Hike #1475; Warren Railroad

Hike #1475; 3/26/22 Warren Railroad with Daniel Trump, Jenny Tull, Scott Helbing, Troy Helbing, Mark Godfrey (Sr), Bobo (Mark Godfrey Jr), Jacob Helbing, Amanda Lance, Jennifer Berndt, Serious Sean Dougherty, Jack Lowry, Sarah Jones, Dan Asnis, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, Lyz Hagenbuch, Ric Giantisco, Steve Sanbeg, Gregory Andres, Robin Deitz, Professor John DiFiore, Brandan Jermyn, Violet Chen, Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Kevin Kowalik, Justin Gurbisz, Kat Cataldo, Kirk Rohn, Chris "Cupcake" Kroschinski, Brittany Weider, Tom McNamee, "Major Tom" Conroy, Eric Pace, Michele Valerio, Russ Nelson, Ewa Nelson, Diane Rieder, Ken Lidman, Bill Transue, Erica Pensyl, Anne ?, Tom Vorrius, Stephen Argentina, ?, ?, ?, ?,( I don't know Erica's kids and boyfriends names) Kenny Zaruni, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, and Mike Piersa

It was time finally for my 25 year anniversary hike. A big one. I honestly didn’t know what to do.

This hike is always an obligation, and at this point it started to feel like the obligation should be something big, something extra special. The problem was, I was a new father, didn’t have the time to plan, and dealing with personal drama sometimes took precedent over everything else.

Before fatherhood, I envisioned having this hike, but also making a full weekend celebration with a party at a hotel with a hot tub, another hike on one of the anthracite railroads, and another trip the second weekend day. I wanted it to be the biggest thing I’d ever done, but that just wasn’t going to happen.

We were still just coming off of the covid craziness, and the numbers of participants still haven’t quite recovered from that. There aren’t many new people coming from online resources.
I couldn’t be out for the weekend without my son, nor would I want to be.

I really had to do the same hike, the same way I’d done it as best I could in 1997. I knew this. I actually wanted it to be that way. There were just a lot of problems involved with doing that.

So much has changed since 1997. Any size group crossing the Delaware bridge would be a big problem, cause a scene and potentially get us in trouble. Several sections of the right of way were at this point heavily posted. The Oxford Tunnel is still passable, but not something I encourage a large group to undertake in the freezing temperatures, and with the fences blocking off both sides following the major collapses a couple of years prior.

Things will just never be the same, and some of what made the hike so fun and crazy were the incredible experiences of the tunnels. It is certainly still a good hike, but it was starting to get close to stagnating.

I decided ahead of time that this would be the last time for a while. The anniversary hike henceforth wouldn’t be the same Portland to Washington or Delaware to Washington as we had done it before. I would do something that would be close to home, but it would be something that incorporated new things as well as some favorite old things. I hope to continue to push for preservation of this right of way as time goes on, and it will always be my favorite, but some aspects of it will be better off changing a bit.

I figure I might go ahead with doing the same hike annually on my actual birthday, and then do another as the anniversary hike. I toyed with that idea during covid and had a different one on the weekend, with the regular one on my actual birthday, but that was a weird situation during the pandemic.

One of the things I decided early on I would do this time would be to start at the Portland-Columbia Footbridge, just like we did in 1997. I wouldn’t announce that part of it to the entire group, but core group people would be welcome to do that if they wanted to. I would have my brother and others help to corral everyone else together from Port Colden Mall out to Delaware where we usually meet.

Doing this actually took quite a bit of stress off of my plate. I actually love showing up at Port Colden Mall and greeting everyone, so I would miss out on that, but I also looked forward to doing the original hike in exactly the way I had done it before.

I typically wear a weird suit for these hikes, but I had something special in mind for this one that would be a great homage to my grandfather. I wish I could have gotten him to join, but I made sure to show him the photos.

I also wish my son could have been present for at least part of the hike. I had already pushed him 500 plus miles in his jogger stroller, and the majority of this could be done with that, but his mother insisted that she was not going to go, and later insisted that I would not allow her to go, which is ridiculous made up fiction. 

