Hike #1472; Wallkill to Maybrook

 

Hike #1472; 3/6/22 Wallkill to Maybrook with Cory Salveson, Linda Salveson, Brian Whiteford, Justin Gurbisz, Serious Sean Dougherty, Jenny Tull, Professor John DiFiore, Robin Deitz, Greg Andres, and Diane Reider

This next one would be the final hike in the west end of the Maybrook Line, which we'd actively taken on completing somewhat recently. 

We had already done the east side as far as Brewster, and the west side as far as near St. Elmo, but still needed to do either end. After this hike, the only one needed to do the entire line would be from Brewster to Danbury Connecticut, which should be one hike. 

I had never been to Maybrook before, but the name was always a very familiar one dating back to my hikes long before Metrotrails was a thing.

I had hiked plenty of the former Lehigh and Hudson River Railway, and all of the mile markers on that had BD for Belvidere, and MB for Maybrook, being the northern terminus. I always figured I’d get there one of these days, and I figured it would be on the old LHR.

However, that line was something that would involve walking a lot of tracks, and I got around to doing the Maybrook Line from the north first, oddly enough.

Just driving in to Maybrook, having heard the name so many places, and knowing what the place meant as a busy center of the Northeast Corridor, it was quite interesting.

We met in Veterans Memorial Park in Maybrook, and then shuttled with as few cars as we could at the starting point, where we had finished the last hike in Wallkill NY.

The parking area in Wallkill was right along the Wallkill River, a peaceful little spot with a pavilion, perfect for gathering.

Because it was so nice, we opted to walk on down to the water’s edge and have a look for the start. I then decided to have a celebratory thing. It was March, and March marked 25 years since the starting of these hikes. Of course, the actual anniversary hike would not be until closer to the end of the month, but any reason to celebrate is a good one.

I had decided to save some of the best beers we’d sampled on all of the hikes for this one. I’d get a four pack or something, maybe one new one every couple of weeks, and if it was good, I only drank three. The third would go in a box in my car, and wait until some special event where we would sample multiple. This would be just that event. It was more a personal celebration than anything else, finally hiking to Maybrook, and doing the hikes for 25 years, but I wanted to share that happiness with everone.

I put out a spread of the best, which included

-          Weyerbacher Sunday Morning Stout

-          Breckenridge Buddy Pass Imperial Oatmeal Stout

-          Weyerbacher Quad, Belgian Style quadruple stout

-          Flying Dog Triple Dog IPA

-          Weyerbacher Insanity barrel aged barleywine

-          Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot barleywine

-          New Holland Dragon’s Milk bourbon barrel aged stout

-          Lagunitas The Waldos Special Triple IPA

-          Hardywood Bourbon Barrel GPS

-          Founders Backwoods Bastard bourbon barrel aged stout

-          Weyerbacher Tiny Belgian style imperial stout

Sean also added one weaker one to the mix that was a bourbon barrel aged thing.
From here, we started walking to the east, directly across Rt 208 and up a bit of a hill onto the Wallkill Valley Railroad bed, now a trail in this area that we had walked back in 2020. We only followed it to the left a short bit when we got on it, out to Bona Ventura Ave and turned right.

This was stuff we had walked on the previous hike in this series, but it was in the dark so we didn’t see any of it after we left the winery then. This was like a bit of a new hike to me.

We continued on Bona Ventura until it turned left, and we went straight on Strawridge Road, which is a really nice back road. It was much nicer to see it in the day light, because there were some remnants of old farm stuff on the right. A silo, a corn crib, all in disrepair. This area was once part of the famous Borden farm, but I’m not sure what the current status of it is. Some of it is clearly abandoned.

We headed downhill and the road crossed over part of a pond on what was the Borden Farm, then climbed back up a bit again. We sampled some of the special brews I brought along the way.

It was hazy but pleasant with still a little bit of snow lingering on the ground. It wasn’t long before we reached the Magnanini winery where we had stopped for dinner the last time. 

This time, it would be an early celebratory stop to get us some wine. I selected the sweet Mirtillo once again and brought it with me for the journey, and let the brews take a back seat for just a little while. We had some food they had there, and then headed on our way further along Strawridge Road.

We continued across the intersection with Plains Road, then descended a bit to cross over the Catskill Aqueduct.

The 92 mile aqueduct employs a combination of cuts, fills, and bits of ups and downs with siphons, completed in 1924.

It is no longer open to public.

When the New York Walk Book was first published in 1923, and for many years and many later additions, the Catskill Aqueduct was recommended among the great Hudson Valley hikes. At some point the entire route was closed to all pedestrian use, and we lost an incredible resource. It was reportedly closed as a result of 9-11.

