Hike #1394; Whiting to Waretown

Hike #1394: 2/21/21 Whiting to Waretown with Justin Gurbisz, Jennifer Berndt, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, Eric Pace, Jennifer Tull, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Serious Sean Dougherty, Shane Blishe, Professor John DiFiore, Violet Chen, David Adams, David Seals, Helen Li, and Jeff Cummings

This next hike would be another return to the Pine Barrens area, this time to tie up another loose in on some of the historic abandoned railroad alignments.

It had been about a full year since we had finished hiking the Pennsylvania Railroad Atlantic Division, at the very start of the pandemic, and this time we would return to the same location we started that hike, only hike the historic route of the Tuckerton Railroad to the southeast.

The Tuckerton Railroad operated from Whiting to Tuckerton and was built in 1871. It made connections in Whiting with both the New Jersey Southern/Jersey Central line, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Atlantic Division. Further down by Barnegat it made connection with the Barnegat Branch of the CNJ.

The meeting point I chose was the Big Lots in Waretown near where the Central Railroad of New Jersey Barnegat Branch came close together with the Tuckerton Railroad.
There was sort of a union station in Whiting because it was located at the spot where the three rail lines came together. It was a handsome structure for which only the foundation remains today, as seen in the then and now compilation I assembled at the beginning of this hike.

The Tuckerton Railroad operated through the 1930s, but when a storm wrecked the bridge over the Barnegat Bay, abandonment was applied for in 1936. The line pushed along without much going for it until the last revenue service occurred in 1940.
Much of the line was scrapped that year with the fifty year old Engine #5. When scrapping was complete, the engine itself was cut up and scrapped at Barnegat.
Some of the Tuckerton rails remained in place as a siding for the Jersey Central until 1973.

Despite having been abandoned so long ago, the line remained somewhat intact thanks in part by use of the right of way by utilities.
I'd been looking at the right of way for years. On any aerial image, the line is so obvious even when panned far out, connecting from Whiting down to Waretown area.
Now that I had done the entire PRR Atlantic Division, all of the CNJ Barnegat Branch, and all of the Tuckerton Railroad south of Waretown, it only made sense that the next thing on the list should be to close this gap.

After meeting at the Odd Lots in Waretown, we shuttled in as few cars as possible on up to Whiting to start the hike. We parked in the Whiting Town Center strip mall area.
We walked right from the start, under a building awning, and across Diamond Road onto the utility line that used to be the Pennsylvania Railroad Atlantic Division.
We followed this to the right, and continued to the crossing of the New Jersey Southern/CNJ line where we went over some of the history of what we would be following. I turned it over to Shane to talk about that some.
We checked out the fenced in former foundation of the Whiting Station, and then headed to the right, to where Station Road is pretty much built on the old Tuckerton Railroad bed.

A portion of the old turntable is still recognizable here, surrounded by the same type of fence as the station foundation.

The first leg of the old railroad bed now has paved trail parallel with the road. It was well cleared of snow, so the first bit of it was quite pleasant. The path was on the east side of the road for a while, until the crossing with Monroe Ave, and then it shifted to the west side of the road.

Unfortunately, the improved surface didn't last too long, and we were soon walking the road. It ended just before getting to Harry Wright Lake.
This was a really pretty area to the right. I stepped off of the road edge to walk closer to the lake while we were parallel with it.
To the right of the road, I noted what looked to be a siding of some sort. What looked like a rather obvious railroad fill, but I haven't seen anything of it on any maps, so I'm not sure what it was.

We continued to walk the road ahead, and near the intersection with Pershing Ave, the pavement ended.

Station Road at some point changed names to Lake Road.
The railroad bed was now a sand road ahead. We soon passed by the Nessie Bog wildlife viewing area. There is a mock up of the Loch Ness Monster's head coming up out of the water which must be how it got the name.

After a bit, Lacey Road came in from the left and sort of merged with Lake Road, and Lacey Road continued in name ahead. I thought the railroad bed was the road here as well, but it was a pleasant surprise that we didn't have to road walk. The old Tuckerton Railroad bed was well into the woods from the road to the right, and mostly clear!

