Hike #1427; Lickdale and Swatara Gap Loop

Hike #1427: 7/3/21 Lickdale and Swatara Gap Loop with Jillane Becker

This would be Jillane's last hike before our son, Everen would be born. We figured everything was going to be alright, and couldn't have been prepared for what was to happen the next week.

It was the 4th of July weekend, and everything was crazy everywhere. I wanted to try to plan a trip ahead of time and have it all set, but for one I never know what to expect with my work schedule, and for two, this particular weekend is always one that I don't even bother to try to pull anything off for.

When I plan a hike for this weekend, I try to make it middle of nowhere type of stuff where we won't have issues.

So, with the two of us just going out, all of the spots that we had been working on going were not good choices. 

She didn't want to go further toward Boston or down further into Maryland, and continuing with our West Virginia stuff would be out of the question as it was just too hot out and there wouldn't be enough water to cool off.

I had to come up with something she might like, and I figured Swatara Gap was a great choice.

I was able to get a room in Lickdale, I think it was the Fairfield Inn and Suites, which is just across the street from the southern terminus of the Swatara Rail Trail. I figured Jillane would love this area because she'd only seen some of it once before, and we headed into St. Anthony's Wilderness instead of exploring the gap itself. I'm now very familiar with it, and I knew there were some spots she'd love.

We went out on 4/2, got set up with a room, visited the Union Canal Tunnel, oldest transportation tunnel in America, and then headed down south of Lebanon a bit to have a really nice dinner at the Quentin Tavern, which was great to the south of there.

The next day, we'd hike the rail trail in a loop to and from Swatara Gap and cover a few different trails.

The hotel we stayed in was I think across the street from the one we had stayed in when she came home from being a Wilderness Ranger in Utah.

While she was getting ready, I went outside first and checked out some of the old Lebanon and Tremont Branch of the Reading Railroad bed.

There is an initiative to turn more of this into a rail trail, connecting the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail with the Swatara Rail Trail. A lot of work has been done, but none of it connects yet to the south from the last time I had been out there hiking it, with Justin and James. We had a rough time in the section south of Lickdale, but to the north was really great.

I also took some time at the start to get some then and now history compilations featuring the old station at Lickdale.

There are several historic shots of the station at almost the same angle, from Reading Company photos, Dan West Collection, by Larry Eastwood. The station was added on substantially over time.

A bridge over the Forge Creek just south of our hotel is being used as a private entrance to a business, but no greenway there yet.

The rail line was originally the Pine Grove and Lebanon Railroad, and it repeated the service area of the Union Canal spur. 

The Union Canal was directly across the Swatara Creek from where we were parked, and this spur of it traveled from Union Water Works just west of Lebanon to the south, up through Swatara Gap to Pine Grove. 

Although many consider this to just be a "feeder" for the main canal, it contained locks and was indeed used for heavy traffic, because it directly accessed the coal industry.

It was sunny and really hot outside for the start of all of this. That made it a little rough to go through the first bit of this hike, but it got good in pretty short order.

The railroad we were walking finds its beginnings with charters going back to the 1860s, which all were under control of the Reading Railroad. The branch reached to Pine Grove where east and westbound travel was possible, or interchange with the Union Canal there. Two charters were incorporated by the Reading Railroad in 1868, the Pine Grove and Lebanon Railroad, and the Lebanon and Pine Grove Railroad, from both the north and south destinations respectively. 

The through route was completed in March of 1870. They and the other couple lines to the north of Pine Grove were consolidated to form the Lebanon and Tremont Railroad a year later, and two months later formally merged into the Philadelphia and Reading as the branch of the same name.

The line, like others, began to decline and the coal of the southern anthracite fields became impractical to mine. However, the Fort Indiantown Gap military traffic kept the line going strong through World War II.

Passenger service was finally eliminated on the line in 1957. Everything we were walking for this trip was abandoned by 1981.
We headed across the street, went to the northeast side of the intersection near where the station used to be, and got some drinks at the Speedway convenience store. We then headed through the landscaping to reach the back of the office of the KOA camprounds.
Much of the campground area was once the railroad yard behind the station that was used heavily by military during the war years.

There were little wooden routed signs that directed us to the Swatara Rail Trail through the campgrounds, and I get the feeling that not many people use this section of it.