My grandfather sang for over twenty years in a barbershop chorus. My great grandfather started out with that, in a group called the Jersey Gents. My grandfather joined them when his father passed, but they soon disbanded and most members went to Flemington to join the Hunterdon Harmonizers.

The Harmonizers attire was a red and white tuxedo; red bowtie, red cummerbund, red jacket, white shirt and pants.
The night before the first hike, my friend Andrew Hughes and my cousin Tanner attended a concert of the Hunterdon Harmonizers in Honesdale PA. It was really an excellent show, and I attended more with him than I could count.
I went to thrift stores and found through four different purchases, all components to emulate the Harmonizers attire. Since my grandfather was the one who first started me out hiking at the age of three, I figured it would be a great homage to him, as well as fit in with my typical crazy hiking attire to dress as a Hunterdon Harmonizer for the hike.

We got to the NJ side of the Portland-Columbia footbridge. I was slightly sad that no one that had done this hike with me 25 years ago was with me at this point. In fact, no one that was on that hike was on this one at all.

I got over that pretty quickly, and we moved on across the bridge to Portland.

Once across the bridge, I did several then and now photo compilations using historic photos, and some using my photos from the first hike. I got closer looks at the old station that is still standing today and pointed out some history.

On the PA side, the tracks are right at the end of the foot bridge, but they weren’t always this way. Originally, the Lackawanna double track main line occupied the place of present day Rt 611. When the Lackawanna Cutoff in NJ opened in 1911, this became a secondary line, and so the double track was no longer needed. By I think the 1940s, Rt 611 was rehabilitated and shifted from its higher ground to a new, wider, and lower route on the rail bed, while the tracks were shifted a bit closer to the river. Looking at historic photos, it seems that the station is out of sync when looking at the tracks versus the station itself, but this is because the station is the point where the tracks shifted from the original route to the later route.

I also did a few shots of the main street there. We started earlier enough that it provided the time to do all of this.

Another shock this time was a symbolic end to yet another tradition.
From the very first hike, and before that, every hike with my grandfather around Delaware Water Gap, I would visit the Port Mart in the little lot next to the station.

When I was little, we would park at the foot bridge on the NJ side, walk across and get Lehigh Valley Farms chocolate milk at the Port Mart after every hike. Then, when I started the group, we would go there at the start of the hike every time we did this one, and I would still go in when doing other area hikes, or just randomly when passing by.

The Port Mart was now closed. It was a bit of a shock. Lehigh Valley Farms chocolate milk has fallen short of being the best for many years, since before 2010 when they shifted to this Tru Moo version. I emailed the company to let them know it was inferior, and they defended that in taste tests it performed better (my new favorites had become Clover Farms and Harrisburg Dairies, also available at Port Mart eventually).

We got on the tracks, crossed over Jacoby Creek, and then Dan and Jenny posed at the same location my group had posed for the photos at the start of hike #1.

We continued on from here to the south, and passed the former junction with the former Bangor and Portland Railroad, where there used to be more rails in a yard. Just up ahead was the old Portland power plan on the left.

This was always an active place, at some point with a security guard stationed outside. We would walk the tracks where cars were stored ahead.

Now, it had been announced that the Portland plant was to be closed. Shortly after this hike took place, demolition began on some of the infrastructure. The entire site is to be redeveloped. And so, I got my very last photo ever going by the Portland plant.

After passing a sign reading “Ass” with a heart around it, we reached the bridge over the Delaware River.

This historic crossing has been home to four different bridges. The first was a wooden span that was erected in 1856. It was torn down in 1870 and replaced with an oblong shaped through truss of what looked to be wrought iron material. 

That one lasted less time than the original, as it was replaced by a through truss similar to the one that stands today, but with a central truss section between the two tracks. 

