Hike #1413; Oxford/Roaring Rock/Washington

 

Hike #1413: 5/13/21 Oxford/Roaring Rock/Washington with Justin Gurbisz, Jennifer Tull, Professor John DiFiore, Kirk Rohn, Stephen Argentina, Diane Reider, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Jennifer Berndt, Serious Sean Dougherty, and Celeste Fondaco Martin

This next hike would be a point to point scouting trip with the main purpose of it being to figure out roughly where the future Warren Highlands Trail would go between Oxford and Washington.

Warren Highlands Trail has become my main trail work of passion for several years. I had first gotten involved with the main Highlands Trail in the early 2000s, and the "Warren route" of that trail, which basically everyone lost interest in, was what I took upon myself ot lay out.
The first segment of the trail was opened in 2013 officially under the WHT name.
The project stagnated, but I kept going. I arranged volunteer trips to build and maintain it, as well a scout the sections of it to the west, in the same way I ran this hike.
At first, it seemed like we might push the trail through rather quickly, but things slowed down quite a lot when it got to state level. I discovered that all properties the trail was to go through required a land management review process which could be time consuming and discouraging.

Planning was a pretty agreeable venture between myself and the other members of the Board of Recreation Commission for Warren County. We decided on a route and I would start working on it.

Rather than just be a route through woods, I wanted the trail to focus on historic sites and basically anywhere worth visiting.
As such, I wanted the trail to go past the Oxford Furnace and the Shippen Manor. These historic industrial resources predated America, and they are so well preserved that they deserve plenty more attention.
I decided that the hike this time would begin as such, at the Oxford Furnace, built in 1741. It was the third oldest mined iron furnace in America, and the first to employ the "hot blast" technique.
We met in Washington for this one, because I had a route put together that would focus on both Warren Highlands and plenty of other stuff. I think we parked at the Shop Rite on route 31 or something.

The assembly of the properties for the first part of this hike took a while to come together. Coming from Washington, there is the township's Roaring Rock Park, a county easement, then a piece of state land in there. Recently, Warren County closed on the Terhune Tract, then the West Oxford Mountain Preserve.

The West Oxford Mountain piece sounds like it's simple, but there was a lot more to it. 

There were two basically disconnected tracts associated with West Oxford Mountain, and the route would have required a road walk to connect and it was complicated.

A couple of years ago, the town acquired some property that was associated with the old iron mines and we had the opportunity to grab it up for use on the trail. Myself, Corey Tierney from department of Land Preservation, and head planned Dave Dech went through the property looking for liabilities. We decided to purchase the upper parts, but the lower parts we simply purchased an easement over an old woods road that descended from the higher elevation to Mine Hill Road.

Money from the purchase could then be used by the township to fence in the dangerous old iron mines near to the road.

Well, the township never fenced the mines. Some of them, with their overhanging rocks, would be impossible to climb out of if they were fallen into. 

Regardless of all of that, I figured we had the route pretty much determined from the upper level of that property to the bottom, and that would be the first part we would be hiking.

I had done this once before, well before we purchased it, as part of a night hike. That time and the time with Corey and Dave were the only times I had walked it.

We walked from town up to Mine Hill Road, and then turned in at an old ore shaft site to get on the road, which is kind of wet at first. I figured we would have an easy time going from there up the hill.

I had kind of remembered this as being an easy and obvious route down hill from the top, but going uphill was quite a different story.

There wasn't just one old woods road that went up this hill. There were several all side by side. Maybe at one time parts of switchbacks. Maybe they were tramways from different mines or tailings piles. I really don't know. It was confusing. 

We tried making our way uphill, and I watched my phone GPS closely, but even then it was hard to pinpoint where we were supposed to be heading toward the top. If I am to determine where the trail is going to be, I'm going to have to go from top to bottom and flag the route off first. It's really the only way to determine.