People still walk it illegally, but face fines if caught.

I feel that it would be better having it open to public, because if some sort of underhanded activity were going on, it would be immediately reported. As it exists today, anyone could just wander onto it with basically no surveillance and do whatever they wanted with no witnesses.

Just past this crossing, in the lower swamp lands to the left, I was relating the story to those who were not present on the last hike, how we had found a Samurai Wakizashi just lying in the weeds along the edge of the road. The Wakizashi is the shorter of the two swords carried by a Samurai, the other being the Katana.

Just as I was going over all of that, I was blown away when I looked down to the edge of the road to find yet another Wakizashi. We took that one with us as well, and Cory ended up keeping it.
It is just totally strange that we found another of the same exact style sword discarded along the road edge at about the same exact spot we had found another one just the month before. 
We continued to the east from here, down hill a bit more and through an intersection. We soon reached the old Maybrook Line and turned to the south.

For those who haven’t followed what we’d been doing, this was the New York and New England Railroad that was developed in 1881. It became the Maybrook Line of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford in 1904 and lasted until the burning of the Poughkeepsie Bridge in 1974. The line was phased out and abandoned then.

We headed south through nice woods, and it was a huge relief that there was only a little bit of snow left on the ground.
We emerged on a dead end street called Keater Road, which is built over the right of way to Hill Road. From there, the rail bed follows a tree line along the backs of modern houses. It looks like they just let the right of way go at that point. We had to turn right on Hill Road.

We made a left at the intersection onto Plains Road and headed south, to soon reached where the Maybrook Line crossed. It was at this crossing that the old St Elmo Station was still standing to the west side of the road, now a private residence. It was really in very nice shape.

 We couldn’t just go into the yard, so we continued down Plains Road just a bit, to where the yard ended, and then cut over to get onto the railroad bed.

We had a great swath of woods to follow from here. It was just an informal ATV trail that took us on through for a very long while. Only one large back yard encroached upon the right of way, and we were past it so quickly it barely seemed like anything.
We were at a pretty regular grade with the land around us for a while, but then we started going into a cut. The New Haven line did a lot of repair to this line over the years, and I suspect that the line might have been straightened through this area. It was double tracked in 1905, and up closer to the Poughkeepsie Bridge some major straightening occurred. I’m not sure about this area, but there were a lot of slightly higher elevation ATV trails to the west, which we made use of.
The weeds got really ugly in one stretch making our way from the railroad bed up to the ATV path, and we got a little cut up. Serious Sean had a trail of blood running down his face that he left there for most of the hike so he would look all bad ass.
The rail bed went into a much deeper cut, and it started getting really wet. Rather than walk through water and fight through weeds, we opted to take the parallel ATV paths just to the west, which proved to be a good idea. Some of the group got separated at some point, but we found each other again.

The ATV path took us out at Osiris Road, and it appeared to be cleared as a utility right of way or something to the south of this point. To the right of the right of way, there was a brick building that looked consistent with early 1900s power substations or trolley power supply buildings. I don’t know anything of its history. We continued on the rail bed through some weeds, then it became clearer again.

We followed this nice stretch out to Rt 52, Plank Road. I think there used to be a station in this area at one time, just to the east of Walden, but I’m not sure. To the right, there was an obvious abandoned cinder block building, but a farther south segment of it was older and of brick construction. Could it have been a station? I would guess probably not, but I cannot be sure.

From this point, the railroad bed would have crossed on a bridge and was at a higher elevation, then passes into the Crist Bros farm properties to the south. Although much of the right of way is not developed over, much of it is and I didn’t want to invade on anyone and their business, and even worse, I don’t want to get shot. This and another of the farm properties to the north as I understand had seasonal shooting ranges or something, and I didn’t need to be in the danger zone there.

I was all ready for the alternate route from here anyway, which would add some diversity to the hike anyway.
We headed to the west on Plank Road, and then cut to the left into the Wallkill Valley Cemetery.

We skirted the south side of the cemetery for a bit, but out among the graves to view the impressive epitaphs and their ages along the way. This was a pretty old area with many graves from the thirties and forties. The grounds had some lovely giant trees, and there was a cannon at the southwest side. It had a pile of cannon balls that was to go with it, probably supposed to be glued into the pile, but they were all loose and strewn about.

At the west end of the cemetery, we skirted the edge and headed north to the next boundary. Then, we headed directly into the woods. There wasn’t a whole lot of undergrowth, which made the off trail bit pretty easy. The only problem we came across back there was a bit of a marsh. It was still cold out enough that it hadn’t thoroughly thawed, so we were able to meander on through without getting too wet.

