Hike #1437; Bushkill to Delaware Water Gap

 

Hike #1437: 9/9/21 Bushkill to Delaware Water Gap with Jillane Becker and Everen

This next one would be a point to point, and my second long day hike with my son. Jillane and I spotted cars at either end, Delaware Water Gap on the New Jersey side, and in Bushkill at the old Turn Store.

True, I had just did a close variation of this hike only recently, but I love it so much and it was perfect for the baby. Plus, I knew the conditions going into it with a stroller in mind, so I knew we'd be fine.
We headed from the Delaware Water Gap to Marluca's, formerly the Turn Store in Bushkill PA. We went in to get some food, snacks, and drinks for our journey. I once again got myself some of the Joe Tea "Blow the Doors Off" energy tea and lemonade I like so much to start out. From then, I ran around a bit and set up some more history compilations of buildings through the area I missed the previous time.

The Turn Store building is two distinct sections from different time periods. The rear section is the original tinsmith shop dating back to 1837, and the front section dates to about 1916. There is some question as to whether any of the rear of it is actually original any more.

It is named for local farming family, the Turns, who owned and operated the store.

It was Deli Depot in the 1990s, but the store fell into disrepair and closed in the early 2000s for a time.

It was reopened as Roost Deli, and now Marluca's.

Once the center of commerce in Bushkill, where roads came together along the Delaware, from the ferry, and from the mountains, and the railroad station on the Delaware Valley Railroad stood directly behind the store.

Talk of extending a railroad from Stroudsburg to Port Jervis started back in the 1850s, but it wasn't until 1901 that a line finally pierced the wild upper Delaware valley to this point.

The line served both logging and tourism interests to hotels and sites such as Bushkill Falls, which is just up the road from this point, but could not compete with the automobile. Passenger service ended in 1927, and freight in 1938.

Today, most of the line is quite obscure, and the station platform is part of a small Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area picnic site behind Turn's Store not too far from Rt 209.

The line was never completed through. Amazingly, Bushkill to Matamoras PA is the only section of the entire main trunk of the Delaware River that never served as a railroad corridor, or even a canal corridor. I think I ordered us a large Italian sub to bring with us on the trip from Marluca's. The guy running the place had a nice conversation with me about the site. I had showed him the then and now compilations I had set up the previous time, which he liked, and I got to talking to him about it again this time. It's amazing that the store is not part of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. It's a postage stamp size lot of private land surrounded by it. Apparently the national park guys like that Marluca's is there.

Construction was still going on along Rt 209 on the bridge over the Bushkill Creek where we started out. The original bridge to cross at this site was a wooden structure, and it was replaced by a through style pony truss bridge on the same site in 1897.

The pony truss lasted until the construction of Rt 209, which was the same alignment as the old road at this point, about 1936. Now, it looks like the current bridge might be widened or replaced. I wonder if there will be a new bridge with a walkway or a separate bridge to carry the McDade Trail.

It does look like there is a plan for something, because there seems to be new trail construction leading up to the side of the creek with orange fencing around it. The 209 bridge is the only oddball crossing site on the McDade Trail that does not have its own dedicated walkway or anything. I'm assuming they'll be putting in a separate bridge based on what I am seeing.
The creek was also full of concrete barricades used to direct the main flow of water to certain spots, so they might be getting ready to do something. Maybe it was just for recent flooding, but I'm not so sure.

There were construction crews already working on the site ahead, and the trail was somewhat blocked where it left the road and headed to the south near the Bushkill Creek.
It went out behind an old garage that was reportedly once part of a service station. It was reportedly an Esso station.
From here, the McDade Trail turned away from Rt 209 a bit and closer to the slopes to the south.
On the previous hike, we had gone over the Hogback Ridge. This time, I intended to stay on the official McDade Trail the entire time. That brought us to the south for a while, then past a hairpin turn.

The trail then ascended quite a lot, then meandered through former fields heading west.
I pushed Ev up the hill rather quickly to where it leveled off. We had to put the mosquito net over his stroller almost immediately because they were getting so bad.
My friend Annika bought this at least $300 jogger stroller as a gift, and I absolutely love it. It has a pivoting front wheel and goes over a lot of terrain easily. The big wheels are perfect for what we do. This was the first time we'd had it out on anything with change in real elevation.

Soon after the top of the ascent, the trail started making its way pretty close to Community Drive. This road was closed for a really long time after flood damages and such, and I thought it'd never reopen.

We soon approached Schoonover's Mountain House, a farm tract in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, which is now vacant and has been for a great many years, sadly.

I had an historic 1911 photo I set up a then and now compilation of it with.

The original frame farm house dates back to about 1850, and had two substantial additions by the 1900s and served as a boarding and vacation home.

