Hike #1476; Winding Hills Park to Walden

Hike #1476; 4/3/22 Winding Hills Park to Walden with Diane Rieder, Robin Deitz, Justin Gurbisz, Professor John DiFiore, and Brittany Weider

This next hike was yet another to fit in my southeastern New York “loose ends” series I’d recently been going mad on.

 We had recently done the Maybrook Line, which completed everything from Brewster to Maybrook, and we had passed through part of Walden on a side trip from that. We had also hiked the Wallkill Valley Railroad from Rosendale all the way to Walden.
Since most of the Ulster and Orange County stuff was completed, I might as well finish these bits, and I had a little more on the Wallkill Valley Railroad. I didn’t want to walk tracks all day, so I came up with a hike that would feature all sorts of things, but with the purpose of hitting that railroad bit.

I titled the hike something like “Winding Hills, Wine and Spills, and Orange Thrills” as I recall, with all sorts of different points of interest named. I thought for sure it would be a winner of a hike. To my amazement, attendance was not what I was expecting, but there was a degree of rain in the forecast. Things like that never scare me off, but for many it is a deal breaker.

We met at the grocery store in Walden where we had completed the previous hike on the Wallkill Valley Railroad, and then shuttled to our start point, Winding Hills Golf Club. It looked like a pretty secure lot where no one would bother us, so I figured a car or two left out of the way there would be no problem. I saw no signs saying no one could park there.

We started our walk by following the edge of the golf course over a wooden bridge parallel with Route 17K because it was rainy and there wouldn’t be anyone out there to holler at us. At the end of where the green paralleled the road, we cut out to the road.
Pretty soon, there was an old road going to the right, Old Rt 17K that was rerouted at some point. We went up this just a bit, and then there was a lot of woods and a slope to the right. We were able to walk up this, off trail, and in a short distance reached the southernmost trail in Winding Hills Park. I believe it was on the map as the blue trail.

Winding Hills Park is a county park that was created in 1968, and an existing old lake was enlarged to create Diamond Lake specifically for the purpose of recreation.

The park had some good trails it seemed, and there was no good way of sticking this on any other hike, this was the second point I found to make a good hike including the railroad.

The park turned out to have many more trails than I was anticipating we would find. We continued to the left on this first trail, through a dense woods full of compromised Ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer.

We continued around this southern perimeter of the park for a while, and then took a side trail to the right, up in to the campgrounds of the park.
We reached the crest of a rise, and these camp grounds were really set up quite nice on the top of a knoll. There were also nice restroom facilities we intended to visit, but they were unfortunately closed still, either from covid stuff or because the season hadn’t quite started up since it was just the first weekend in April.

We meandered around the sites, then descended almost the same way we came down, with a slight difference, and continued around the west side of the park, heading north.

Pretty soon, the trail emerged to the dam on Diamond Lake. It crossed the dam with some misty views across. It had started to rain a bit, but it wasn’t too much of a drag.

The trail started gaining elevation along the west side of Diamond Lake, and I was certainly feeling the incline more than I should have.
I had apparently, according to my recent doctor visits, ballooned from 203 lbs to 258 since December. Of course, I had stopped doing the night hikes as soon as my son Everen was born, and for a while I was doing stroller hikes with him during the week of normal distance, but by December, it was kind of too cold to have the baby out, so I discontinued it. I gained a ton of weight really fast, because cutting out 15 miles per week is quite a huge change. I’ve tried not to eat as much, but it has not been helping at all.

Of course, it didn’t help that I also have a few drinks every weekend. I basically never do at home, but hiking I do, and on this one, I found a blueberry MD2020 I’d never had before, as well as some Johnny Bootlegger thing I was sipping on.

I certainly needed to do more elevation and I was feeling it.

We continued along to the top of the hill west of Diamond Lake, where there were some rock outcroppings and some seasonal views. As we descended some of the north side, there were some pretty impressive stone rows passing through the land. One of the early ones we came upon looked like it might have once been a structure.

As we descended a bit more, the stone rows got tighter together, and there was an old plot of some sort to the right, where it didn’t look like such a stone row set up should have been.

We came to an intersection in the trail, where the Heritage Trail went to the right. We turned here, and followed it on the slope above the lake, heading back to the south. There was a giant White Oak along the way, and then a spot where the trails switched back along the waterfront.

There was an odd rock jutting forward from the ground, and then an old homestead foundation ahead to the right.

I wanted to know what all of this was, but the official county park website makes no mention of anything on the property except for when the park was built, and that there was already an existing reservoir there. Old map of the area don’t reveal much else either.