Eventually, we did get toward the top. The woods road skirted an open field area to the right, and then picked up what had once been the right of way of the Oxford Iron Mines railroad. The original mine railroad ascended West Oxford Mountain by way of a switchback that broke off from what is now the road to Oxford Furnace Lake, and then skirted the cemetery near the hill top .

This right of way was abandoned earlier on in favor of a newer route that circumnavigated the terrain from the same road to Oxford Furnace Lake. 

It weaved around and then crossed over Jonestown Road to reach the mine complex direction, a little further west than the cemetery site. The county is working on purchasing that right of way as well, which could become part of our trail system possibly.
We continued ahead when the railroad bed joined, and it became a clearer walk. I had wanted to find a route for Warren Highlands Trail that would bypass some of the buildings out at the end of Renners Road, which were historically part of the iron mining complex. It was in more recent years used for storage, and now it appears a lot of junk has been taken out of there.

We cut to the left at one point up a little bit of a slope to pass through some splendid evergreens, and then came out behind some of the complex. We did make our ay back to the buildings and wandered through pretty much from end to end since I hadn't seen any of it in a long while.The buildings were looking more trashed than ever, full of graffiti and with all sorts of holes through the roofs and such. It is definitely a spot I need to figure out a way of having the trail avoid.We continued past the buildings, and then went left on a woods road that I believe was more of the old iron mining railroad switchback. It seemed to disappear near the top, where it turned off and had a sort of run out.

Some of that right of way was not easy to see because no ATV trail or anything followed it. It was just a grade through the woods, and the vegetation was getting heavier, making it harder to see.
We continued toward the top of the rise, and there was a small building with one window that I think might have been used to house dynamite or other blasting types of devices.
When we were well east of the building complex, we continued through woods in what I thought was to the south, off trail. Somehow, we ended up getting turned around and it was rather confusing. We passed by another old structure made of brick, which I'm pretty sure was for holding blasting things.

I soon realized we were accidentally looping back in the direct we had come, when we hit a woods road that was making its way back toward the old mining buildings at the end of Renners Road.
We turned around and cut a corner to bushwhack to the south a bit more. Now, I know there is a woods road to the west of where we were walking that we should have been using.
After a bit, we came to a power line clearing.
This was at a corner of county park land. It might have been a little too close by for our purposes for a trail. A stone row marked a property corner in the area where we hit the power line.

We cut into the woods from the power line, which had a slight view from it, and headed to the south for a bit more.
This as I recall petered out a bit, but we were able to follow a good route from that point to a bend in a service road that went to a tower on a mountain top just to the south.

This was another oddball spot for me. I had never gone to this tower, despite the fact that I had been looking at it my entire life.
When I was very little, I remember my grandmother driving me home from her house on Sunday nights, and when it was still light, there was the tower on the prominent hill in view. The tower, to my young mind, seemed to look like the profile of a Saguaro cactus, so I really believed there was a cactus on top of that 

We walked up the gravel road to the fenced in tower, and I walked around it.
This was an odd moment for me. I'd finally reached another spot that had been a prominent view traveling in so many directions for my entire life, and just now I was only finally seeing it.
We didn't hang out at the top all that long. There was a long way to go, and we needed to get out to Roaring Rock Park before dark. Being lost in the mess afterward would be disastrous.
To the south of the tower, the woods opened up quite a bit more. There wasn't really any undergrowth at all. We were able to just continue walking in the direction we needed to go.

To the right of us, there were some big rock outcroppings which looked pretty cool.
I had found out that there was an opportunity for the county to purchase the property that contianed those outcroppings, and after this hike I would report to them that I thought it was a good idea.
Not only are those rocks pretty cool, purchasing that property will allow for us to have a much gentler grade for the trail.
Looking at maps or aerial images, it all looks so easy to put a trail in, but when we got to the spot ahead, it was not so much so. The slope to the west was incredibly steep, and would not be so easy.