Today, the stately homestead sits vacant near the park headquarters, immediately adjacent to the McDade Trail.

A home like this would be perfect for a trail side bed and breakfast, for weddings and catered events, or to simply provide lodging for hikers and bikers going the distance.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anything like that will ever happen because government can't get out of it's own way. We crossed a little foot bridge over a creek that flows from a large swampy area to the left, which was probably at one time an old farm pond. We continued past the Mountain House, and then in view, and directly beside the trail to the right was the old Van Auken Farm barn. The barn is in reasonable shape, almost in the trail where it sits wide open and unused.

The building was wide open, so I decided to have a closer look at the structure. This barn was very old, and I found it noted in historic sites on vague PDFs in park files, but very little else could I find on it. I wanted to refer to this in my Minisink book, but I couldn't find it for reference at the time of this writing. In the lower level of the barn, I found that it was still supported by lovely hand hewn beams. It's really that much more a shame that it is falling into such disrepair with that old level of craftsmanship.

The framework inside is standing very strong. It really wouldn't take a lot to get this place up to standard, but the question would be, what to use it for? Almost all of the formerly cultivated area fields are overgrown.

We continued past this building, and remained closely parallel with Community Drive. Above us and across the road was another old house. Research has led me to the fact that this was the Van Auken House.

Again, there was almost no history I could find on this online and I didn't have my books handy. We didn't go over to check out the house because it looked like it was actually still lived in.

I'm quite certain a park employee probably lives in that way. It looked to be in far too good shape for it not to have been.

The trail gradually gained a bit more elevation parallel with Community Drive. Before we reached Schoonover's Mountain House, I noted the side road I had wanted to walk the previous time I was out there, but missed. The trail turned away from Community Drive, and then crossed one of the entrance roads to the national park headquarters. It then passed through a swath of woods and crossed the other entrance road before starting to parallel River Road.

After a bit along the road, we descended a bit, and then came to a set of stairs that went down to the edge of a major swamp area. It is now known as Headquarters Swamp.

I needed a little help to get the stroller down the steps, but after that it was all easy. The section was a beautiful, long boardwalk that eliminated a nasty road walk section.

We continued along this stretch, and then had to go uphill just slightly more into woods to get over the last little bit of The Hogback.

From here, the trail follows a bit of an old road route that starts to switchback down. I had heard years ago when I talked to a ranger up there that this had once been known as Jag Road, and that it was what they though they were going to use when they developed the McDade Trail. We started heading down on this route, which was pretty relaxing. I couldn't trip up though, because if I did the stroller would go flying.

On the way down, we did come across one fallen tree over the trail. This is a bit of a pain, but with both of us working on it, we were able to get through alright.

I had to take the carrier off of the stroller and carry Ev through it, and then carefully get the stroller through the mess. When we have stuff like this, we either have to remove the carrier, or one of us on either end have to lift the stroller in order to get it through. Sometimes, I just lift both ends myself and carry it short distances. It's just a matter of being careful, and then it all gets easy again.

Ahead, the trail went across a drivable road, and then I think it follows some of what might have once been known as Hibachi Road according to the official maps. The trail descends slightly more, and then switches to either a foot trail or along the road. The road is for the bikes and the other path is for foot traffic. I think we might have taken the road through this section to make it easier. The McDade Trail soon crossed the Freeman Tract Road, which goes all the way out to the Hogback, the name for the Pennsylvania side of Walpack Bend with the high elevation.

It was out at the end of the Hogback where Decker's Ferry was, set up in colonial days. We had just walked that stretch the last time out.

We continued past the Owens Trailhead and through pleasant woods, over some foot bridges to the west. We then passed by the Turn Farm. Some sections of the trail followed old tree lined farm roads, while other sections were just newly constructed trail. After the John Turn Farm access side trail, we meandered through woods a bit more and I tried to show Jillane where Shangri La used to be, as well as other historic site stuff.

The mosquitos were so bad on this one we really couldn't sit still for any period of time. The baby was fine with the netting over the stroller, and I would normally have been perfectly fine except now we were going slower than I'm used to, so I was getting bit up as well.

We got to where the trail came out into the fields and I pointed out the old cemetery spot, which Jillane was the one that initially found it years ago when we went looking. We continued through woods and along field edges, and we stopped when we got to Old Ramp. I figured we could go down there to go swimming, but she didn't want to go in at that point. I thought she would, so I went down and got in myself. By the time I was just starting to get comfortable, she decided she didn't want to go in, so I climbed back out and we continued walking along the trail to the west. From there, it wasn't all that long until we reached the Smithfield boat launch.

