Cabbage Hill Preserve
112 acres in Woodstock, CT
Parking: Small lot at the end of Cabbage Hill Rd
Trail Map Trails: 1.5 miles Rating: ★★☆☆☆
From the small lot at the end of Cabbage Hill Road the trail starts off in a small field. Up until this property was donated in 2021 there was a trailer and house or barn here though they’ve been completely removed now.
The trail map is a little misleading, suggesting that the trail forks right in this first meadow, but it doesn’t until later down the trail so at the start keep the left and follow the mowed path. These mowed paths are maintained but it will be luck of the draw how recently they’ve been mowed so I hiked through shin high grass.
I ignored all the side trails branching off and followed the path all the way to the back of the property where it gives you the option to hike back up along the field. This hayfield is preserved for most of the summer to provide habitat for rare bobolinks much like Hubbard Sanctuary in Chaplin. It sits on a hill so theres a beautiful pastoral view down the slope with the grasses swaying in the breeze.
I backtracked from the hayfield to another trail not on the trail map which led off into the woods to the old Hammond Cemetary. These gravestones date back to the mid-1800s for the Mathewson, Hammond, and Siemens families who had a small farming community here. Many of the gravestones are well weathered and hard to read, but I included a link below to their full text.
From the cemetery I looped back to the main trail and explored some of the other side paths to extend the hike. I ended up hiking just over a mile, but I’d guess if there are about 1.5 miles of trails here total.
History:
Preserved thanks to an anonymous donor in 2021.
Links:
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Last updated July 17th, 2022
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