We made our way through these woods to the loop trail around the outside of James Olley Community Park. My plan was that we would use the longer portion of the trail to the north around the lake in the park and then head out through Walden.
This park dates back several years, when the property known as the Wanderling Farm was acquired by the town under the former mayor James Olley. The recreation area was developed, and the mayor’s adversaries referred to it as Olley’s Folly. Many however feel the opposite and love the man’s legacy, and so Wanderling Park was renamed for Olley when he passed in 2008.

We reached the wide gravely trail, and turned to the right, north, which led us into an old quarried area I think must have been used by the municipality for roads and such, then meandered to the north side of the property where the trail turned left.

It wasn’t long and we made it to the north side of the lake in the park. We crossed a little foot bridge to reach the west side, then turned left, to the south along the shore for a bit. We then goofed around on the playground and passed the beach and buildings.

 We cut through the grass directly up hill to the west out of the park, and had some Lagunitas Waldos as we reached Sherman Avenue. We soon turned right on East Avenue.

On this street were some really impressive big houses. One of them looked like it was once an important rich person. I figured that Walden was a town that was once the knife making capital of America. I would bet that this stately home was probably one of the big bosses or owners.

We continued to the left down Hill Street to the west, along and then across the Tin Brook. Just after that, we turned right onto a side road that brought us to our late lunch stop: Empanada Nirvana.

This place was pretty great. I had a few delicious empanadas for lunch, and we checked out the oddball displays out in the lawn area across from it.
There was a thing with umbrella frames and skeletons seated, a pink mannequin with a breast cancer ribbon made of mannequin heads next to it, and weird dolls and roses and sticks.

The inside of the establishment was adorned with posters of musicians and actors. It was really a pretty neat place.

We were soon on our way, and we had to head back up hill on Hill Street, then turned right on Union Street. At the end of that, we went left on Sherman Ave, followed by a right on Edmunds Lane for a bit. This brought us out to Coldenham Road. We turned left just before there though, and cut across the land of Emerson/Spence Engineering to save a little road walking.

This bit was the crappiest part of the entire hike. The road was wide and not particularly to my liking. It wasn’t terribly ugly, but wasn’t nice like what we’d been on so far.

We got to where the Maybrook line used to cross, and it was a gated road into the private farm to the north, but just a clear ATV path to the south. We had a nice route to turn here.

The right of way was wide and nice the whole way. ATVs had been keeping the entire remaining stretch of abandonment totally clear.

We headed south over a pretty farm crossing, then further through woods to cross Coleman Road. Beyond that, we made our way across a power line and to the underpass below Route 17K.

It was somewhere in this area that the Berea Station used to stand, the first station to the north/east from Maybrook. There was a collapsed building off to the right at this point, which I assume was a barn or something, but it could possibly be the Berea Station. I don’t really have a clue, and I’ve never seen a photo of the Berea Station.

Just past the bridge underpass, the rails started up again, although overgrown. Bracken Road came closely parallel, and the tracks were soon clear, then became active, but there was an abandoned right of way just below us to the left with no tracks. I assume this was the through route and this upper one was just a siding for businesses or the Maybrook Yard. I’m not sure. We continued to the south, passed beneath Interstate 84, and made our way through woods. There were multiple accesses to Stewart State Forest just to the east of us, for which I have at least three hikes I can get out of the trail system there.

We continued south, with ponds and such on our left, and industrial areas of what used to be the Maybrook Yard to the right, and then came upon the old office building for the railroad to the left.

I had no idea this building was so substantial or that anything of it was still standing. It was quite impressive.
The building had wide windows, and to the right of it was a large base for a former water tower. The stairs to the upper levels were still in place, although the walls inside were all busted through to a great degree, apparently by crazed vandals with sledge hammers.

We were able to get right up to the roof with no problem at all, and we had good views of the former Maybrook yard, the ponds around, the former tower, and woods. We were also able to get all the way into the basement, which usually would not be possible due to deep water. This time, the water was frozen through the entire thing, so we were able to walk along all of it.

Cory flew his drone off the roof, which was pretty cool because he got a group shot up there.

We only had to walk a little further south from this point to get to the access to where we were parked. The old office building was the perfect way to end an awesome hike I’d been wanting to get to for a very long time.

Now, I have several more through the state forest, and from all of the other lines converging here, but I knocked out a pretty significant missing gap with all of this Maybrook line stuff.
Our 25^th year of exploration was going strong.