Hike #1388; South Brunswick to New Brunswick

Hike #1388: 1/24/21 South Brunswick to New Brunswick with Jennifer Berndt, Jennifer Tull, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, Serious Sean Dougherty, Vi Chen, Professor John DiFiore, Shayna Michaels, Jeremy ?, Helen Li, Diane Reider, Stephen Argentina, Heshi and his daughter, Elizabeth Manner, Carolyn Gokhale Gordon, Diane Reider, Maggie Lin, Daniel Trump, and Karen New.

This next trip would be a point to point in the areas south of New Brunswick, an oddball route I put together using all sorts of different stuff that tied into some of our past adventures.

One of the main things I wanted to cover was the old Newark-Trenton Fast Line, operated by the Public Service Railroad, a subsidiary of the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey.

This was an amazing interurban trolley between the two cities, which first opened for regular service in 1904 as the Newark and Trenton Railroad. Public Service Railroad consolidated and extended on it offering lots of service around New Brunswick and through from Jersey City to Trenton, and more.
Unlike many first impressions of trolleys that come to mind, the Newark-Trenton Fast Line was mostly “cross country”, meaning it was not a street car, but rather it’s own electric railroad right of way. 

The trolleys overcame elevations a bit more than regular railroads because their light weight would allow for such. It makes walking the lines a bit different but as interesting.

Like most of the lines, trolley mania only lasted a few years, and by the end of World War I in 1919, it was already on fast decline. It limited service for several years before the main route discontinued service entirely in January of 1936. The last section in New Brunswick closed in 1937. Shortly after, high tension wires were placed on the right of way, and later a gas line utilized more of it.

In addition to the old trolley right of way, the other thing I really wanted to cover more of was the extensive greenways we had discovered east of there. I had incorporated part of the Ireland Brook greenway into a hike in the past, but looking into it further revealed that there was quite a lot more out there I needed to cover.
There was enough greenway connecting with the trolley bed basically two ways that I could do all new stuff, parallel with a portion of it that I'd already walked in the past, and bring together several other things I'd been wanting to do for a long time.
We met in New Brunswick adjacent to the On The Border Mexican Grill and Cantina so we could have a bite to eat at the end, an then shuttled with as few cars as possible to the point I determined for meeting.

This would be the Summerfield Shopping Center in a section of South Brunswick area called Dayton.
It turned out that one of the hikers actually lived in adjacent buildings to the shopping center but still went to the start. I think it was Violet?
I never post the actual start points of the hikes because them people tend to just show up there and it becomes a problem. Everyone trying to do that means that there are not enough cars to shuttle people to the start or back or whatever.

We started walking from the parking lot to the north across Rt 522.
Like I do with night hikes, I looked at this one as every green swath was hiking territory. As such, we walked right onto the berm of a retention pond and skirted the development across the street.
We skirted Scenic Drive, and then went into Scenic Park. Of course I joked about how scenic the retention ponds and bland ball fields were as we walked along them.
The old trolley bed is now utilized as a power line right of way adjacent to these properties to the west.

My plan was to cut away form this little local park through woods and just come out on the trolley right of way to continue north for a bit.
We cut into the woods on the northwest side of one of the ball fields, but it turned out to be a sopping wet nightmare. The entire woods was basically springs and marshes. There were some berms and such probably from times of sod or onion farming or something, but it was nothing that could be easily navigated. We tried to push our way through, and still had to cross a small stream before we could emerge on the trolley bed.

It took some time, but everyone got out to the trolley bed. We then continued to the north through high grasses toward Rt 130.
Crossing a highway like that can be as bad as trying to cross any body of water. Fortunately, the weekend traffic wasn't so bad and we were able to push through alright.
On the other side, the trolley power line had work going on. The upgrades from either old wooden poles or iron ladies style towers have been traded off for much taller, octagonal post monstrosities lately.

The only good thing that comes out of construction such is that is that there are often long plank roads used by their machines to get out into wet areas. This entire area would be something like that.
The next foolish assumption on my part was that perhaps there would be some sort of bridge over a stream ahead known as the Great Ditch. Since they had it planked much of the way out to 130, it seemed logical to me.

Well, that did not go so well. I got to the stream, and although it looked small on aerial images, this was not something we were going to be crossing on the cold weather.
There was no choice at this point but to backtrack a bit to 130 and follow it to the east.
My alternative plan (I at least planned for that) was to walk through adjacent cemeteries, which I'd done before to some point when walking some of the trolley.

