Revisiting the Shoemaker Farm

MarkBNJ

Piney
Jun 17, 2007
1,875
73
Long Valley, NJ
www.markbetz.net
Off topic, but I know a number of you have spent time up in this neck of the woods, and specifically in the Gap. I was up there last Saturday to revisit a few spots I had not been in several years. Among them was a place that has been mentioned here before, the Shoemaker Farm. Sadly I found the property much damaged and deteriorated.

The first thing I noticed was something I didn't notice. I was driving south on Mountain Rd. looking for the farm and somehow I ended up at Buttermilk Falls without seeing it. The last time I made a point of stopping there you could look down the neat farm lane from the road, past the metal gate halfway down, and see the whole property: the magnificent fieldstone main residence, built in 1822; several barns and outbuildings. It made a pretty picture.

Somehow I had missed it. So I turned around and headed back, keeping a close eye to the left. North of the falls I finally spotted the property, and then I understood why it had escaped my notice the first time I drove by.

To begin with, the road is gone. I don't know whether it was Sandy or some other gullywasher, but the road, known as Houck Lane on current maps, has been removed. Anyone who has been there will recall a tiny little trickle of a brook running in a ditch alongside the drive. There was even a neat little wooden footbridge over it at one point. Here's a picture of the three-foot concrete culvert through which that teeny little brook used to run after coming down off the mountain, just before it turned west to follow the drive.

ZWkwTdq.jpg


The whole pipe has been heaved up out of the soil, at which point the water apparently decided that the driveway looked like a far easier path downhill than the ditch that the humans wanted it to use. Here's a shot of what used to be the road, just past the culvert.

DKh0Uk5.jpg


You can see the wooden fence has been undermined, and you can just see what's left of the metal gate in the background. Here's a better picture of that.

M6jUQs1.jpg


And this is looking back up toward the truck. You can see the layer of crushed stone that used to make up the road. I kid you not this thing is cut to a depth of 6-8 feet in places.

IP6KMsU.jpg


It must have been quite the torrent that did this. Or perhaps it was a series of smaller storms, I don't know. Anyway, I mentioned that I had trouble finding the place, and in fact I had to walk another hundred feet or so to convince myself I was really in the same spot.

e1rb2x2.jpg


Oh, there's the farm! The increase in the brush in a couple of years is really amazing. When I was last here you would have thought "What a nice property. I hope the Park Service does something with it." Now you'd just think it's a ruin. Here's a picture of the main residence, followed by one with the original owner's name (which has been seen here before).

fPuBgh6.jpg


n2EVpSU.jpg


And that's pretty much the nicest view that's left out there. You can see the windows have been torn out all around. A door was ripped off its hinges in front, allowing partiers to gain access. Graffiti is tagged all over, whereas there was none three years ago.

DrucT0X.jpg


Hns2jt1.jpg


I couldn't make it to the back of the property to check on the cottage there, which had been in reasonable shape last visit. The property was massively infested with ticks and I just wasn't dressed for it. This hadn't been in my plans for the day. More graffiti.

qAqRXbv.jpg


gpmFNot.jpg


Lastly a look back up the drive toward the truck, showing the extent of the washout. I'm still shaking my head over this. The perils of living in the mountains, I guess. You wake up one morning and 700 feet of driveway is a creek bed.

fO9s7Ea.jpg


All in all a kind of somber visit. I know there's no realistic hope of preserving places like this, but still it's very melancholy to watch it rotting away, being vandalized by young idiots who probably don't even know when it was built, or if they do don't care. I think of the nearly two centuries of history here, and it makes me sad.
 

Badfish740

Explorer
Feb 19, 2005
589
44
Copperhead Road
A shame, for sure. That yellow building though, that looks like it had been painted and shingled within the past 5 years or so.

The NPS has made a haphazard fits and starts (and ultimately "fits and stops") effort at figuring out what to do with the properties left as a legacy of the Tocks Island Dam debacle. Apparently they had allowed folks at one time to lease buildings and fix them up, but since there was never any possibility of owning them it wasn't all that attractive. I wonder if they could offer 99 year leases with some kind of guaranteed right of renewal? I hear that's how vacation properties on some of the large Army Corps flood control lakes work down South and out West. The Army Corps retains ownership of the land, and you own the improvements with a 99 year lease. The lease can be handed down to descendants just as real property would, but I guess there's always a possibility that your children or grandchildren could get screwed at the end of that 99 years. Still, if someone offered me those terms on one of those farms I jump on it in a heartbeat.