This entire section of trail used to tell some sort of story, but the waymarker signs were long since rotted and pretty much destroyed. The few that I was able to read were only about plant and animal life, and I could not find a PDF of a self guided nature trail on line either. It seemed that some of the ruins and remnants might have once had a degree of interpretation, but not any more.

The trail continued north through the woods, and soon picked up an old woods road lined with stone walls on both sides, but then turned to the right.

We passed one other hiker walking through this area, and he looked kind of visibly perturbed that there was anyone else out walking. I think he figured this would be the quietest day he would ever have out there and see no one, but that wasn’t the case.

It probably also threw him a major curve ball that I was wearing a bright green blazer and yellow shirt on a far end of a park. People don’t know what to make of that.

Pretty soon, we reached closed Diamond Valley Road. Today, the southern end of this road is the access road to the park, but the northern end is closed to traffic where it used to go all the way out to Corbett Road.

We headed south along this road for a little bit, and then there was some sort of lodge building on the hill to our left, so we went to check it out.

When we got up there, the front door to it was wide open. It was loaded with all sorts of antiquated office stuff, probably no good to anyone any more, but there were also more of the wooden signs and such, exactly those used to make the way markers that were rotten away out on the trail.

It is pretty much the same everywhere you go; trails are the least important thing everywhere, never maintained quite right, infrastructure falls apart, despite the fact that they are the most used facilities in the entire park systems.

We left the building and turned right, back to the north again, and then there was a giant overhead entrance to the “Nature Trail”, which took us into the woods.

We ascended a bit, and went back and forth a bit mostly along the same trail. My goal was to get to what the map showed as the white trail along the northern side of the property. 

We came within sight of another parking area to the south, and I was kind of freaked out a bit by a pair of headlights heading toward us from there. I hadn’t considered that even though that building was open, we might have been on a camera or something.

I was probably just paranoid for nothing because it was just a regular trail parking area and the weather was improving.

We continued to the east a bit more, and near the northeastern corner of the park, we came upon a shale outcropping, which was once the bottom of an ancient ocean. It looked like some of the area might have been industrially excavated at some point.

We climbed up hill a bit, and then reached a more level area where Small Pond was on the right, below us. We didn’t go down to it, but rather continued on the trail straight ahead, which started to climb more steeply up hill.

This was another section that was really killing me going up. I felt awful that I was that out of shape. Still, I was the first in the group to the top.
The area was actually quite close to a private home, and there was a USGS marker that read “Kimball” on it, and a beacon. The top of this eastern hill in the park is 777 feet above sea level. We could see into the clearing to the right, but didn’t get close for a better view as not to intrude on anyone’s private property.

The trail started to descend gradually here, and did a switchback that could have been bypassed by a steeper trail.

 We descended here, and some of it picked up some old woods roads. I got farther ahead of the rest of the group again on the down hill, and the trail came out to Diamond Valley Road.

The trail actually was supposed to cross and then go immediately right, but it was terribly overgrown. I went into the woods and saw the markers, but pubic were clearly taking the parallel road. I walked the official trail out to the side road to the boat launching area and piers, then crossed the road to continued descending again to Diamond Lake.

Once along the lake side, it was surprising that the trail follows so very closely to the shore. We followed it along the waterfront to the left, which was quite pretty.

 We stopped when we got to the dock area, and could see the dam we had crossed over earlier. There were nice misty views over the lake again.

I had planned to try to head south on the trails parallel with Diamond Valley Road from here, but there was none going up into the woods where it said it was supposed to be.
We ended up walking the road for a bit, and when we got to where I thought the trail should be on the map, I decided we would just start bushwhacking and maybe we’d find it. If not, the undergrowth was sparse enough that it wasn’t too much of a drag.

We continued along a height of land with a steep drop off to the left. There was no official trail that we ever hit back in this section. We ended up descending with the natural contours of the land, and got to where we could see Diamond Spring Road. When we had a safe enough spot to descend to the road with less of a grade, we did so. We then just walked the road back out to the regular park entrance.

Near the front of the park was a pretty little pond and dam. We went around it and then came out to Old Rt 17K, but a different place that it deviates from the current highway than where we initially went in.

The road walk to the east from here was pretty pleasant until we reached the modern 17K. Once we got there, it was only a 0.8 mile road walk, but Brittany was beyond frustrated with the rain and cold. She decided to try hitchhiking, and it took her a several tries before someone finally came along and pulled over for her.
One of our next stops was to be City Winery in Montgomery, and she managed to get a ride there. It worked out alright, because she was able to secure reservations for us for like an hour and a half from where we were, which was actually a little sooner than we would make it there.