Edge Avenue and Mule Road both intersected on the north and south sides of this intersection. I noted blue blazes on these sand roads denoting that this was part of the High Point to Cape May Trail that was being worked on mostly in the southern part of the state.

I had been part of talks on this trail when it was first devised, and there were some great ideas, but they were looking at superimposing onto a lot of other trails already used by other things, and so only really the southern portion of it was very interesting to me. I made some suggestions to keep the trail near the middle of the state, and let them know that they couldn't use the Appalachian Trail without going through the Secretary of the Interior.

I'm not sure how far along they got, but it was interesting to see the blazing, and maybe I'll try to go back and do a series on that for a bit one day.

We soon came toward the settlement of Bamber, near Bamber Lake. There was once a station here, and when we got to where we understood it to be, I think at Dover Road, we found the foundation just inside the woods.

We had to get off of the rail bed when Cedar Creek passed by. The bridge that carried the line over the creek is long gone, so we had to use the road bridge and stayed down from there for a bit.

Some of the wooden supports for the old wooden bridge were still surprisingly recognizable in the stream.

Lacey Road turned slightly left at the intersection with Good Luck Road, and there the Tuckerton Railroad too turned away from the road to go straight.

Unfortunately, this bit was developed over so we would have to continue on the road ahead a couple of blocks, and regain the right of way at Maple Road.
The next part of this through the woods was incredibly pleasant. It was not a road at all, just a narrow right of way that was perfect.

We crossed a sand access road to a sand quarry, continued on the right of way ahead, and then came to an obliterated spot with sand quarry lake on the right of us. 

It looked like we picked the right day to do this because the snow probably keeps them from operating. 

I didn't want to stay out in the open there for too long, so we hurried ahead and crossed the large, paved access road to the sand plant. Ahead, the railroad bed had been overtaken by a substantial unpaved access road. 

This was a pretty pleasant walk. We had trees to our left and a lot of open sand land to our right. We just kept moving until the road started to turn away from the railroad bed. We had to go to the left a bit as it had turned slightly away from it, either bushwhacking up a bit or taking a slight detour onto a short swath of road that picked up the rail bed on the other side, called "Old Road" on Google maps. Here, the right of way became a power line once again.

There were some really nice views of the lakes created through sand quarrying.

We continued through woods, went onto a bit of a fill, and crossed a creek known as the Factory Branch. In this area, in Lacey Township, we entered Forked River Mountain Wildlife Management Area.
There were several sand roads going off in all directions through this entire area. We could easily spend many days wandering through all of this. 

There were wet area son the rail bed where different branches of the Forked River, springs and such, drained over the rail bed. I'd suspect that this must have been a problem in railroad days as well.

It was a long stretch of woods. We eventually got to the North Branch of the Forked River, which had only a couple of cut poles across as a walkway. 

Some of us just walked across using both of the boards, others sat down and edged their way across the river. Serious Sean took a different approach and threw himself into the stream saying he was reenacting something from the past I think, but now I can't remember what it was!
Some of the footings for the original railroad bridge were still visible in the darkened water from the evergreens.
The right of way got wide, many more sand roads came in from the left and right, and we passed another nice spring pond on the right.
At one point, the entire right of way passed through a cut where it was full of water. To the left, there was a parallel ATV path we could walk to avoid getting completely soaked.
The power line left the railroad bed in this area and went to the east.
After a bit, we got to where the right of way crosses the South Branch of the Forked River.

Based on the height of the right of way on either side, I would suspect there was probably a substantial wooden beam trestle that crossed over this branch in this area. I saw no remnants of beam footings or any other kind of supports, but there had to have been something substantial. It isn't that huge a stream, but it would certainly be a problematic spot during times of flood. All that was there when we got there were two corrugated pipes laid in the middle of the stream, but not doing anything at all to keep it from washing over. 

Some of the members of the group tried to find a way around downstream, but I didn't foresee there being any option. Everyone had to wade the stream, which was freezing cold because it was taking on the snow melt off that was still actively happening.

Beyond this crossing, the woods was loaded with ATV paths everywhere. I suppose the people that traverse this section of the Pine Barrens don't always stray all that far. Certainly most don't even bother to ride the distance we had just walked.

