Many state parks filled, forcing Memorial Day closures
More than a dozen of Connecticut’s most popular state parks and beaches were forced to turn away additional visitors on Memorial Day, after parking lots hit maximum capacity on the “unofficial” first day of summer.
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which manages the park system, sent out 24 alerts about park closures over the Memorial Day weekend, as temperatures reached into the 80s and sunny skies drove winterweary residents to the shore, lakes and hiking trails.
Four of the state’s largest shoreline parks — Hammonasset, Rocky Neck, Silver Sands and Harkness Memorial — reached their parking capacity limits by about 1 p.m. Monday, according to DEEP. That meant that staff was forced to close the lots to additional cars, but visitors were still permitted to arrive by foot or public transit.
“Memorial Day weekend is one of the busiest beach weekends of the year, and when it coincides with hot, sunny weather, that leads to a high turnout of visitors to the shoreline parks, and the potential for capacity-related closures,” DEEP spokesman Will Healey said in an email Tuesday. “When parks reach capacity, they do reopen later as visitors leave, so returning in the afternoon is a possibility.”
Farther inland, the state was forced to close parking lots at Squantz Pond, Miller’s Pond, Wadsworth Falls and Kent Falls on both Sunday and Monday. Parking at Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden reached capacity before noon on Sunday.
At Gillette Castle State Park in East Haddam, park officials Tweeted at about 2 p.m. Monday that there was still space for visitors to hike and picnic on the grounds, but that tickets had sold out for tours of the historic stone castle.
The largest state beach to remain open throughout the holiday weekend was Sherwood Island State Park in Westport, according to the public notices released by DEEP.
Eric Hammerling, executive director of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association, said the number of closures was not atypical for a Memorial Day weekend, especially given the steamy weather.
“That’s been the trend over the last few years, (the parks) fill up on holiday weekends when the weather is nice,” Hammerling said. “It was, of course, a perfect time to go to the beach.”
After Connecticut lawmakers made state parks free for all residents in 2018 — paid for with a $15 fee on vehicle registrations — visits to the network of more than 110 parks and beaches began to rise. The visitation numbers then skyrocketed at the start of 2020 as residents sought outdoor refuge from their homes and quarantines early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The surging interest in parks also strained DEEP’s ability to accommodate the crowds, leading to hundreds of park closures during the past two years of the pandemic.
As part of an effort to expand access to the parks, Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration launched a pilot program last summer to provide free shuttle service to several parks and beaches from existing transit hubs. The program was expanded to include seven parks this year, including Hammonasset and Silver Sands, with the first shuttles running over the weekend. A spokesman for the Department of Transportation said Tuesday that it would take several weeks to compile initial ridership numbers for the Memorial Day weekend.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Lamont said that the parks remained open to people who were not traveling by car, but that the number of closures indicated that more improvements are necessary.
“It seems like our parks are being loved to death,” Lamont said.
Park officials noted that the majority of closures during the summer are limited to smaller inland parks, but proponents of beach access say that tendency of state beaches to reach capacity on hot and sunny weekends raises the need for cities and towns along the shoreline to make their beaches more accessible to nonresidents.
Efforts to cap nonresident municipal beach fees, which can range up to several hundred dollars for the summer, have so far failed to gain traction in the state legislature.
Healey, the DEEP spokesman, recommended that visitors planning a trip to one of Connecticut’s state parks to check with the agency’s Twitter account and the Connecticut State Parks’ Twitter account for postings on the latest closings.
In addition, he said visitors can avoid the crowds by visiting one of Connecticut’s dozens of inland lakes, or by hiking one of the 20 trails included in this year’s Sky’s the Limit hiking challenge, the theme of which is “best kept secrets” and includes hikes at Bluff Point State Park in Groton and Gay City State Park in Hebron.