We continued along the highway, and there was a weird dog house out in the wetland to the right, and crossed a creek known as the Muddy Kill. We then turned to the right into Benedict Farm Park.

I don’t know the history of this park and couldn’t find much of anything, but I would assume it is named for the former farming family.

There was a now vacant old farm house to the right as we entered the property, and on the front was a white sign that read “Edith Benedict, Park Commissioner”. Maybe she lives there or used to live there.

We headed down the gravel lane to the southernmost part of the park, along the Wallkill where there were some nice signs and giant Sycamore trees. We were able from there to turn left and walk along the Wallkill downstream.

Brittany had just missed out the end of the inclement weather, as it stopped raining in this park. It was a really nice walk along the slopes, with some great river views and beautiful trees.
The Wallkill was kind of flooded, and we tried to take a mowed path that went closer to the water, but it got too wet to get through. We ended up going back out, and the path again joined on the right further up.
We skirted the field edges above the river to the east, and then shifted to head north along the east side of the fields, which provided us with some good views to the 777 foot Kimball beacon hill we had been on earlier.

We passed a collapsed barn or chicken coop ruin on the right of the trail, and continued through a line of trees to another open field. Just ahead on the left was the Montgomery Community Garden. To the right, a paved trail led through another line of trees and out to Parsonage Farm Lane. We turned here.

 After coming out of the development, almost directly across Rt 17K was the Brick Reformed Church, just outside Montgomery.

This is actually the fourth Church to occupy this site. The first church was the Old Dutch Church erected in 1731 of log construction. The first interment in the adjacent Cemetery was the next year. That original Church stood just about behind where the lion statue is seen . It was replaced by a wooden frame structure that stood on the site of the current Church, in 1760.

The congregation outgrew the second church, and a 58 by 46 ft "New Brick Church" was erected in 1804.

The present Church replaced that one in 1858. At the time of construction, there was no church spire included. A small spire erected did not meet the approval of the congregation, and so the larger one was constructed.
The Cemetery contains the remains of many veterans including from the American Revolution.

The building and the statue in front were so impressive we had to cross and have a closer look, then we turned right to walk through the old cemetery and check out some stones.

We headed out from there and then east a bit more on 17K, and soon were along the Wallkill again. We approached Ward’s Bridge, which was an early name for the settlement of Montgomery. 

It was named for James Ward, who erected a bridge in the mid 1700s to access his grist mill that was once nearby. Ward and his wife were originally buried at the grist mill, but were reinterred at the cemetery. The town of Montgomery was renamed in 1810 for General Richard Montgomery, an officer during the American Revolution.

I believe we took Bridge Street to Clinton Street to continue. I had a different route planned originally, but we needed to make better time to get to the winery, and I needed to see the Montgomery Station site.

We continued past the local library, which was one of the buildings of the Montgomery Academy established in 1818. It was the fourth chartered secondary school in the state. There was a pretty old Presbyterian church right next to that.

We soon reached the former Wallkill Valley Railroad Montgomery Station site at Clinton Street. I tried to figure out where exactly it had been located based on several photographs of the area showing it. I think I pretty much nailed it.
I had several historic station photos by J. E. Bailey taken about 1910, from the Steamtown NHS archives/Jim Hutzler Collection, as well as others.

The Wallkill Valley Railroad began in 1866, stretching from the south at Montgomery where it connected with the Erie Railroad main line. It was originally built in the six foot Erie gauge.

The line extended north through Walden, then Wallkill, Gardiner, and was extended to New Paltz in 1870. By 1872, it bridged the Rondout to Rosendale.

Steamboat magnate Thomas Cornell purchased the line and extended it further north to Kingston. It was operated by the Erie for ten or so years, but then after that eventually became part of the West Shore Railroad as a branch line.

Conrail took over the line, and it was discovered that the piers of the Rosendale trestle had shifted, and it was not worth the expense to fix them. The line was abandoned, and most of it was removed in 1983-84. A section of team track remains in Kingston, and the southern stub from Walden to Montgomery, and an extension south to Campbell Hall is all the remains.
I’m not totally sure but Montgomery might have been the southern terminus of Wallkill Valley Railroad, and below that was Erie’s Montgomery Branch.

After getting tons of photos which hopefully came out alright, we headed north on the tracks over Ward Street, then a little bit further to Factory Street. Here, we turned left, slightly up hill.

This brought us to the historic Worsted Mill, built in 1892 following a fire that destroyed original grist mill built by Johannes Miller in 1813.
The Crabtree Family operated the mill on the shore of the Wallkill from 1880 to 1939.

Today, the mill is home to City Winery Hudson Valley, which is apparently a chain. I’m not sure how it is a winery because it just looked like a restaurant occupying the old mill building. It was still a pretty cool creative reuse of the property.