That one was replaced by the one that is still there in 1906 or 7, and the predecessor was sold to a preacher by the name of Darlington, who rehabilitated it as an automobile toll bridge. As such, it was known as Darlington’s Bridge or “The Preacher’s Bridge”. That bridge was purchased and demolished by a predecessor of the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission as not to have competition for its nearby Portland Columbia toll bridge that had recently opened.

The bridge was really in no worse shape than it was twenty five years earlier. Still easy to hop on across despite spaces between the railroad ties. This has changed a lot over the years as well, because the NJ side used to be very accessible. The bridges over Rt 46 on the other side were torn down in 1996. For a while, to keep people off, some of the fill on the NJ side had been removed, but was then replaced probably for greater liability concerns.

We made our way across, and then climbed down and up across Rt 46.

We did one little side trip to the left on the other side to the former railroad cut of the Blairstown Railroad.
Established in 1876, the Blairstown Railroad, built by John I. Blair, broke away from the Lackawanna in Delaware at this point, headed up along the Delaware, then followed the Paulins Kill east to Blairstown. 

It was purchased by the New York, Susquehanna, and Western in 1881, which extended east to Jersey City and west to East Stroudsburg/Gravel Place.

Back in 1997, the cut was still intact where the line headed over parallel with present Rt 46. The highway construction obliterated much of the old rail grade where it would have paralleled 46. Just a couple of years ago, the land owner had removed the entire west side of the rock cut to make room for more parking.

There was a photo of me sitting on the cliff in the cut back in 1997, and I wanted to find the exact spot I had sat back then. I did manage to find it, and got the same shot of me sitting there this time.

I also did another shot to emulate the one of my friend Rob Richmond climbing the same rock in 1999. Another friend, Jay Erker, climbed it in 1998.

We continued ahead to the concrete highway that comes to a dead end now, but used to go across the Delaware River on Darlington’s Bridge. My great great grandfather, Edwin Allen, died of a heart attack driving across that bridge from the route we were looking at. He was found slumped over the wheel on the PA side by a truck driver.

The concrete highway occupies the original railroad right of way, which was shifted over when the current bridge was built. We checked out the parallel right of way of that, and the bridge over the little brook ahead as we went by.
I attempted several more compilation photos, and also checked out an old road bridge just downstream on the little bridge I’d never noticed before. There was also a house that used to be an old fueling station I never recognized as such before. There are so many things like that, which we go by all of our lives, but we don’t recognize as interesting because we subconsciously take them for granted. In any other place, I’d have been incredibly interested in all of this. I had to try to look at everything with retrained eyes.

We were just about to the meeting point with the rest of the group because we had reached the old railroad yard, but we were way too early. Even with all of the photographs, we had taken not nearly enough time.

We headed back over to the west on 46, and checked out the somewhat newer convenience store on the right.

I was kind of surprised at the small selection of everything they had, despite being in an area that should be getting a lot of truck business.
Another new store had opened up across the street from here, and that one I’d also never been in, so we checked it out as well. There wasn’t anything of particular interest there either, and we moved back on toward the meeting point. A couple of people were there by the time we arrived.

I was so happy to see so many friends who did show up, some of them I see all the time, and some of them I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Once again, I was elated at the family affair it had become, as both my dad, my step dad, two brothers, nephew, a sister in law, and a former sister in law all attended.

I tried not to hold people up for too long, and we started paralleling the right of way along 46 to Clarence Road, where the bridge had been removed for bus clearance in the 1990s. We always do a group shot there, and so we did that and moved on ahead along the fill, behind the weird house that was a world’s fair stand, and then to Smiddy’s Liquor Store, another place we had been frequenting for all 25 years.

We got our stuff at the store, and then headed out and re-convened in the back, at the pavilion where I gave a little more history of the area before moving on.
From this point, we headed eastbound on the track bed, and passed the former site of the home of my great grandmother, Gladys Snyder. The brick home that used to stand to the left of the railroad was built as a Baptist church, then converted to a home early on. My great grandmother lived there as a border from a broken home, with the Evans family. Mr. Evans held the title of “Tunnel Keeper” for the Lackawanna Railroad, for Manunka Chunk Tunnel to the south. My great grandfather lived across the street and at an angle. His father didn’t approve of his courting Miss Snyder, and so he was disowned, and moved to Hampton.