We went just a short distance and came to what google maps calls Oaklawn Memorial Park. Other spots it is referred to as Degel Yehudo Cemetery. Whatever it's really called, we cut into that to the left, over a swath of lawn before the entrance, and then walked north along the grass of the west side of the clearing.
We continued north through this area, which took us over a bridge over the Great Ditch, and then further north across through wide open areas to Deans Rhode Hall Road.

Many years ago I walked the trolley bed into this area by way of similar roundabout route, on a hike that was to end in nearby Davidson's Mill Pond Park. That time I dashed across the swamp to get to the trails there. It wasn't easy, but this time would be far easier. I probably could have done it back then, but I didn't yet know about this route. I found the one we would take this time the very last time I did any of this trolley bed, walking it from the north from Farrington Lake.

The cemetery route continued on the other side of the street, apparently under several different names according to the google maps.

We returned to the trolley right of way and headed north for a ways. This section of power line upgrade had already been completed unlike the section closer to the highway.

We continued along the power line for just a little bit until a woods road led to the left, near the intersection of another power line coming in on the right.
We turned here for a bit, and then soon turned left on the Hidden Pond Trail, which was blazed yellow.
The pond referred to on this trail name was at the start of it, and we continued to meander on the trail through the woods. The yellow trail followed a former farm road ahead, and a simple narrow foot path to the left. 

What I did not realize when we started walking this was that much of the group was still behind. They did not see us go left on the yellow trail and continued straight out to Davidson's Mill Pond itself.
After walking down this trail for a while, and missing a couple of phone calls at least, I think Justin or someone got a call saying that the others were behind and couldn't find us.
I had them just go out to the mill pond and wait. At this point, they wouldn't catch up with us for a long time, and I was looking at taking several different trails.

We intersected with the white trail an went left.
A lot of this was former farm roads of the Tantum Farm, which dated back to the 1800s. The land for Davidson's Mill Pond Park had its original acquisition in 1975 under Green Acres and had additional acquisitions added in subsequent years. The first time I went through this park on a hike, not all of these trails were open yet. On my last visit, I had followed the yellow blazed trail to the east and took a shorter route through.

After a fork in the white trail, on the left was the blue blazed Mill Pond Trail, which I had never done before and wasn't on trail maps I don't believe the last time I was in the park.
It was a narrow foot path that descended down along Davidson's Mill Pond, and it was an absolutely lovely route.
I was impressed to see this trail, which apparently had something to do with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension, was extremely well graded and included various sections of stone steps.

They were among the best stone steps we've hiked, and ranked among some of the best we've seen by SCA and through the Catskills. They must have brought in the stones to make them from elsewhere because we didn't see anything of the sort throughout the park.

Those that went through wrong way when we did this trail missed quite a lot of stuff I guess. It seemed like we were walking the partial loop around this park for quite a while.

When we finally came out to a parking area at the end of the Mill Pond Trail, we turned left into open area and reunited with the rest of the group. We then walked across wide grassy fields to the main park entrance road off of Riva Avenue.

Across the entrance road, the Farrington Lake Trail entered the woods and descended to cross Riva Ave.
We followed this, and went downhill toward the lake edge where there was both an upper and lower trail. We turned right to begin following the foot path along the lake shore.
This particularly pretty lake followed along the slope above the Lawrence Brook where it flowed out of Davidson's Mill Pond, and then we witnessed the beginning slack water leading to Farrington Lake.

Farrington Lake is really very long. It's over three and a half miles in length, and that's not even counting the curves of the lake shore that would certainly make it over four.

The trail continued along the edge of the lake, and then came out to Riva Avenue when the slope between road and lake were too much.

We crossed Davidson's Mill Road adjacent to a bridge, and then continued along the slope of the lake heading to the northeast.

The trail eventually terminated further up on Riva Avenue. We turned onto the road, crossed the Ireland Brook, and then on the right started the blue blazed Forest Brook Trail.

The trail went up only slightly and then leveled off a bit. There were mowed paths in this park, and different options we could take for parts of the loops. We kept straight on this one, which took us through a pretty stand of immature Birch, densely growing together.
I had been on part of this trail before, on the previous hike in this area. This was how I knew how to connect this blue trail with the rest of the Ireland Brook Conservation Area upstream.

The blue blazed trail just loops on itself and does not cross the Ireland Brook to connect with the rest of the preserve. It is only a small brook, but still would require getting wet to wade it.
When we reached the power line clearing, which was the trolley line again, we turned right and then just into the woods is a fallen tree over the brook large enough to cross rather easily on. We did this and then got up on the old trolley right of way yet again.

The trolley bridge at this point was long gone.

