The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A ‘unique and valuable resource’
83 acres of open space to bring Middletown’s total near 1,000
MIDDLETOWN — With the Common Council’s approval to buy 83 acres of land off South Main Street dedicated to open space, the city now boasts just over 1,000 acres for people to enjoy passive recreation.
The most recent acquisition consists of the Majestic Oaks/Wilson Property off South Main Street / Route 17. Last week, city officials approved $372,000 to buy the parcel.
The total land includes close to 200 acres off Brush Hill Road, according to Commission on Conservation & Agriculture Chairwoman Elisabeth Holder. The $5 million open space bond approved by voters in November 2019 is financing the purchases, she said.
The property can be accessed off Talcott Ridge Road, as well as South Main Street.
There are limited trails on the untamed, steep land near the power lines, which is home to forest, fauna and flora, such as painted turtles, said Holder, who has encountered a
number of wetland plants on her visits there.
Middletown is unusual compared to municipalities across Connecticut in terms of acreage dedicated to open space, which Holder calls a “unique and valuable resource.” These parcels are very important to combating climate change, she added.
Natural forested land is much more effective than planting isolated trees in helping toward that effort, she said.
There are presently three individuals dedicated to creating and maintaining trails in the city, with some volunteers who help out occasionally, she said.
Passive recreation became all the more important during the height of the pandemic, when people were isolated in their homes for much of the time to avoid exposure to the coronavirus, she said.
“An enormous number came out during the pandemic. Clearly, people were using it for getting children out to enjoy being somewhere other than cooped up in their homes,” Holder said. “There has been a great(er) appreciation of resources by people in past year than in the past.”
Middletown has a plethora of places for people to exercise and enjoy crosscountry skiing, hiking, trails that can be explored on foot on horseback, and various habitats for bird watching and to observe wildlife, she said.
“One of my dreams is something like Lexington, Massachusetts, (or places in Vermont) which have an
enormous number of trails and good signage and bridges,” she said. However, these are “incredibly wealthy communities.”
She’d like to see more information on the trails to improve access for walkers who want to understand more about what they’re seeing.
In the future, the commission hopes the city will make an effort to preserve a farmland soils preservation area and investigate how to use to keep agriculture in the city viable for the next generation, Holder said.
Most recent purchases will be added to a future edition of the Middletown
Trail Guide, which was last updated in 2016. The document, available on the city website as a PDF, took an “incredible amount of work,” Holder said.
The guide, in its second edition, will not be in booklet form as it has in the past, she said.
The commission will eventually be updating the guide, however, Holder said, members will be investigating whether it would be best accessed through an app such as All Trails or a city-designed one.
To view the trail guide, visit middletownct.gov.