 My family’s saw mill was almost across from the Evans home, and next to it is the big white mansion house that belonged to my family for generations. Next to it was a Cape Cod style house my great grandfather built and lived in during retirement.

We crossed over the road near these homes, and then crossed the road and up to the right of way parallel with the old cemetery where many of my ancestors are buried.

We eventually reached where cell tower construction put a road over the right of way where we had to go up and follow it briefly. Most every year, I do the “shrub of might” activity near the top, where we try to run up a shale slope. This year, I decided against it because I didn’t want to ruin my tuxedo that early on. We also didn’t do that until hike #2 so I didn’t feel as bad.
Even that had changed a lot. The shrub we used to refer to was a little Mountain Laurel bush, which was kind of dead at this point. There were two good sized trees right behind it we would brace ourselves on at the top, but one of them this year was dead or close to it, broken off at about four feet up, and leaning.
We headed from here out to Ramseyburg and crossed the road, then headed back up to the right of way, out to Manunka Chunk Tunnels. I took my time to go back and forth between forward and back of the group and tried to chat with everyone a bit.

At the tunnel, Tea Biscuit, Jenny, Kirk, Lyz, Ric, and I think maybe Greg went on through. I’m not sure who else was behind us on that. It was sloppy as ever going through, but not much more difficult than it’s ever been honestly.

We turned left after the tunnel cut and washed our shoes off at the cascade on Catherine’s Run, then headed up the path to the plank bridge across. 

It is amazing that this has lasted for so many years, because the wood is part of the old flume system that carried waters of Catherine’s Run up and away from the railroad bed in an artificial waterway. This has been out of use completely since probably 1913 when it seems the entire area was redone with newer routing of the creek for flood reasons.

Rather than take to the fields on this one to the left, we went to the right and paralleled the track bed to cross Upper Sarepta Road. I decided this time we would go up to the overlook in Beaver Brook Wildlife Management Area a quicker way rather than the roundabout thing we had done before. In doing so, I lost a lot of the hikers who decided to just continue walking the grade ahead toward Sarepta and Hope Crossing.

The rest of us went up to the overlook, which is always great. It is also Russ and Ewa’s wedding spot, and I didn’t want to deprive them of visiting there by any means.

From here, we headed directly down through the fields below. We passed through an opening in the tree line to the lower field, and then made our way to the south end where a path led into the woods near the edge of the old quarry off of Ledge Road. We checked out the edge and view, and then continued on out to Sarepta Road. From there, it is only a very short distance back to the railroad bed.

Lots of music ensued on the easy part ahead, with Jack playing his carbon fiber acoustic and Sean playing his electric. We moved on across Hope Crossing Road, and then out to Bridgeville. Some were parked I think at the little park to the right of the track bed, or over at the Quick Chek further down.

The rest of us continued past the old Bridgeville Station, which had been rehabilitated after the fire that had gutted it a few years prior.

We crossed over Rt 519, followed the right of way to the sand quarry, and then skirted the edge of that up to a slope and an ATV trail that bypasses it. We haven’t been able to follow the undisturbed right of way pretty much since 1998.

After we got back down to the railroad bed, we descended to Hot Dog Johnny’s for our lunch stop along the Pequest River. I had my usual two dogs and we had a nice time hanging out before moving on.

We climbed back up the slope on the other side, and I think some of the group cut out here. The right of way took us up to a side road from Green Pond Road, which is part built over it and then parallel with it, out to the main part of Green Pond Road. We then got back on the railroad bed on the other side along the cemetery in Buttzville.

1997

 My dad and a whole lot more cut out early at the former bridge site where the line crossed Rt 46. We headed uphill, crossed over the Pequest River on the three arch concrete span, with good views of the former Lehigh and Hudson River Railway and the river, and continued into Pequest Wildlife Management Area.