I started descending a bit, and we found a faint woods road that would take us downhill a bit into the Terhune Tract. If we had that other property, it would be far easier to head down.
We continued on this trajectory, and as we got closer to the bottom, there was more clearings. Many trees had been taken out of the Terhune tract before the county purchased it. There were woods roads through the area which we were able to head back and forth on to reach the abandoned road known as Lannings Trail.
Lannings was a road that went up and over the mountain through a small gap made by a stream.

I had hiked this road many times, but never followed through any of the properties to the east or west of it.
In this area, Serious Sean was just about ready to meet up with us. He had work in the morning, but then drove out to try to find us. I directed him to park at Project Excel, which I understand isn't used any more, but when I was in high school it was where the "bad kids" went to learn. Excel occupies some of the historic stone buildings of the Bowers Foundry, in the Bowerstown section of Washington Township.
He parked there, and we didn't have to wait too long for him to start making his way up the abandoned road toward us. I directed him by phone to go across the old stone arch bridge on his way up, and he found us fast.

Jen was pretty tired out from all of the bushwhacking, and she decided she wanted to try to cut out at this point.
She headed back down Lannings Trail and turned left through Bowerstown, and then took Mine Hill Road back to Oxford to get back.
The rest of us continued to the west from here.
We bushwhacked through some woods, and then crossed over a small stream. This took us into the state property, part of a secluded piece of Pequest Wildlife Management Area. It is an oddball piece because there isn't much WMA property in this area. It transitions to more state park land.

We started to climb on the other side, and made our way to near the southern boundary of this state land. There was a bit of a seasonal view along some of the height of the land. We followed along some stone rows and such, and there was some undergrowth in areas, and none in others.

There were a couple of rock outcroppings through the area, and way too much Japanese Barberry. 

There is a cul de sac in the area on Mt Ridge Drive, but we didn't get too close to it. This is a really delicate area because there is a major slope, but we also have to contend with the private property boundaries to the north. So, we had to stay far enough up the mountain, but far enough down that we weren't trespassing. I didn't have any flagging tape for this, but I had an idea of where the trail should go. I followed closely on my phone GPS through here.

We came to a spot where there was a large spring in the slope. This was a bit of an obstacle for the trail because above it took us closer to the houses than I wanted to go, but below it would mean a lot of brush and a lot of side hill work. For this time, we started heading up and around it a bit. 

This was the most delicate section of the hike, because I had to turn off my aerial images on my GPS and zoom in enough to see the property boundaries. We had only a narrow spot we were able to use on the county right of way. It's a rather unfortunate piece at times, because there is a great woods road just barely downhill and off of the public land.

Just above this property, there is a private home that is really quite visible if too close.
We had to go through some of the worst barbery in this area, and then headed uphill just barely too far. The private property has a bit of a path cleared parallel with its boundary that we ended up on briefly. This is a good route too because it goes into more of those woods that has no undergrowth, but is just off from where we need it to be.
I got us just about on the trajectory we needed, and going down hill is a pretty bad section.
I had come up through this on my own one time and tried to figure out where the trail was going to go at one point, so at least I kin of knew what to expect from here on out.
It's terribly steep, but this time on the way down we found our way to a rock outcrop. It's not the best choice, but there really are no good choices, and the rock outcrop, although steep, might provide us with some stepping stone options and hand holds that are so badly needed on the slope. Otherwise, we'd have to construct more steps.

Just below the rock outcropping is an abandoned road, formerly a continuation of Forces Hill Road, which is a dead end now to the south with several homes.
Once we had everyone down, we turn right on the road for just a bit, to a spot where we can descend a bit further to the Brass Castle Creek.
This is also not an easy descent, but we also don't have a lot of great choices here.
The next bit after this is a bit better; the trail reaches the abandoned original alignment of Brass Castle Road.
We descended to the abandoned road and turned left on it a short distance to where it reaches the present route of Brass Castle Road, but they don't join just here.
The original alignment goes straight across the road and into Dick Flint Natural Area, which is a contiguous tract with Roaring Rock Park, Washington Township property.
This was the first piece of land in Warren County that was funded by the county for use of the township. The land was originally set aside to provide water for the fire departments.

