Hike #1465; Wonder Lake State Park to Brewster

Hike #1465; 1/15/22 Wonder Lake State Park/Holmes/Brewster with Jennifer Berndt, John DiFiore, Diane Reider, Randall Woodruff, and Polly Delafield

This next hike would be another point to point, this time between Wonder Lake State Park and Brewster NY. I had had such a good time on the Maybrook Line hike the week before, and I wanted to finish it, so I decided to post another one in that series, but in a totally different area.

Typically, I don't do back to back weeks on the same trails, but I figured since this and the previous hike were on opposite sides of the Hudson River, it was almost like a different area anyway.

The two components of this hike would be the Maybrook Line and the Highlands Trail and connections. The railroad that was the theme of this was built as the New York and New England in 1881. It was consolidated by the New York, New Haven and Hartford in 1904 as the Maybrook line from Connecticut to Maybrook NY.

The New Haven line double tracked the entire branch in 1905.

Passenger service continued to this area until the early 1930s, and freight was still going well until the Poughkeepsie Bridge burned in 1974.

The tracks remain in place today beside the Maybrook Trailway, part of the Empire State Trail, so there is still hope for future excursion or rail bike service. The tracks are in place only from Hopewell Junction to Brewster and may go all the way to Danbury, but I don't know yet.

The Highlands Trail passes through the spine of the geological province known as the Highlands, and was originally devised to go from the Hudson River to the Delaware River. It has since been extended into Pennsylvania, and some segmented sections of it have been developed in New York. I had never done any of it that I'm aware of east of the Hudson, but finished everything between the two rivers.

About ten of the miles would be on the Maybrook Line, and the rest on Highlands Trail and connections.

The amount of snow on the ground for this had me kind of worried. I wasn't going to cancel, but I would not have chosen to do what we were doing if I'd known that there was so much snow out there. It ended up being alright fortunately.

Meeting in Brewster was not as easy as I had thought it was going to be. I chosen Southeast Veterans Park as the meeting point, but it was not good for parking all day. That would be a problem. I had to figure something out, and I found what I believed would be a good spot on Marvin Avenue. and we all had to shuttle there. We did end up driving around a lot longer than I thought we would before getting a move on.

Once we were all set, we shuttled north to Wonder Lake State Park. I think Polly had her son drop her off.

The parking area for Wonder Lake State Park was on Ludingtonville Road, and the teal Highlands Trail diamonds went into the woods right there.

The Highlands Trail ascended pretty steeply at first up some switchbacks, and once up a little ways, Highlands Trail went right, and the yellow trail went left. I decided we would take the yellow trail and save the official Highlands Trail for when I get to it as part of the Highlands Trail series again. I was going to start the Highlands Trail series again, and I want to cover as much different ground as possible.

The yellow trail crested the hill, and another trail went right over Bare Hill, but I chose not to do that because we didn't need to be getting that much more out of breath on the hill. We continued on yellow, which kept at an easier land contour, and then turned to the south a bit. We crossed the Highlands Trail, then headed south further through the park. We joined with the Highlands Trail again after a little bit, at the south shore of the lovely Wonder Lake, and then it turned away again to the left while we stayed on the yellow.

The park was a 1920s Summer home property with bridle paths. Wonder Lake and Laurel Pond were created through damming in the 1930s when A. L. Cushman, owner of a chain of bakeries in New York City, owned the property.

In more recent years, the property was the summer home to Elizabeth Montgomery, best known for her portrayal as Samantha Stephens, the good witch in the television series Bewitched.

The yellow trail picked up a woods road and started following it to the south a bit, then turned to the left after a bit more and descended to reach a utility clearing. 
The trail turned left on teh power line for a little bit, then left once again through some lower lands nearer to Wonder Lake again.

At this point the trail had been going north again, and we followed it across the Highlands Trail once more.

We headed toward the north side of Wonder Lake, and the yellow trail intersected with a white trail, and then became sort of a woods road heading to the north. It made its way down to Laurel Pond where there was an old chimney near the inlet.

Odd construction of the old chimney had me wondering exactly how old it was, and what led to its eccentric form of construction.

The section of the chimney facing what would have been the inside of the building is made of a rougher, older-looking material, while the outside section, which also has what looks to be an outside cooking area, is a finer and more recently pointed Stone Construction.

From the inlet of the pond, we soon reached the intersection with the Highlands Trail again, and from there we would follow that trail to the north and out of the property. The trail continued on the east side of the Laurel Pond, which was quite lovely. I kind of wished I had saved this hike for a Summer one, because there were what looked to be great swim spots, probably both at this pond and Wonder Lake, and this one even had a great looking rope swing going into it.

The Winter doesn't always keep me from taking a dip, but this day did. It was by far the coldest hike of 2022, and I wondered if I had worn enough layers. My ears were still freezing cold despite having worn a hat. Nothing was making any of it any better. I did not bring any gloves either, because I wasn't counting on it being so cold. Still, we pushed on, and soon we were at the dam at the base of the pond. There were some steps going down along the near side of it, and it looked to be in pretty poor condition.