We were now following the rail bed on the power line back the direction we had come from a bit.

This led us out to where there was parking for the Ireland Brook Trail, which was yellow blazed, at the end of Parkview Court.
We turned left into the woods and started following the trail.
It split immediately, and we opted to take the left fork which was a bit closer to the Ireland Brook itself.
Ahead, we went across many puncheons through the wet woods, which was very beautiful and pleasant walking. I was really glad to have incorporated this route.

The trail descended and came to the edge of the Ireland Brook after a bit, and we took a little break before reaching the crossing of Fresh Ponds Road.
The trail crossed Ireland Brook on the road bridge, and then went through more woods, winding around like crazy. There were more lovely sections of puncheons and lots of wetlands. There was a fallen tree with an incredible root system and plenty of pretty woods.

Eventually, we emerged from the woods into the edge of a field. The trail skirted the sides, and some of the areas were enclosed by electric fences.

At one point, we went under the electric fences, which were raised for safety between field sections we followed.
A side trail broke off to the left near the end of the trail that maps called Pseudacris Trail, which is inexplicable to me. We followed it to check out the view of the vernal pool along it.
From here, we headed out to Beekman Road, and the hike took on a different character than I was planning just because of the time and amount of distance we had left before finishing.

My intention had been to continue east through undeveloped land without official trails, get to the other side of NJ Turnpike, then pass through Heavenly Farms Park. 

I decided we were going to skip any of that stuff this time. The amount of mileage we had accrued at this point was already going to be higher than anticipated so we cut a corner.

The amended route was to simply turn left on Beekman Road.
This was a pleasant back road with hardly any traffic anyway. There wasn't a very good route across the street into the woods anyway because it was so much wetland. We would have had to go south more to get into anything.
We headed up as far as Church Lane and turned left.
We went for a little ways until there was a small farm access into a field to the right. I found that this was an undeveloped segment of the Tamarack Hollow Preserve, which would make up the next leg of the hike.

We skirted the fields of this segment to the left side heading to the north.
There were no signs saying to stay out of there, but I figured it probably wasn't an area they were actively telling people they could be.
We came close to the back yard of one home, but other than that we were mostly pretty secluded.
At the end of the first field, a farm lane cut through an area of trees to a second field, where we skirted to the right. Doing this brough us out to Fresh Ponds Road.

We turned left briefly, and then soon turned right into the Tamarack Hollow Preserve on a blue blazed trail called the Fresh Ponds Spur Trail.
We continued through woods to the white blazed Tamarack Trail and turned right.
We meandered through more nice woods, and somehow we ended up getting off of the official trail system. I think a few in the group, maybe Violet because she lived so close, opted to leave early around this point because they knew the property and could get out of the woods alright on their own.

The tract of land is about 232 acres that was originally slated for 57 homes and a sewage treatment plant, but it was somehow saved. I think the trail must not have been marked all that well, because we somehow got off of it. We ended up walking some woods road in the wrong direction.

I recall we had to turn back at some point in there, and then there was a side trail that went to the right a bit. I watched on the GPS where we were ending up, and fortunately it took us out to the end of a dead end street with public land signs. It wasn't part of Tamarack Hollow I don't think, but probably a municipal tract or something.

We walked out to the end of the road, which I think was Henry Street, and then reached the crossing of the former trolley line at the intersection with Hillcrest Street.

Ahead, we were back on track with where we should have been, and the rest of the hike was to follow the old trolley right of way as closely as we could to the end point.
Of course, I knew this wasn't possible, and although we reached it right here, the inlet where Beaverdam Brook enters Farrington Lake is impassable. We had to continue left down Henry Street to Riva Ave and then turn right again.
We did just that and got back to the trolley crossing on Riva, and many in the group were way behind us. Unfortunately, they made the wrong decision to try to follow the trolley grade from up there, and got to the deep water impasse. They had to go back around.

When they finally got back down to us, I decided we weren't going to try to follow the trolley bed just yet. It was signed no trespassing from this side.

I wasn't worried about covering this section again because I had followed it on my previous trip anyway.
I felt like I wanted to avoid any problems on it because we had a much larger group this time, so we instead headed up Dorolee Drive. I think I was intending to go up Oakmont Ave to the east and made the mistake of heading uphill on this instead. Rather than bring everybody back down, since we were going farther than I had planned, we instead continued to the end.

At the cul de sac at the end of this road, we cut directly into the woods, quickly and quietly, and bushwhacked parallel with the power line and trolley bed.
I didn't think it would be difficult or go on for as long as it did, but it was admittedly a bit rough.
We bullied through a lot of the stuff and then emerged in a meadow area with interesting vines growing along the more sparse trees.
We then turned left and made our way out to the utility line and trolley bed adjacent to the Elks Club.

