Above All State Park

Connecticut State Park / Scenic Reserve

31 acres in Warren, CT

Parking: Small pull-off near 98 Above All Road, Warren, CT

Trail Map          Trails: 0.25 miles        Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Above All State Park, as the name may suggest, once provided one of the best views in Litchfield County. It was a Cold War radar site that up until recently still had the ruins of the small facility.

I parked at the gate along the side of Above All Road and hiked the 1/4 mile driveway up to the summit of the hill.  Whatever view the hill once had has long been replaced by trees and only a small clearing remains.  The building which once housed the facility has been knocked down and I’m pretty sure buried under additional gravel. You can find old photos here.

All that remains are the diesel fuel tank supports at the backside of the hill. I poked around the edges of the clearing and didn’t see any additional trails so hiked back out to the road.

History:

Established as a state park in 1927 when three acres were donated to the state by the heirs of Seymour Strong.  The state purchased another 28 adjoining acres from the Stanley estate later that year in December.

Previously the hill was the site of a wooden observation tower in the years before the Civil War. A mountain-top summer resort was planned in the 1880s that would have featured a 125ft observation tower but was never started.

From June 1957 to June 1968, the state park became a Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Air Defense Network radar site. The military installation was called the New Preston Gap-Filler RADAR Annex P-50A /Z-50A. As an unmanned “gap-filler” the facility provided low altitude coverage for northwestern Connecticut. In 1968, a dirt road and cinder block building were added to the top of the hill as part of an upgrade to the site but were soon abandoned.

The building was removed sometime after July 2020.

Links:

Peter Marteka – A Radar Once Watched The Skies Over Warren’s Above All State Park (2017)

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Last updated August 12th, 2022