Herrick Park

Herrick Park

Bolton Town Park

20 acres in Bolton, CT

Parking: Medium lot at 29 Hebron Rd, Bolton, CT

Trail Map      Trails: 1 mile      Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Herrick Park is one of those standard town parks with a couple baseball fields, a playground, a tennis court, and so forth.  What interests us here is the Bates Nature Trail.  Standard town parks with short trails can be pretty hit or miss often with the trails fading in disuse.

Thankfully that is not the case here.  A small kiosk next to the parking area introduces you to the orange blazed 1 mile loop trail.  It seems the area was revamped in 2015 thanks to Nicholas Grottole likely as an Eagle Scout project.  The trail starts off among dense trees and winds between roots filled with thick moss before reaching a stone slab bridge.

Not only has this trail been revamped, it’s not the only trail here, unblazed trails lead off towards Rt. 85 and Foxtrot Farm.  The latter is a bit of a problem.  The horses of Foxtrot Farm leave regular deposits as they are ridden on the trails, which left me side stepping every couple hundred feet for most of the loop.

The backside of the loop just clips the edge of an open field off Loomis Street.  I followed the trodden grass at the edge and almost passed where the blazed trail cuts back into the woods.  It seems most who use this trail continue to the next corner of the field and return on a much more established trail there.

From here its a simple return to the parking area for an easy stroll through the woods that takes 25 minutes or so.

History:

Preserved in 1965.  The park is named for and the trail is named for Stanley Bates, who played a large role in acquiring the land for the park.  See CTMQ’s review of the park below for the ebbs and flows in the history of this trail.

Links:

• CTMQ – Bates Nature Trail at Herrick Park (2020)
• Paul Marks – Path to be Dedicated in Honor of Local Man
• Bolton Historical Society – HERRICK MEMORIAL PARK

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