There were some really bad fires that hit Washington in the sixties, and before that there were other big ones that hit the organ factories for which Washington had more than anyone.

The reservoir on the property served the purpose until the town got its own water system and the property on the hill was no longer needed. It eventually turned into a passive recreation park.
Once we got across present day Brass Castle Road, we followed the abandoned road, which as lots of rocks and such strewn on it now, to the south a bit and over an old bridge. There, the trail that loops through Dick Flint Natural Area joins it briefly.
This trail had been there many years ago, and I had used it for hikes in the early 2000s, but then it was abandoned. It had in recent years been rerouted some and brought back.

We had gotten permission to use part of this loop and part of the Roaring Rock Park trails for the Warren Highlands Trail somewhat recently.
We turneed right on the trail, which then headed uphill parallel with the little stream for a bit. It then took us through more woods on an uphill slope and passes through an old farmstead.
There is the site of a sort of farm dump on the left, a clearing where there used to be a barn on the right, and then the former farm house site on the left.

I was kind of upset that the township had the foundation plowed in where we can barely tell what used to be there any more.
The trail continues gradually uphill, and when it starts to level off, there is a connecting trail that goes to the left to Harmony-Brass Castle Road. We headed out there, crossed the road, and then took the gravel driveway into the main parking lot of Roaring Rock Park.
From there, the trail is going to take the main trail that goes down toward the dam of Roaring Rock Reservoir.
When we got to this park, we met up with our friend Celeste for the first time in a while. 

Celeste and her dog Benny joined us for the rest of the way through the park, and we headed up to the edge of the reservoir, which was quite beautiful this time of the night.

I think I went for a dip in the reservoir because I was so hot and sweaty but I don't quite recall.
From here, there is no marked trail along the east side of the reservoir, but when I walked through the property with Darryl Detrich, he thought the Warren Highlands Trail should go that way, so that was the way we went from here.
We headed up and around the east side, then up through the woods parallel with the Roaring Rock Brook. 
The trail crosses the brook on a foot bridge, an then climbs a hillside heading to the west. From this point, we diverged from where the Warren Highlands Trail will go. The trail plan is that it will be new trail following the brook out of the park.

The westbound trail will leave Roaring Rock Park and then be a back road route until reaching the NJ Conservation Foundation property in Harmony Township because easements and such that were set up by Warren County were sabotaged by land owners. Lands that went into farmland preservation with easements agreed upon were not recorded properly, so the entirely off road route that had been previously secured just disappeared. 
When we got to the height of the elevation in Roaring Rock Park, there is a meadow area. It is in this area that we come very close to the corner of Coleman Hill Road.

I had followed this route for hikes before, most recently on one of the Common Sense for Animals hikes a few years back. On that occasion, we came into the property from the road. This time, we were trying to exit, and I thought it would be relatively easy.

The problem was it was getting dark fast. When we reached this site, we barely had any daylight left.
We pushed through the woods and I tried my best to lead the way, but the undergrowth was really terrible. I weaved back and forth, and there was a house to the right I didn't want to get close to. I think I was having a depth perception issue, where I thought one of the houses across from Coleman Hill Road was on our side.

Eventually, we found our way through the woods and out to the road, which was an enormous relief. The hike would be totally easy from this point on.
We turned left down Coleman Hill Road, which is an incredibly steep road. There is a bit of a view on the way down over some of the township which is nice.
When we got to the intersection with Little Philadelphia Road at the bottom, we turned right. That road made a ninety degree bend to the left, and we headed south across the former Morris Canal, which I pointed out as we crossed over it.

