three of it’s kind of pony truss bridges to span the Musconetcong. The others are at Hackettstown Union Cemetery and Netcong.
The old mine
We reached the bridge, and I stood in teh river up to just above my knees to try to get some of the mud from earlier off.
We crossed over and Robin reached her car. She cut out and the rest of us continued from there directly up Point Mountain Road. I had considered going up to the peak, but then figured it would be going up only to come back down. It was getting cloudy, and it started to lightly rain when we were in Port Murray Preserve. We’d be better off just sticking to staying lower.
My next plan was to take everyone to the waterfall, which few know about. My dad and I call it “Fritch Falls”, because that was his mother’s maiden name, and they owned the house at the base of the falls, just barely out of sight of it. It was built supposedly as a Summer home for the Fritch family in the 1800s, and my dad went to live there when he was a teenager.
Stone row
The house does seem to appear on an 1873 map of Lebanon Township, which shows it belonging to a “Huffman”.
After a little while going up Point Mountain Road, we reached Hunterdon County park signs on the right. At that point, we started cutting off of the road and heading gradually down hill toward the creek, for which I do not know the name.
It is a steep slope, but we moved on upstream carefully. The falls soon came into view ahead. I knew they would be flowing well when we started the hike, because we had been getting a decent amount of rain.
Point Mountain South
Everyone seemed pretty well impressed with it. Justin climbed the right side and found the geocache that was up there.
I got several photos, and we began climbing the right side of the slope above the falls, then started walking along the creek upstream.
The next point of interest was an old iron mine I had found earlier this year.
I have gone to the falls so many times, and then bushwhacked up to the yellow blazed trail further up, but for some reason the existence of an old iron mine always escaped me. The last time I was there, I noticed the tailings pile around it.
On the Point Mountain sign
The old mine is just a trench, not really anything you can go in, which was full of all sorts of old bottles. It was amazing that not many of them had been smashed. Really no one goes back there.
When I talked to my dad about it the next day, he said he remembered it, but only remembered it being full of bottles. I told him they were still there, which goes to show that people don’t really go back there.
I went through some of them, and then found a Hoffman Soda bottle, which I decided to keep.
Albert and Joyce Hoffman lived in Hunterdon County, in what is now Hoffman Park, and the business is long gone. I figured this was a cool one to have. It had Newark, New Jersey written right on the bottle.
We headed up hill from here, along the edge of the mine, and then along the slope to the west. I figured we would head out to Mountaintop Road and then follow that the rest of the way, but then the woods was so open and easy, I decided we would head up hill.
I spotted another prospect pit that could have been a mine on the way.
We went up hill, and there was almost no undergrowth until we came to the top, just beyond a handsome stone row. There, it was an impenetrable mess of thorns.
I tried to get around them, but it was no good. We were very close to the fields on the far side of Point Mountain South, where the trail comes out to Mountaintop Road, but it was a mess to try to fight through.
I decided we would follow the top of the stone row to the west a bit, which worked out well because it turned to the south, and led us basically out to the fields I wanted to get to. We then were able to walk through them right on to the trail.
The old Henry Addickes House next to my grandfather's
We took the trail out to the parking area, then turned left on Mountaintop Road.
It started raining really heavily when we got there, only a mile from the end. I took my umbrella out, and the wind kept annoyingly opening it.
We pushed on up the hill, and soon reached my grandfather’s house to finish the hike. Amazingly, it was only just after 3:30 pm. We had moved along very fast and did the entire hike as I had planned it, without goofing off too much. Ken put a blanket down on his seat to drive Justin and I back, without causing a mess.
The rain pretty much held out the entire hike, and we had a pretty nice time of it. It goes to show never to trust the apocalyptic forecasts, they’re almost never worth much.
HAM
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