Brittany was inside at the fire place when we arrived, enjoying a glass of wine. We all headed over to the table we’d had reserved and ordered a good lunch. Everything was pretty overpriced as I saw it, but the food was really good. I ended up not getting any wine at all. I’d looked at the bottles they had, and it was just mind blowing high prices compared to other wineries. The ambiance was good, but I can’t see a place like this really succeeding in the location we were in. I understand they have another one in New Paltz, and that’s more upscale enough to support it, but not this.
I was going to sample something, but the guy serving us didn’t even remember to bring it so I decided against getting it at all anyway. They also had different prices whether we dined in or carried out, and different selections. The whole thing just felt a bit too snooty for my taste. And if they’re snooty, at least let them be professional and knowledgeable about what they’re selling, but they weren’t.

We left there, and headed just barely back up hill from the place, and turned left on Patchett Way. This led out to a hard right turn and a condo area known as Loosestrife Fields. We followed the road to the end, and then bushwhacked into the woods. I had seen on the aerial images that there seemed to be a mowed path that came out almost to this location and I figured we could bushwhack on to it if it wasn’t clear the entire way. I really expected it to be all clear.

Well, it was not clear. It was even worse. After skirting a bit of an outcrop, there were dense weeds and a lot of wetlands. The Wallkill was running high, and this was a big flood plain. I pushed ahead a bit, but then was feeling like crap and figured no one was going to want to go through this craziness. It made more sense to go back and try to access from the apartments we had passed.

We made the turn back to that Loosestrife place a little ways back, and then went to the far south end of it. There, there was path over to the former Wallkill Valley Railroad. We were able to turn there and follow it to the north.
This was a really pleasant stretch with a lot of water on both sides of us, pretty woods and swamp scenes, and a small pond. We crossed Bailey Road two times, then a couple of farm access roads and an industrial access road, then went under Rt 208, Orange Avenue. The section went by really quickly.
We next crossed Coldenham Road, Rt 75 at grade.

It is interesting to note that where I grew up, Port Colden, is named for a man who lived on the outskirts of Walden and Montgomery. 

Cadwallader Colden, who would become first President of the Morris Canal and Banking Company had built a farm canal for irrigation and such, and sent letters of recommendation for a system of canals in America for transportation based on his own success.

We continued north of here, and then crossed Grant Street, which was the former location of the Walden Station. The station actually still survives, but was moved to a park just to the east. We unfortunately did not go to visit this on the previous Walden trips because I didn’t know it was there until much later.

I got several then and nows of about where I thought the old station was, and we proceeded ahead to where the bridge used to exist over East Main Street and the Tin Brook. The bridge is gone, and the tracks end abruptly just before the bridge site. This was where we had finished our previous Wallkill Valley line hike.

The bridge that had been there, a through truss structure, had very low clearance below, and was nicknamed the “old scalper”.

We climbed down, and I got another then and now from below as best I could, avoiding traffic.
I also intended to get another from standing in the Tin Brook, but I couldn’t get down to it for that. There is a good one looking upstream to “old scalper” I need to go back and get.

 

I wasn’t giving up quickly, and the others went ahead of me into town while I tried to figure out a way to get down for the photo.

I couldn’t get it and everyone went on without me, so I started hurrying back. I went up the Main Street, through town, did some more compilation stuff, and headed down to the Hanneford supermarket via Oak Street.

 Walden was first settled in 1736, founded by Alexander Kidd. As such, the settlement was originally known as Kidd's Town. Jacob Walden, for whom the town takes its name, was a shipper in 1820 who convinced his partners to build a woolen mill on the Wallkill River here.

Most of the woolen mills eventually failed, but the site became known as Walden’s Mills at first anyway, and then simply Walden in 1855.

Town leaders convinced knife makers from Dutchess County to establish factories in Walden, and it became home to three knife factories in the years ahead.

The town became colloquially known as Knifetown to some.

President Grover Cleveland opened knife trade with Germany which nearly killed the American knife market, but tariffs imposed by President William McKinley restored the market. Thomas Bradley of US Knife Company erected a statue of McKinley in town that remains today. The knife market remained pretty lucrative in the town until after World War II.

It had been a pretty good day, and we were finished within reasonable time. I was quite happy to have seen a bunch of new things, and covered another bit of all of the southeastern NY railroads. It is pretty incredible to think that I've already walked almost all of the abandonments in the Orange County area, and that the few bits I haven't seen are yard limits around Maybrook, a little more Wallkill Valley and the Lehigh and Hudson. I'll probably finish with the area by 2023!