It was pretty wide open and sunny, which was hot and all, but it didn't take long to get to the shade near the end of the yard. 
We turned right when we reached an an access road, and headed down to the Swatara Creek to check out the view. 

We exited the boat launch, back to the rail trail, and then just to the north of there was a rail loop that I'd never done before.
The last time I came through, when I planned to do it, it was getting too late and running over the mileage I wanted to do.

The loop was actually built for the train traffic from Fort Indiantown Gap. The turning loop was built so that trains could easily make their way around, which was far easier than using a turntable and using the switching operations.
We made our way around the circle of this, and there was something off to the right, toward the Swatara Creek that looked like it might have been some sort of a spur or siding, but I'm not sure what it was. We came back out next to the access road to the parking area and boat launch. The main through trail paralleled this.

There was one of those stupid things we only see in parks where the trail paralleled the road.
There was a galvanized railing alongside the road, and on top of it was affixed thick pieces of wood.
In most anywhere, the galvanized rail only would be more than enough, but to give something a "park feel", they often line things with wood.
In my opinion, this practice is insanely wasteful. It's a precedent that goes all the way back to the 1930s CCC, when they were basically creating busy work for underemployed Americans. Now, we no longer need the busy work because we have too much work, but they continue to insist on wasteful uses of wood.

One that drives me particularly nuts is "sign backers". They will building wooden backings for metal signs, which will then have a half inch wooden frame around the outside of the sign. The only part of it that ends up being visible to the driver is that half inch, and yet hours of labor and lots of wood is wasted on this foolish practice. Even wooden gates instead of painted metal cattle cats or for that matter, a chain and piece of pipe, are more economical choices with labor and money shortage.

In the case of this trail, there were galvanized rails on both the road side and the trail side, and both were affixed with wood. Thousands of feet of wasted wood. I figure they probably had grant money they had to blow on something and they couldn't come up with information for any more interpretive signs or something like that. Most public going by these things probably think "oh how nice", but I look at it from a practical level.

We turned left along the entrance road to the north along the wasteful fence line, and then crossed over Monroe Valley Road to the north onto just the trail, into very nice woods.

We skirted fields, and came close to the Swatara Creek over on the right. Jillane wanted to go down, but I tried to urge her to wait until a little further ahead where there were nicer spots.
Along the way, we passed by a brand new garage building off to the right of the trail.
I had to stop and look at it for a few moments, and then recognized it as the former site of a very old barn that I had photographed when I walked through a couple of years prior with Justin and James when it was getting dark.
I remember thinking then that this barn did not have much time left.

I wonder if any of the original barn structure was incorporated into the new garage, since it looks like it sits on the same footprint, or if it's all new construction. Probably the latter unfortunately, but would be cool if any of the old building was used.
We passed through a pretty cut, and then passed a pretty pond on the right. The rail bed began to very closely parallel Rt 72 as we approached the little settlement nown as Inwood. There was a good interpretive sign giving a lot of details on the settlement.

The settlement of the area dates back to the 1750s with the establishment of Fort Swatara near the gap. Northern Lancaster County was first settled in the 1730s.

I know that Swatara is a native American word meaning "where we fed eels", but I can't remember where exactly the name "Inwood" came from. Interestingly, Inwood is on the south side of Swatara Gap, and a settlement on the north side, which I've also hiked through, was called Outwood. Further interesting was that early on, Swatara Gap was known as "The hole". So it's like going in and out of the hole.
Up the slope and across the highway from us was an old white house, which I think might have been the old Inwood House hotel and tavern. It served as a hostelry for travelers on the old state road through the Swatara Gap from the end of the Civil War until at least 1896.

To the right of us, where there is also parking, is the Inwood Bridge.
This site has changed quite a lot since the first time I'd seen it years before.
The Inwood Bridge was originally a through truss structure built in 1899.

When Justin, James, and I walked through on the trail, it was the last days before the bridge was removed. It was once the route of the Appalachian Trail until it got its own bridge further north.

I had first seen it with no decking, and machinery in place to lift it off of its foundations. The next time I was out back in I guess it was Summer 2019, the bridge had been removed and was sitting on the trail parallel with the creek.

I didn't know what had happened to it, but I found out on this trip that it was moved down the Old State Road to the south, and re-erected over an old piece of the Union Canal in another section of Swatara State Park. We didn't head out that way to see it this time, but I hope to in the future.