The section ahead was a bit of a problem I had to figure out when I was planning the hike. Two obstacles stood in our way of continuing. The first and most obvious one was the Garden State Parkway bisected the right of way. The other problem was Oyster Creek, which passes under the Parkway in this area as well, and the railroad used to cross it in the same area as the northbound lane.

The first option was to leave the railroad bed entirely and head south on parallel sand roads to reach Wells Mills Road. Another choice would be to go to the Parkway and head south somewhat to where it crosses the Oyster Creek, and there is a grassy swath with plenty of room to walk over the creek bridge and continue down to Wells Mills parallel.

The final choice, which I didn't think would be as plausible as it was, would be to just dash across the Garden State Parkway and continue.

If the group was adamantly against it, we wouldn't do it, but the north and southbound lanes were so far apart, the only thing we'd have to cross were three lanes of one direction at a time. We had certainly done worse than this before.

We kept moving toward the Parkway, and the right of way became inundated with water. A parallel path led around it, and we only had to do a slight bit of bushwhacking.

When we got to the Parkway, it wasn't bad at all. We could see the traffic coming from a long distance from the crossing, and so we just dashed across. 

The right of way in the wide woodsy median between the north and southbound was a bit more overgrown, but still very easily passable. Someone had left a giant reel wheel about five feet tall in this section.

When we reached the northbound lane, it was a bit trickier. It wasn't really busier, but the railroad used to cross the Oyster Creek at the exact location where the northbound lane crosses it. We had to dash across and cross the creek, which had another wide grassy swath on the other side outside of the travel lanes, so it ended up being easy also.

Just a short bullying through a line of trees led to a wide sandy opening with a picnic bench along the edge of the Oyster Creek, on the once again clear railroad bed.
The right of way through this next stretch was regularly used by passenger vehicles we could see. Snow was not deep, and there were fresh tire tracks. Someone had affixed a random stop sign to a tree out in these woods.
The rail bed came out to the busy Wells Mills Road, and then crossed directly over through another swath of woods at the Waretown Creek, and then crossed Greenbriar Blvd, the entrance to a private community.

We hurriedly crossed and took a break behind some evergreens for a short time to let everyone catch up. I wanted to keep everyone close together as we were now finally getting out to more developed area and I didn't want to run into any problems.

When we were all together, we got back on the right of way and started heading to the southeast, sandwiched closely between the homes on Belmar Blvd of the private community, and the homes to the left off of Laurelwyck Drive.

Aside from a little local use and people dumping their lawn trimmings and such, this section did not have much activity. It was still pretty easy to navigate through. It was only barely a bushwhack.

It widened out an an ATV path joined in from the left, and then it was really clear for a good while. 
Eventually, the clearing led us out to cross the access road to the Greenbriar maintenance building. We crossed that, and then crossed over Pancoast Road, which goes into the private community.

Once we were directly across that, we we got to be closely parallel with the Barnegat Branch of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which we had hiked in the past.
I had never followed the old Tuckerton line parallel with the Barnegat Branch, but it was obvious that a lot of people walk it in this area as an alternative to the often busy Barnegat Branch Trail which gets inundated with fast moving cyclists. It was really a lot more pleasant for walking and still so close.

We continued on the right of way parallel with the Barnegat Branch for a good long while until we reached Barnegat Blvd. We got over on the Barnegat Branch Trail for the last little bit of time before that road, and then we all turned off to the left to reach Rt 9 and the plaza where we parked.

We stopped to have dinner at the Naples Pizza place across the street from where we met.

We had some terrific pizza, the likes of which we don't typically expect from south Jersey establishments.
Then, Mr. Buckett and Eric drove some of us back to the start to Whiting where I had also shuttled.
Instead of taking the Garden State Parkway in order to save a dollar, he took us a weird roundabout way that lasted probably double the time, but involved listening to classic Mr. Buckett diatribe that only he can create, so it was of course a hilarious treat.
I wish I could remember some of the things he was saying, because it's comedy gold.
And so ended another fantastic day tracing an historic route, and closed another series that had been started years before and had been on the cusp of completion.