It's a whole different world up there. There are still about 60 or so people who actually own property in Walpack Township-mostly descendants of the holdouts who would not sell to the Army Corps. They are among the smallest towns, population wise in NJ (Tavistock and some other wealthy enclave in Camden County are slightly smaller)-the average property tax bill is about $500-800 because they have no municipal services really. The NPS maintains the roads and all of the infrastructure. There is one home being built or reconstructed up there. The property was apparently subdivided from a current owner, and sold to a new person who is restoring it. Another house went up for sale about a year ago. $200K for 8 acres overlooking the Delaware, but it needed a ton of work.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jay and bobpbx

46er

Piney
Mar 24, 2004
8,837
2,143
Coastal NJ
Off topic, but I know a number of you have spent time up in this neck of the woods, and specifically in the Gap. I was up there last Saturday to revisit a few spots I had not been in several years. Among them was a place that has been mentioned here before, the Shoemaker Farm. Sadly I found the property much damaged and deteriorated.

The first thing I noticed was something I didn't notice. I was driving south on Mountain Rd. looking for the farm and somehow I ended up at Buttermilk Falls without seeing it. The last time I made a point of stopping there you could look down the neat farm lane from the road, past the metal gate halfway down, and see the whole property: the magnificent fieldstone main residence, built in 1822; several barns and outbuildings. It made a pretty picture.

I was up there last winter and tried to get back to the farm. It was a sheet of ice as it has become a drainage for the small creek. I got as far as the gate, where there was a semi-frozen pond, and turned around. Pretty sure Irene did all the washout/creek rerouting damage. The farm is slowly disappearing and now is very easy to miss. Have you heard anything more about the NPS teardown plans?
 

MarkBNJ

Piney
Jun 17, 2007
1,875
73
Long Valley, NJ
www.markbetz.net
A shame, for sure. That yellow building though, that looks like it had been painted and shingled within the past 5 years or so.


Quite possibly! That's basically what the NPS does up here when they want to at least try to preserve a structure: exterior paint and shingles. I don't recall whether this work was done since my last visit prior to this one. But I do remember that the last time I was in the building there was a tree growing on the stairs up to the loft...

gWTj94c.jpg
 

MarkBNJ

Piney
Jun 17, 2007
1,875
73
Long Valley, NJ
www.markbetz.net
It's a whole different world up there. There are still about 60 or so people who actually own property in Walpack Township-mostly descendants of the holdouts who would not sell to the Army Corps. They are among the smallest towns, population wise in NJ (Tavistock and some other wealthy enclave in Camden County are slightly smaller)-the average property tax bill is about $500-800 because they have no municipal services really. The NPS maintains the roads and all of the infrastructure. There is one home being built or reconstructed up there. The property was apparently subdivided from a current owner, and sold to a new person who is restoring it. Another house went up for sale about a year ago. $200K for 8 acres overlooking the Delaware, but it needed a ton of work.

The Rosenkranz's held on to their farm north of the bend. On Saturday I saw that there are "For Sale" signs out front but I don't know if they are selling the whole thing or a piece. I think the house you refer to as being reconstructed might be the one on the newly-opened section of Old Mine Road, the stretch that was gated off until a year or so ago.

I also heard about the "lease and renovate" deal. But I don't think much has come of it. The deli/store in the Delaware House has closed down, and I think he had a similar deal. The truth is that other than the handful of visitors to Millbrook, and few hikers on weekends, and fishermen that end of the park doesn't see much use.
 

MarkBNJ

Piney
Jun 17, 2007
1,875
73
Long Valley, NJ
www.markbetz.net
I was up there last winter and tried to get back to the farm. It was a sheet of ice as it has become a drainage for the small creek. I got as far as the gate, where there was a semi-frozen pond, and turned around. Pretty sure Irene did all the washout/creek rerouting damage. The farm is slowly disappearing and now is very easy to miss. Have you heard anything more about the NPS teardown plans?


Ah it was Irene then. As I said it had been a few years since I was up there. The storm certainly tore the hell out of that property.

I haven't heard anything specific about the tear down plans, but I can tell you that a number of structures along Mountain Rd. north of the intersection with Main St. are gone now. None of them really had any redeeming qualities and all of them were ruins. I took some pictures of a foundation that is all that is left of one place...

bR7gTYT.jpg
 

46er

Piney
Mar 24, 2004
8,837
2,143
Coastal NJ
Ah it was Irene then. As I said it had been a few years since I was up there. The storm certainly tore the hell out of that property.