Little Philadelphia Road took us directly out to Rt 57 where we crossed over directly into the property of Warren County Community College.
This area evokes so many memories since I attended school there.
I had only somewhat recently realized by looking at some of my old photos that my friend Jenny Tull and I attended school there at the same time, and not only that, we were both on the 5K running team with our math teacher, Harry Moser.
I was shocked when I looked through my old photos trying to find a particular shot of my old friend Rob, and a photo of Jenny and I had come up. I recognized her right away, and had had conversations with her almost twenty years before she started attending my hikes. 

We walked around the building, and in back of it is a mowed trail system that passes through some meadows and young woods, then along the edge of the Pohatcong Creek.
We reached the creek and turned left, then emerged from the woods onto Buttermilk Bridge Road.
We turned right here, crossed the creek, and headed uphill a bit to Buttermilk Bridge itself, which is a bridge over the former Morris and Essex, later Lackawanna Railroad. 

We cut down to the left and followed the tracks to the east. This was once a double tracked line and there is always a path adjacent to the tracks, which I've been walking my entire life since I grew up along this route.
We continued along and crossed Mill Pond Road. I had considered maybe trying to follow some of the ATV paths through the woods to the right of the tracks here up Shabbecong Mountain, but decided against it since we had already had enough unexpected crap this time.

We just continued along the tracks further ahead and entered Washington. There were apartments on the left of the tracks, where my grandmother (my dad's mom) used to live, so I used to go up there sometimes with my dad when we would go there. 

Then when my mom and dad split up, my dad also got an apartment there for a while, and I would always go over there to visit him.
 When we got to South Lincoln Avenue, we turned to the right uphill.

We went only a little bit to Nunn Avenue where we turned right briefly, and then left heading uphill through the Washington Heights apartments.
This was another spot from my youth, because my great grandmother used to live there and we would stop up there to visit her.

Most recently, our old friend Gregg Hudis had lived in one of the top buildings up there. He hosted many Metrotrails meetings for the group, which was always a great time.
I miss seeing Gregg around and feel bad that we couldn't come together to help him better, because that entire corner building he lived in had burned down. I wanted to do a collection for him, and I actually got a grey suit jacket for him that was nearly identical to one he used to wear hiking with me, but he ended up not coming on any hikes again after that.
I ended up going through one of the most emotionally devastating times in my life just after his disaster, and I was unfortunately not in a good place to be helping anyone, nor was in in a good enough place to be asking for much help either, and so Gregg might have felt kind of abandoned after his tragedy too. 

We walked up the hill and past the apartment where Gregg used to live, then continued directly across into the Washington Cemetery which borders the back of the apartment complex.

I had long wanted to bring a group into this cemetery, and I don't know why I never got around to doing it until this time before.
We headed out along the back of it, and then to the height of the land that overlooks the area of the Shop Rite in Washington. It's really quite a stunning view.
The area is subject to a lot of controversy. A lot of the locals don't like it that all of the cemetery plots are being purchased by Asian people who have never lived in Washington. While I have no problem with who buys the plots, there is a big problem with cemetery management running over other people's grave stones and messing up those existing plots with no respect. It seems like the cemetery with the great view has turned into a big money deal.

I actually don't remember exactly where we walked from here. I seem to recall we went down hill through the cemetery, and then cut through the old Mansfield Woodschurch Cemetery, which is the really old one from when the town of Washington was called Mansfield. I think I showed everyone the grave stones from the Changewater Murders, which are quite creepy.
I don't remember from there the way we went to our end point, but I think we went across to Springtown Road, and then cut to the right across the golf course to get to the Shop Rite where we were parked. I hd also wanted to do a night hike over the golf course and hadn't gotten around to that either. I seem to recall walking through those wide open fields and heading straight for the lights of those buildings.
I was really very tired at the end of this, but I felt like I had a much more firm grasp of where the Warren Highlands Trail was going, and I also jogged lots of other memories from so many overlapping parts of my life.
Sometimes it's like a favorite meal served with a new condiment. Sometimes it's like a new taste sandwiched between familiar wrap. Either way, the key to appreciation is building on that which we already love.