I'm afraid the dam will probably break one of these days when there is a big enough storm. Water was already seeping through that we could see.

The trail crossed over the top of the dam and then followed a woods road to the north from there. It left the woods road and then weaved around quite a bit. crossed another woods road, and then ascended to a sort of little ridge. It then turned left and headed back south again briefly, then hard to the right and around to the north again. In one of the saddles of land, there was a bit of a seasonal view to the north out into the valley beyond.

The foot path passed through some lovely old stone walls as we headed north, and another trail came in from the left that I will have to do another time. We just continued to the north and eventually made our wa out to Mooney Hill Road where we turned left. There was an enormous dead tree where the trail turned onto the road. There was a left turn blaze where the trail turned, but I'm not sure where it is supposed to go yet at this point. I'll have to look into that further.

This section was incredibly brutal with the wind and such, but we continued to push on through. We stayed on this busier road, because there was no other way, until we got to Denton Lake Road where we turned to the right. This road was far less used and less busy, so it was a fantastic road to walk.

Randy had done so well the previous week, and I thought this guy really fits the kind of attitude we all have, so I decided it would probably be really fun to get him a Four Loco. I don't believe he had ever had one before, so this was bound to be entertaining.

I was drinking my beers along this road as well, but it was not easy with the cold and no gloves at first. It got a little easier as time went by.

Randy sipped at the Four Loco and ended up drinking it pretty fast. It also hit him pretty fast. At 14% alcohol, this was definitely going to keep hitting harder!

We headed gradually up into a Presbyterian Camp property, and there were some lovely giant trees. There was also a trail system, designated by little metal markers on some trees with arrows on them. I wonder what it would take to get permission to go through some of these trails, and I would bet that the Highlands Trail will also one day go through some of them.

We passed the main camp property and headed down hill, and there was a trail just inside the woods to the right. We decided to go down to that and walk along the shore of Westminster Lake, which was quite beautiful. We took the trail to the dam on the lake, and then went back out to Denton Lake Road. There was an old building foundation along the left side around this point.

After we crossed the dam on the lake, there was another trail that went along the shore to the south.

We headed gradual down hill through the woods, and then came upon Denton Lake.

The loco had taken full hold of Randy, and he started going on about what a cute little bridge it was that went over the spillway of Denton Lake, and how he had to walk over it. He proceeded to run over to it. Jen and I were laughing pretty hysterically, because I had already explained to her that I thought Randy was pretty awesome, so we had to get him drunk.

Across from the lake, there was a building with a sign that read "Denton Homestead" and the date 1760. It didn't quite look that old to me, but I know that area was settled earlier than that so it could very well be.

I did some research into the area, and I could not find anything about Dentons or Denton Lake amazingly. Denton Lake Road passed by some homes and along a little creek with several dams in it before coming out to Holmes Road where we turned right, by the Holmes United Methodist Church. Just before reaching Denton Lake, we left Putnam County and entered Dutchess County.

The current church building was constructed in 1853 for the congregation that had been meeting since 1766.
The name of the settlement has changed over time; it had previously been known as Campbell's Creek and Reynoldsville.

We continued down the Holmes Road, past a pond, and I stopped to get a then and now compilation of the Holmes Station area, and we reached the Maybrook Line where we turned right.

The trail is paved, but it was snow covered at the start where we got on it. It was less as we got toward Brewster, but this part was higher elevation and farther north. 

The area had some nice, somewhat mountainous scenery along the route, and the snow wasn't so bad that I couldn't walk through it. It was really just a basic surface covering enough to make it kind of slippery.

Holmes used to be a pretty substantial station stop for the New Haven and its predecessors. There were several more buildings at one time in close proximity to the station site including a sort of store, warehouse, and several other things I'm not sure of.

We continued to the south from the crossing, and the next crossing was Mooney Hill Road.
The road had old stone abutments that were vacant, with the newer one on concrete ones.
A little bit after the bridge, there was a handsome home on the left side a bit off of the railroad bed that looked rather station like, but I'm quite sure it was never any kind of station. Probably new.

We were on a shelf of hillsides much of the time, and there were sometimes nice seasonal views off to the east of us. We eventually got to the bridge across Rt 311, where tracks had unfortunately been completely removed. They are intact in so much of the distance, but these small severed points are sad.

We headed south a bit more, and there was an old spare rail holder on the left. This is where section gangs of workers often referred to as Gandy Dancers would take spare sections of rail to replace broken sections.

We continued south and crossed Rt 164, and then the railroad turned to the east a bit. We crossed the same highway again right after that, and pretty soon came to the former site of Towners Station, which I think was where there is now a parking lot. 

The area was organized in 1795, in the corner of the municipality of Patterson, and was named for Samuel Towner Jr who purchased an area farm in 1780, and operated a nearby tavern at a place that became known as Towner's Four Corners.