 This is a really great stretch, quiet and nice the entire way. There were a few more trees down over it than usual, which means the normal ATV traffic is not happening anymore, because they used to keep it clear.

We were on the higher shelf, with the Lehigh and Hudson down below us to the left. When the Lackawanna turned to the right into Pequest Cut, the old Pequest Furnace Railroad went off to the left and is still quite clear.

We passed through Pequest Cut, and I pointed out the cinder piles remaining from the smelting at Pequest Furnace. Ahead, we crossed over Pequest Road, turned right, and then left to continue on the paved trail section. This brought us back onto the rail bed, and through the state land out to Lower Denmark Road.

Amazingly, we were running out of drinks at this time, or at least anything particularly good. So, I stopped in Mountain Valley Liquors and got the new Flying Dog barrel aged Gonzo, which was pretty good. I’d not really cared for the Flying Dog brewery stuff in the past, but recently they’ve been putting out some really good ones.

 We continued past the way to Oxford Tunnel, and I pointed out where the original Warren Railroad right of way went from 1856 to 1862 parallel with Rt 31. 

We passed by where the hunting supply store that was recently torn down used to be, and then headed onto the rail bed to the right when we got past the upper end of the tunnel. We also checked out the mouth of it more closely so I could get some then and now shots using my own past photos.

We continued south from there, passed by the farm lane, and then the old farm overpass which grows in more every year. I had a then and now to do at this site as well, but I forgot to do it this time. I ended up coming out the next week to do it instead.

We were making pretty reasonable time here. We had made it to the border of Washington Township, and despite it being kind of weedy, we headed out to Jackson Valley Road where the bridge was torn down in the 1990s. I also did a then and now of this site.

We headed back onto the right of way, and this was the most difficult part of the entire hike. It is getting so overgrown on the state park owned piece through Washington that it almost feels impenetrable at times. It always used to be perfect.

We pushed on through it, but some of the group gave up here and walked the road as well I believe.
Just after passing Warren Hills High School, the route I used to walk home from school, it got to be less overgrown and more passable. It was here that Mike Piersa met up with us to do the last couple of miles after work. 

Chalrie Houser image, 1965

We continued from here out into the open area behind the former Warren Lumber. Now that entire business was gone as well. We then hit the spot where the spur from American Can, another long gone business, came in from the left. I pointed out the tops of the abutments where the Morris Canal used to pass beneath the Lackawanna line.

We continued along the tracks at this point, crossed Rt 31 and Rt 57, then skirted the left side of the yard going ahead. I pointed more things out through this stretch, but it was kind of a blur to me.

Part of this seemed really like old time, with just my brother Tea Biscuit and I making our way out to beneath Rt 57 again, and then up where the path used to be to Port Colden Road where we grew up. We walked directly from the now almost gone path directly into the back yard where I had set up the twenty by forty foot tent for the party the week before, and where Mark had gathered up plenty of wood for the fire.

 Mark plans on moving in the near future, and so it might be the last chance we’d have to do a camp fire for the anniversary hike at his house, so it was only appropriate that we end the hike right where we always had in the past.

 The night wasn’t the crazy time that so many parties had turned out to be in the past. We stood, then sat, then stood again around the fire, chatting and having a nice time. Matt Davis wasn’t able to come on the hike, but he did make it over to the party which was nice.

I would never have pictured all of this hobbie evolving into the amazing thing it has become. It truly is another family, and I'm beyond grateful for the time and effort everyone has put out to be a part of it.

At the close of 25 years, I wonder where I will be, if I am in fact anywhere, in another 25. I hope that my son will take to it and enjoy it with me. I hope that I'm not judgemental and forceful, and that he can do so on his own terms. I hope his mother lets go of whatever resentments she harbors toward me so that he will have the best life he can.
I hope that the hikes can continue much in the way they always have, and that this family I've built among my hiking companions, and integrated with my own blood family can continue to evolve as not a competion, but a compliment to everything family is and should be as my life marches on.

Thank you everyone for joining, and here's to another 25 or however many I have left in me.