I haven't heard anything specific about the tear down plans, but I can tell you that a number of structures along Mountain Rd. north of the intersection with Main St. are gone now. None of them really had any redeeming qualities and all of them were ruins. I took some pictures of a foundation that is all that is left of one place...

I don't head up there until the leaves are off the trees, too far to travel for me. I have a number of places I would like to get to this winter. Picked up a soft cover at the Kittatinny VC titled 'Exploring Delaware Water Gap History' around $10, great little spiral bound with most, if not all, of the historic structures listed, with a history and picture of each. Helps me to pick out where to go.

The NPS is still working on damage done in 2004-2006, but it looks like Van Campens Glen is finally open, and the Van Campen Inn has tours till near the end of August.

The current park newspaper has some good, old photo's in it;

http://www.nps.gov/dewa/parknews/upload/Newsletter2013pp20.pdf
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jay

Badfish740

Explorer
Feb 19, 2005
589
44
Copperhead Road
I don't head up there until the leaves are off the trees, too far to travel for me. I have a number of places I would like to get to this winter. Picked up a soft cover at the Kittatinny VC titled 'Exploring Delaware Water Gap History' around $10, great little spiral bound with most, if not all, of the historic structures listed, with a history and picture of each. Helps me to pick out where to go.

Another great resource (if you don't have them already) are the Kittatinny Ridge series of maps from the NY/NJ Trail Coalition. They show most old woods roads, whether open to vehicular traffic or not across Worthington State Forest, the DWG, Walpack WMA, Flatbrook-Roy WMA, Stokes, and High Point. This guy leads some pretty interesting hikes up there. TONS of history in those hills...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jay

Badfish740

Explorer
Feb 19, 2005
589
44
Copperhead Road
Have them, but probably need a new set, mine are very old.


You're lucky then-apparently through the years they've both added and removed things for various reasons (trail closures, vandalism in certain areas, rerouting, etc...), so if you pick up a new set you'll have the best of both worlds.
 

MarkBNJ

Piney
Jun 17, 2007
1,875
73
Long Valley, NJ
www.markbetz.net
You're lucky then-apparently through the years they've both added and removed things for various reasons (trail closures, vandalism in certain areas, rerouting, etc...), so if you pick up a new set you'll have the best of both worlds.


There are a lot of roads and paths that aren't on the official maps, as well. They're mostly leftovers from before the park was established. Most of them show up on actual road maps because somewhere a database doesn't know that the NPS came in and changed things. Stumbling on them is one of the things that has made exploring up there such a gas over the years.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jay

Jay

Scout
Nov 19, 2013
57
1
62
PB191471 resized.JPG
PB191471 resized.JPG
PB191471 resized.JPG

I am really glad to see this thread. I found it on my group site in Facebook. I mean I am really sad that the Park Service has let this place deteriorate and now seeing the graffiti all over the place makes me ill, but it brings back good memories of two great friends gone way before their time. I was lucky to see it 3 years ago to the day with my neighbor who was a great photographer in his day. Even luckier when my friend and I hiked up there together and visited Buttermilk Falls too. Imagine my surprise when I went to find the pictures to post here and found that they were taken on 11/19/2010. I'm glad it is obscured now ... it was way too easy for those who have no respect to find. Anyway, glad I can post these pictures. It sure must have been a wonderful, fantastic place in its time. RIP former residents, Greg and Pappy Arnold.
 

Jay

Scout
Nov 19, 2013
57
1
62
PB191473 Resized.JPG

Inside one of the two houses in back 11/19/2010. Hope it wasn't destroyed or trashed.
 

Jay

Scout
Nov 19, 2013
57
1
62
PB191474 resized.JPG

Beautiful old tree on the property. You can see the fence behind the tree. Must have provided a lot of shade to the horses/cows in its day.
 

Jay

Scout
Nov 19, 2013
57
1
62
The outside of one of the two houses out back. You can see the second house in back on the right side by the pine trees.
PB191475 resized.JPG
 

Jay

Scout
Nov 19, 2013
57
1
62
PB191478 resized.JPG
The furthest house out back. The backyard to this house was completely fenced in ... wondered if it was because of children or a small foal.
 
Top