There was once a station stop at Inwood, immediately on the west side of the bridge, taken out of service in the 1930s after beginning service in 1872.

Inwood Bridge in 2019

We turned right and crossed the bridge, and could see where the Union Canal used to go on the other side. I recall seeing on a map that there used to be a lock in this area, but I saw no remnants.

Once across, we turned left along the Old State Road, which is still open to vehicles for a time. This brought us to the north, and remained parallel with the former Union Canal the entire time.

There's so much stuff to see out in these areas, I don't even know where to begin.
While I watched closely for remnants of the canal and saw very little, we passed beneath Interstate 81, at which point the Appalachian Trail descended from the Blue Mountain to the right and joined the Old State Road.
Just after this point, there was a very old stone ruin in the weeds to the right. The lack of windows made me think it was some kind of barn foundation or something, but I wonder if it had anything to do with the canal. I saw no lock remnants here.
We continued ahead a bit more, and I was surprised to see an old mine into the side of the rocks to our right. I don't know anything about it, or what was mined here, but it was clearly a serious opening. Whether it once went further down or out at some point I don't know, but it was not very deep.
We continued to the north on the Old State Road from here, and the old Union Canal became a bit more apparent. Closer to the highway bridges, there were old concrete slab sections below the current road, which I think might have been an earlier alignment.

The Union Canal was started during George Washington's presidency, and he turned the first shovel of earth in its construction, but it took until 1827 to be completed between the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers. The section we were following, the navigable feeder canal used to haul coal, was completed in 1830.

This section was rather short lived, as it was destroyed in the Flood of 1862, the same terribly flood that destroyed almost the entire Upper Division of the Lehigh Canal to the east.
We continued ahead, and soon reached where the Appalachian Trail turns off to the left, across the Waterville Bridge, but we would continue straight.
The bridge is a rare lenticular truss style bridge manufactured by the Berlin Bridge Company in 1890.
The bridge was originally located in the settlement of Waterville, Lycoming County PA. It was moved to this site for use as an AT pedestrian bridge in 1985. Lenticular trusses are quite uncommon.

Just ahead of the bridge and to the left is Union Canal Lock #9, in splendid condition. It's made of fine cut stone that has lasted the test of time amazingly.

Locks 9, 8, 7, and 6 are all consecutive in this area, and each are recognizable. 9 is in the best shape, and the middle two appear that they might have been of composite construction, or otherwise the blocks were stolen for other purposes.

Lock 6 was fine cut stone, and the deepest lock on the entire feeder canal. I'm not sure what the lift was on this one, but it is one of the biggest locks outside of the Lehigh Canal Upper Division that I've seen.

It was disappointing to see that lock 6 was deteriorating pretty badly. It looked like the upper end, the deeper part of the lock, was getting ready to collapse. The fine cut stones were already down along the inner edges. 

I looked closely at the locks, which was off of the Old State Road, now known as Bear Hole Trail, and Jillane stayed on the road. I made my way back over after Lock 6, and we continued on the Old State Road together to the north.
I saw another old road or something down below the Old State Road to the left. I wasn't sure if it was some other right of way, or road, or the canal for a time. It stayed down below the Old State Road for a good long while. I realize that for a time, it might actually have been the canal, because we were pretty closely parallel with the creek. I'm going to have to have a closer look at it on a future trip.

We continued on the road which was beautifully lined with blooming Rhododendrons. 

On the left was the Sand Siding Trail, which I don't know how it got its name. Maybe there was a siding on the railroad on the other side of the Swatara that was part of a sand quarry. I'm not sure. But the trail was developed to connect the Swatara Rail Trail and the Bear Hole Trail. We passed that by.
We continued along the trail to the northeast, and then took the side trail to the right to visit the Bordner Cabin. This was one of the places  I just knew that Jillane would absolutely love. It's far enough out there in the park, but also not terribly far, and has such a unique feel to it.
It was built in 1939 by a high school industrial arts teacher named Armar Bordner, with the help of his students, using locally sourced materials.
Mr Bordner lived there until he died in 1994. It became part of Swatara State Park, and then for many years it was sitting vacant and relatively unknown. No windows remained in place, and it was all open air.

I happened upon the place by accident several years ago while hiking the Old State Road, before it was surfaced and renamed the Bear Hole Trail. I almost missed it, but it was colder months with no leaves.
This time, I knew there would be pretty much no avoiding people coming through, because it was a holiday weekend, and it was kind of close to the Appalachian Trail, but still it wasn't a mob scene.