It was just ahead of this spot that the New Haven Line crosses the Harlem Valley Line of the former New York Central.

This other line was first built through Towners and Patterson area in 1848 as the New York and Harlem Railroad. It linked NY City to Chatham NY by 1852.  It is still operated by Metro North for commuter service, but in the past it was a major Summer resort line as well as a year round dairy and agricultural hauler.

When the Maybrook Line was built in 1881, it utilized a timber covered bridge. It's amazing this lasted without being burned by locomotive sparks from the Harlem Valley line beneath, but it was replaced by the steel truss at the site in 1906.

Towners Station at one time had its own post office, general stores, hotels, hardware store, and blacksmith shop. By the late 1800s, interest in developing a reservoir through the area would have involved moving the railroad, but also involved moving all of the homes in Towners. The buildings and apparently a cemetery were moved, but the railroad never was, and the reservoir plan was dropped in favor of other reservoirs on the west side of the Hudson River.
The settlement was pretty much gone along the lower tracks, and one would never know it existed.

I set up a couple of then and now compilations featuring the bridge at Towners, and we continued to the south, and then entered a portion of a six thousand acre wetland known as The Great Swamp, fed by a stream known as the Muddy Brook. It feeds into Ice Pond to the south, a former ice harvesting water body. 
From Towners Station site, the snow almost disappeared, and from the crossing it was gone from the trail. This was a really nice section, and the air felt a bit warmer.
I was able to walk from here without my hat on any more, and having my drinks wasn't as painful.
The section along the Ice Pond was beautiful. There was a lot of ice on the vertical rocks to our left, and to the right was open water of the pond, with the Harlem Valley line on the other side. While walking this bit, a train went by on that line.
In this section, John and Diane ended up going pretty far ahead while the rest of us stayed behind and walked a bit slower. Polly got a ride out a bit early, and Randy, Jen, and I were walking the section together.
As we reached the southern end of Ice Pond, there were some beaver lodges out in the waters. The original ice house as I understand used to be over along the tracks of the Harlem Valley line.

At the south end of the Ice Pond and along the swamps, the Harlem Valley Line came back very close to the Maybrook Line once again. Just after a spare rail holder again, there was a switch and a track that led over and connected with that line, as the two were now at the same grade.

I'm not sure if there was ever any kind of station at Dykeman, but with the connection I would imagine there was likely some kind of infrastructure. I just don't know the area well enough for that.

The two lines separated again, and we passed beneath Route 312, then passed through a nice wooded section before emerging next to Tonetta Lake.

According to local legend, the lake was named for Ton, an African American slave freed after fighting in the American Revolution, and his African-Native American wife, Etta, also a freed slave.

The history of the area is also tied to local farmer George Hine, who had a five hundred acre farm and was one of the first area farmers to import holstein cows for milk production. He dammed and created Tonetta Lake for ice production so that his milk could remain cold during warmer months. He sold his product to the Borden Dairy. Hine had a club for recreation on the lake in the late 1800s as well.

The development around the lake happened a bit after Hine's death in 1914, when some of the farm was sold in the years after World War I. A beach for swimming, boating facilities, and a pavilion were constructed for the new residential subdivision. Polly now lives in that subdivision, and calls her home "the nest".

We continued south, crossed Pumphouse Road, and then passed beneath Interstate 84. A little past that we crossed under Tonetta Lake Road. We crossed Crosby Avenue at grade, and then ahead on the right was the connecting trail down into Brewster where we had hiked to the previous time. 

The Empire State Trail turns down this way to make connection to the Putnam Trailway on the old Putnam Division of the New York Central. The trail continues ahead, but not as part of the Empire State Trail. We continued on this through a cut, 

We were soon parallel with Wells Park to the right of us. There was a foot path, kind of obscure at first, that descended from the railroad bed on down to the ball field park. I would have chosen to park in this park and we'd have been done there, but it was closed off due to covid or something. The gate was shut earlier.
I think John or Diane came and picked Jen up before the end of it as well.

We headed down hill from the park on its access road, and then came out to Oak Street. A left took us in a short distance out to Main Street, and then we turned right. In a short distance from there, steps took us down to a parking lot off of Marvin Avenue from there, from which point the spot we parked was at a small park area to the left a bit.

When we were finished walking, we got some pizzas and headed over to Polly's house to eat, having gotten ourselves pretty tuckered out from the freezing cold and no food stops along the way.

The hike was pretty great, pretty relaxing, very beautiful and interesting, but still wasn't as exciting as the previous Maybrook Line hike. It wasn't at all bad, just different.

I think what it boils down to is that I had a big build up to what this hike was going to be, and the previous one had no build up and really no excitement going into it. Setting the bar low leads to being easily impressed, while setting it high leads to disappointment, or maybe just more underwhelming.

Whatever, it was, I was really happy to have done this piece, and I couldn't wait to do more.