There was literally no one using the boat launch or recreation area on this week day, so we pushed the baby down to the edge of the ramp and just went down into the water to cool off there while he slept.

I made use of the restroom and baby changing station to get Ev cleaned up here, and to get rid of our garbage at the receptacles they had available.

Ev was so little that he slept literally most of the entire time we would spend hiking with him. This was a really relaxing time for me. The bugs don't really seem to bother me the way they bother other people. There was so much stress in my life with work and all, but now the one good thing that came out of the Governor Murphy administration was that there was all of this extra paternity benefit time that I could take. With the majority of my pay I could take off with child bonding time for like three months. I was definitely going to take as much of that as I could. I had considered waiting a bit before taking it because I already had so much benefit time, but I figured if Murphy got voted out in November, it could potentially all go away, so I'd better use it. I wish I'd had the time with my son getting older and learning more, but it was good to be there when he was most helpless, and to help Jillane try to transition back to normal, although that never really ended up happening anyway.

While it was nice to be out of work, the stress didn't go away. It seemed like I was getting really lucky. I would have gotten less benefit time through the Family Leave Act Child Bonding if I opted to take the non consecutive time off. Taking consecutive provides with more time. While I chose consecutive, I was allowed to have one day a week down as vacation time (two per pay period) which was able to continue feeding my contribution to my pension. I also didn't lose my benefits. So this was a great thing. Deb Spencer in Trenton was an enormous help to me with all of this stuff.

When I put in for this, at first it didn't go right, and it turned out that someone other than me filed for unemployment under my name at the same time I had my FMLA claim in. That set back my pay because it basically confused them. I had to sit on the phone for hours and hours explaining that I did not file for unemployment. Then, an employee of the state pension told me I DID need to apply for unemployement and walked me through it, and it was totally wrong and fouled up my pay.

Then, after I had gotten everything squared away, someone applied for benefits under my name fraudulently AGAIN. I couldn't believe what was happening. Fortunately, I had enough money set aside in case of emergency that I would be alright, but it went over two months before I got a cent of pay.

Even after I finally did get paid, which was only allowed to be done through prepaid credit cards, someone stole my card number and I had to get it replaced. And then, before my new card even arrived in the mail, and before I could even set up a pin number, that one was stolen.

As of June of 2022, I still have not received all of my FMLA pay that ended in November 2021 due to fraud and theft. It's been such an incredibly frustrating thing.

We continued hiking through the Smithfield Beach area, and the humidity was pretty bad. I think Jillane spotted another nice river spot where we went down and took a dip while baby Ev slept.

We continued from there and made our way up to the end of the McDade Trail at Hialeah Picnic Area. I told Jillane that I had found the cemetery that she and I had searched like crazy for so many years prior, and she almost seemed to pretend not to be interested.

I uncovered an epitaph near the south end of the picnic grounds, and more inspection revealed what might have been 4 more graves, with the same recessed epitaphs embedded in other rock or concrete. There was also some evidence of what might have been cemetery delineation.
The other stones had no legible markings, but this grave of a 5 year old girl named Rhoda, who died in 1833, was quite clear.
It also appears that some of these tombstones was damaged at some point, and embedded in these frames. Someone, at some time, appears to have tried to preserve this site.

Some more research by a Mrs. Harrison revealed that the young girl was buried here because it was the farm belonging to her maternal grandfather. The other slate markers, of too odd shape to be sidewalks or anything, were probably other grave markers from this particular plot. The rest of young Rhoda's family lived in Warren County NJ, Pahaquarry Township, which is now Hardwick, and other relatives are buried in the Calno Cemetery.
In more recent years, a bungalow community was set up through the area, and some some of the cinder blocks and such were certainly from some of that. There were water shut offs, there was a hose sticking up, and other stuff. So we might have seen cemetery delineation, but a lot was probably old home infrastructure. It is my theory that when these homes went in, a local probably took it upon him or herself to try to preserve the head stones of the graves that were present when they moved in close by.
Jillane seemed more impressed by the site when I finally showed it to her.
I posted the discover on the Metrotrails page to a whole lot of engagements and insights. I would hope that the national park service might step up and at least erect an historic marker for the site so that the people having picnics there know what is there.

Some of the engagement was really nice. A former park maintenance man said he used to stop at the site and have lunch with Rhoda every day.

We continued on from the picnic site out to River Road by way of the main access road. I was surprised that the gates were wide open for anyone to drive in and use the site again, but then I realized it was a week day (and I was off work). It further proved my theory that it was only closed on weekends to close to crowds.

We passed the MacManus House on the left, which is the park house still in good shape. I left Jillane behind to go have a look at it and she went in while I walked a little further. I inspected a lovely little cascade flowing off of the Pocono Rim to the right along the way, near the first private house on the right.

