Easton Trail Walk and Brewery/Winery Crawl at Simon Silk Mill

We're going to have an encore presentation of one of our most popular meetups of last summer when we return to Easton to walk the Karl Stirner Arts Trail and sample the beer and wine offerings at the Simon Silk Mill complex.

So join us bright and early Saturday morning to kick off the festivities with a 3 1/2-mile walk on the Karl Stirner Arts Trail, from the Simon Silk Mill to the foot of College Hill and the Lafayette College campus, and back. The roundtrip should take about an hour and a half.

Lunch and drinks will follow at the Simon Silk Mill's newest tenant, the brand new Ranch City Brewing, which is in the former Boser Geist Brewing space. From there, we'll move on to the Easton Wine Project urban winery, followed by Seven Sirens' Brewing Co.'s Blendery space.

As for the silk mill itself, brothers Herbert and Robert Simon opened the silk mill in 1883 on 13th Street along the Bushmill Creek in Easton. In its heyday, it employed more than 1200 workers and had more than 1500 pieces of machinery in operation. It was one of 75 silk mills in the Lehigh Valley alone and 300 in the state of Pennsylvania. But cheaper foreign competition pretty much destroyed the local silk industry and by the 1960s, the mill shuttered, falling into disrepair over the decades.

In the early 2000s, plans were made to level most of the complex and turn it into ballfields and a community center. Easton's Redevelopment Authority bought the old mill in 2006. But instead of tearing it down, it worked to redevelop the property. Four years later, VM Development Group was hired to turn the old mill into a mixed-use development with apartments, warehouses and retail space. The first businesses opened there in 2016.

Fast-forward to 2025 and we now have two breweries and a winery at the old mill. And a walking trail with public art spaces along the way.

So again, we'll meet at the trail head at 13th Street by 11:30. There's a parking lot there as well as other options for parking. If you're not up for the walk, meet us at Ranch City around 1. Or join us at another stop on the crawl.

See you there!