Jillane liked it, but not with all of the people there. So, we headed to the northeast for a while longer until we reached another side trail to the left, which I forget the name of. This led down to along the Swatara Creek, and to the old Union Canal Lock #5, which is also in excellent shape. I'm really surprised how great this one looks despite the fact that it is directly in the flood plain of the stream.

It was a really nice spot along the creek that I had really loved the last time I was out there. I got in and cooled off, and felt great, but she wasn't into it and didn't want to go in, saying the spot was no good.

I also figured it would be a great spot to wade across the Swatara and continue on the other side. So much of this creek is really shallow and easy to wade across, and I just assumed, wrongly of course, that we would be able to do it at this point.
There was no getting across at this point without possibly swimming. It was very surprisingly deep.
I figured we'd better head back to the Sand Siding Trail the way we came, and then go across the easy way.
We headed back out the trail the way we came, and this worked out pretty well because we passed by the Bordner Cabin again, with it's pretty Cardinal Flowers out front, and there was no one there any more.
Jillane and I headed up to it once more, and we got to spend some more time in it looking around without other onlookers around.
Just as we were leaving, a group of Mennonite girls came up on bikes, all dressed perfectly matched, and went up to explore the cabin as well.
We headed back to the Sand Siding Trail and descended a bit to the Swatara Creek. The trail crosses the creek by way of a really interesting and long bridge over to the west side.

I could have sworn I saw what looked to be a remnant of the Union Canal on the east side of the creek, now part of the flow of the river separating an island. I suspect that the rather man made looking curve in the river is actually the former canal.
Immediately on the other side of the bridge was the old rail bed again, the Swatara Rail Trail. We turned left on that and started heading on our way back.
This section is quite beautiful, shaded and secluded with surfacing that isn't too rough on the feet. We continued through the woods and kept our eyes to the left for a good place to head down and take a dip.

We found a good spot near an old arch culvert under the railroad bed. The creek was a bit deeper in that area, and it was beautiful. Cooling off was definitely helpful to making the rest of the hike doable.
The only problem with the site was that it wasn't all that private because boaters kept coming by every ten or fifteen minutes or so.

Ahead, the trail emerged from the woods and onto the abandoned stretch of Route 443. This whole section of highway was moved to the north and west a while back, and the still paved highway, with yellow and white lines still visible, is now part of the trail system.

The section of old 443 alone is about a mile and a half, longer than the abandoned highway in Centralia, and only a fraction of the crowds.
The railroad bed is immediately adjacent to the highway, and it used to be totally walkable not that long ago. I hiked much of it when I went through only a few years ago, but the past couple times I was up there, it is getting close to impossible to walk. It's necessary to come out to the abandoned highway and walk that instead because no one has been keeping the rail bed clear.
A couple of other old roads came in from the right, Chapel Drive and Moonshine Trail both appeared to have been paved roads that once intersected with 443. I'm not sure how much was torn down.

We continued to the south, and the trail got back on the railroad bed, which looks like it and the road route come together at some point. We then reached the Appalachian Trail at the Waterville Bridge once more. It wasn't very long after that we passed beneath Interstate 81.

It wasn't long after that we passed by the new Inwood Bridge again on our way south. We'd reached the section of trail we had already done earlier at this point.
I was glad we did some of the wide open road stuff as it was getting dark, or it might have been quite gruelling in the heat.
We continued south along the rail bed, an I don't even remember much of getting back to the south to the KOA campground. It was probably less than three miles total we had to do in the dark, so it wasn't all that bad.
We headed home from this trip, and Jillane thought something had been wrong even before we went, but then we read some symptoms that made us think she was fine and that her water hadn't broke.
However, her water did break, and somehow it kind of re-sealed somewhat anyway.
We called her doctor the next day when she said something wasn't right, and she was told to come in right away. She would end up stuck in the hospital for two weeks before our son was born.
So, Jillane surpassed the friend that so impressed me with her hiking through eight months pregnant. She did it through seven months pregnant and even after her water broke.
At the same time, I feel horrible for even entertaining doing such a hike. I thought everything was fine and that it wouldn't cause any complication. Maybe it didn't because her water broke before we started hiking.
Either way, it worked out alright in the end, though it would be a stressful couple weeks.