The hike went very similarly to how we did this route the last few times we were out there at this point. The McDade Trail ends at the Hialeah Picnic Area, but the way I laid out the hike, was where the trail might go when they extend it to the Delaware Water Gap itself. When we got to some of the condos or time shares or whatever they are at Shawnee on Delaware (erroneously named for Shawnee native Americans because they mistook the Lenape found here for Shawnees in the 1700s), we headed downhill along their side walks, across Depuy Lane, and then onto mowed paths along the Delaware.

The paths criss crossed each other and continued to a couple of river accesses before petering out in a very steep lawn I was not going to try to get up with the baby. We ascended the slope to Depuy Lane.

We came to a turn in the road where an old building bears the name "Fort Depuy", which is not quite accurate.
The historic homestead was built in 1785 and known as "Manwalamink"; it was erroneously labeled Fort Depuy in more recently years.
The actual garrisoned, stockaded fort, built in 1755, was located a bit to the west and no longer exists. The original homestead was down hill near that.
The home we saw was built by Nicholas Depuy, grandson of the original Nicholas Depuy who settled here at present day Shawnee on Delaware Pa in 1727. It is still quite a lovely and impressive historic structure to see.
We continued on Depuy Lane to the north, came back to River Road, and turned left again.

After a short distance, we turned left on Minisink Ave, then sat on the porch of the Shawnee Playhouse for another little break.

The play house was originally built as Worthington Hall in 1904, by businessman Charles Campbell Worthington in Shawnee on Delaware Pa.

The building was burned by an arsonist in 1985 and rebuilt, which is why it is delisted from the national register of historic places.

The venue remains in use today providing entertainment and education to the community and its visitors. From here, we turned to the left on Worthington Street heading to the south as it was getting darker.

We turned from Worthington Street to the right on Palmer Drive, which was a tiny road in the community, almost trail like. This came out to Shawnee Inn Drive, which we turned left on briefly. To the right from there, there was an old driving range area and nets. We turned to the right there, and there is an opening in the net that allows for us to pass on through to get to Shawnee Inn.

We crossed the parking lot to Shawnee Inn, and then turned to the right around the outside of the building to the paved golf cart trail. Here, we headed across a bridge over a little tributary and to the left which led us toward more condos and such at the Shawnee Place. We came up to a golf course road ahead, and then turned to the right toward the buildings. We headed uphill to behind the buildings where there was another multi use trail that passed into the woods with light fixtures mounted along the way. This would be a perfect route for the McDade Trail if only they could get out of their own way and make it happen. We followed this path to a divergence and it got to be far less maintained with some trees down over it and such. It led us out, after lifting the stroller over branches and such, to Ickes Memorial Drive.

We took this back out to River Road and followed that east just a little bit past the elementary school. I think we also stopped at Llama Ice Cream on the way but I forget if we got anything. There were some side roads that lead to private lands as well as to the Light the World Community Church, and we turned onto the latter one, which had a dirt road off to the right that closely paralleled River Road, but gained elevation up on a slope. At the end of the lane is St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church built in 1890.
The church, very easily missed, is perched on a steep sided hill above the old River Road in Minisink Hills. We came up to the area in the dark, but then cut to the left on a ramping side road that leads into the associated cemetery. From there, we walked through the cemetery out to Binnekill Road on the other side, which in a short distance led out to River Road again.
We turned left on River Road, passed some park land on the left, crossed the Brodhead Creek, and then entered Minisink Park on the right. We didn't go down directly to the confluence of the Cherry Creek, Brodhead Creek, and Delaware River. We went to the left off River Road on the continuation of the trail after crossing the old Lackawanna Railroad tracks. We followed the trail for a bit and eventually came to the crossing of Cherry Creek, which was on concrete steppers. The creek however was flowing like mad. I couldn't actually walk on the steppers, but could wade the creek. Jillane was not up for doing that, and I kind of didn't want to try either, especially with the stroller, but there was a path up to the railroad tracks, over the rail bridge, and then down the other side which would have been fine. Jillane said instead she was going to go back to the PA Welcome Center. I could run the rest of the way back to the car which was only a slight distance more. I climbed up to the rail bridge and back down the other side, then followed Cherry Creek Trail out to the access road and to Rt 80. I crossed 80 on the access road bridge, then continued along its edge, partially in the travel lane which was weird, and then reached where the Appalachian Trail comes down from the town. From there, it was all good pedestrian walkway over the bridge into New Jersey back to the Kittatinny Point lot where we were parked at this end. I got back to the PA Welcome Center very soon after Jillane arrived there.

I really enjoyed this hike a lot, would like to do it again, and definitely want to do all of the McDade Trail with the baby.