We just stayed on the right of way from this point out to Hardenburgh Lane, where the trolley used to cross the Farrington Lake on a causeway and bridge (see semi then and now photo of one crossing compared with the scene now above).
Like the finger of the pond at Beaverdam Brook to the south, this causeway is also incomplete.
To get by it, we turned to the left, and the road changed names to Washington Place.
I had considered stopping for lunch at a bar to the left, but it was getting too late to do that.

We passed it up, and then turned to the right on Miriam Drive, and then right again on Hamlin Road.
The trolley bed and power line were clear behind houses but there was no way to get to it yet.
We continued to Morton Road on the right, and took a break at the tiny Farrington Oaks Park.
From there, we were able to get on the trolley bed again and continue easily to the north.
Mink Run Court was parallel just ahead, and then a paved trail emerged from that road onto the right of way. We continued ahead on actual trail for a bit.

We skirted a power substation on the trail, and then it turned away from the power line into the Eisenhower Playground area to our left. Another side path led to the Farrington Lake spillway, which I'd have liked to see, but we had a while to go and I didn't want to take any more extra time at all. We could do that another time.
The right of way soon passed more closely between homes, and we crossed over Farrington Blvd. We then passed over Hoover Drive.

I would suspect that some roads were there when the trolley was in service, but some of these were later development roads that resulted in cutting through the right of way.

The downs and ups along some of this were too much for rail. Although trolleys could handle more difficult grades than steam locomotives because of lighter weight and such, these were too much.

We crossed over the Sucker Brook on a higher fill, and I would assume that the trolley underpass must still be down there, but I didn't try to go down to have a look at it.
We continued through the suburbs; we crossed Brook Drive, Clay Street, North Main Street, Lawrence Street, Highland Drive, and then skirted an industrial building to the right, open field of David B. Crabiel Park, and some sort of college campus to the left. We then crossed an industrial access road, and then descended to an active railroad spur that visibly dead ended to the left of us.

College Farm Road ahead had covered over the tracks there completely, at the approach to the Rt 1 underpass.

The line we were crossing was the Raritan River Railroad, which was founded in 1888. By 1890, it extended from Sayreville to New Brunswick. It was originally intended to travel as far as Bound Brook but was not completed.
The twelve mile line had a couple of industrial branches added that went to other locations like South River. It served both passenger and freight, and made connections with both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York and Long Branch. It was 60% owned by Central Railroad of New Jersey and 40% by Pennsylvania Railroad at some point.

It remained an independent company until it was absorbed into Conrail in 1980 which renamed it the Sayreville Secondary.
I'm not sure when the line was cut off at Rt 1 and into downtown New Brunswick, but it might not have been all that long ago.
We climbed across the track and up the slope on the other side to get back on the trolley bed. I don't remember seeing any evidence of bridge abutments that would have carried it over the Raritan River Railroad, but it certainly would have had to have one because they coexisted the entire time the trolley was in service.

We cut across some field on the other side, sticking to the trolley bed, and then skirted College Farm Road briefly. We crossed where that road turned to the right, and then turned left to resume walking on the trolley bed. At this point, we were directly adjacent to Rt 1.
At that point, there was a cloverleaf ahead where Ryders Road crosses Rt 1, and it would have been a crap mess to try to figure out how to bypass that. Fortunately, we surprisingly came upon a pedestrian underpass of Rt 1 to the left! This took us over to skirt Rutgers owned fields on the north side of Rt 1!

Timing for this was perfect. We turned right, and were able to just parallel 1 on the other side.

Splendid parking by Jen!

The mowed edge of the fields brought us on to Ryders Lane, which we followed north for just a bit.
While walking this section of road, I found a really nice Eastwing hammer just laying there, so I threw it into my pack to use for work (I still use it regularly to this day there).
When it was safe, we dashed across Ryders Lane and then through trees into parking lots, through Rutgers property, and past some sort of campus buildings, stores, and a Houlihan's restaurant. 
The parking lots are mostly all interconnected, and it brought us right to On the Border where we had met in the morning, and we went in and had ourselves some really delicious Mexican dinner to close out the great day.
I really need to return to this vicinity again because there is so much more to see around there. I could do another variation of this same hike, covering the different trails from the loops and it would still be at least 40% a different hike.
The more we do, the bigger the "to do" list gets. If my misfortune is never running out, I'll count myself lucky.