Rocky Neck: Shaped by fish fertilizer and a snowy wedding
Mention Rocky Neck in East Lyme, and most people envision summer weekends, when throngs pack the beach cheek-to-jowl, RVs and tents spread out over all 160 campsites, and late arrivals struggle to find a parking space or empty picnic table.
No such crowding in winter, which by some measures is the best time to visit the 710-acre state park. An added bonus: With leaves off the trees now, hikers who ramble five miles of trails can take in unobstructed views of Bride Brook to the east and Fourmile River to the west, as well as a sweeping vista of Long Island Sound from a bulbous rock formation called Tony’s Nose.
Even birds stand out more prominently this time of year.
“Nothing is quite as blue as a bluebird in snow!” exclaimed Maggie Jones, director emeritus of the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center in Mystic, who led our group around the entire peninsula a couple weeks ago, when the ground was still blanketed in white.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly a year ago, we had restricted our excursions to lesser-known nature preserves and wildlife sanctuaries in order to maintain social distancing while remaining active outdoors. Lately, our group has begun exploring state parks and beaches that are popular during warm-weather months but almost deserted this time of year, especially on mid-week mornings.
The first of these outings — at Napatree Point and Watch Hill in Westerly, and then at Bluff Point in Groton — captured nature’s serene, elemental appeal in near solitude.
The same was true at Rocky Neck. While hiking for more than three hours, we crossed paths with exactly one other person — a park ranger who warned us that some of the trails might be icy.
On this sparkling winter day, Maggie pointed out the tracks of fox, deer and coyote. The woods were mostly quiet, except for a few golden-crowned kinglets and a yellow-bellied sapsucker. In one meadow, a small flock of eastern bluebirds flitted among the cedars.
Before it became a state park, Rocky Neck supported a 19th-century dairy farm, as well as a stone quarry served by a single-track railroad built in 1852. Today, Amtrak trains run on realigned and expanded tracks that cut through the park.
We set out on a path lined by mountain laurel just north of the Ellie Mitchell Pavilion. This 356-foot-long, curvedstone structure was built with supporting timbers fashioned from trees cut from each of Connecticut’s state parks and forests. Completed in 1936 by the federal Works Progress Administration as the state’s largest Depression-era building, it is listed on the National
Register of Historic Places.
Some of the building materials were salvaged from the Niantic Menhaden Oil and Guano Company, which built a large fish fertilizer plant in 1902 to replace a smaller facility that burned down in the 1890s. Records show that 19th-century farmers near Rocky Neck first used seaweed, and then small fish, as fertilizer.
The development of chemical fertilizers in the early 20th century doomed the fish fertilizer industry; Niantic Menhaden Oil and Guano went bankrupt in 1922 — much to the relief of many nearby residents.
“In years past the malodors of this establishment have nauseated shore dwellers, and failing relief by legal means, the works have twice been set on fire,” The Day reported on Feb. 1, 1930.
After the plant shut down, local developer Charles Brockett ran a campground for several years before the legislature proposed buying the property for a state park in 1929. But a $200,000 appropriation bill stalled, so 10 residents put up their own money to prevent the land from being sold for development. The benefactors were reimbursed two years later when lawmakers finally approved the purchase.
Their generosity nearly a century ago serves as a reminder that land conservation has deep roots. We are surrounded today by parks, preserves and wildlife sanctuaries, forever protected from despoilation thanks to longstanding support from public-spirited citizens and forward-thinking government authorities.
Just as these legacies endure, so do legends. One such tale involving Rocky Neck explains the derivation of the name Bride Brook, which Native Americans called Sunkipaug.
As the story goes, a snowstorm blocked the magistrate who was scheduled to officiate at a wedding during the winter of 1646-47, and the closest replacement to perform the ceremony, John Winthrop, then living in New London, only had jurisdiction in Massachusetts.
At the time, the brook formed the border between Connecticut and Massachusetts, so Winthrop stood on one side while the couple — identified as Lt. Jonathan Rudd and a woman believed to be either Mary Metcalf or Mary Burchard — stood on the other.
Incidentally, Winthrop later became governor of Connecticut Colony; his father, also named John Winthrop, had been governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
A brass marker attached to a boulder off Route 156 near Bride Brook tells the story of this 17th-century marriage; a stone statue on Brainard Street in New London pays tribute to John Winthrop.
Wouldn’t it be fitting to similarly honor the magnanimous individuals who saved Rocky Neck?
Directions: Take Exit 72 off I-95: Follow the turnpike connector south to Route 156. Turn left and take Route 156 east for 1/4 mile to the park. The park street address is 244 West Main Street (Route 156).