Five Mile Rock

Five Mile Rock

Lebanon Town Easement on Private Property

in Lebanon, CT

Parking: Shoulder parking near 264 Randall Rd, Lebanon, CT

Trail Map         Trails: 0.4 miles      Rating: ★★☆☆☆

The trails starts just southwest of Gillette Brook in a break of the stonewall along the gravel Randall Road.  I pulled up onto the rocky edge, but the road doesn’t seem busy enough to worry about the sketchy shoulder parking.

A small laminated sign, which was laying flat on the ground, confirmed it was the trailhead and requested the visitors stay on the trail as the town only has easement access to this narrow trail through private property.

An old logging road, the trail is wide and easy to follow with large yellow blazes.  The trailhead sign warns of crossing paths, but I didn’t see any until reaching the rock itself.  There were a couple wet patches early in the trail, but it mainly chugs ever so slightly uphill nearly the whole way.

There are a couple large boulders off the trail that could pass as the ‘Five Mile Rock’ and may build anticipation.  At a flat area of the trail blazes show a turn off the logging road onto a substantial yet wide and low rock. More like a rock ramp than any fabled historical landmark.  Atop the rock a sign that had once been nailed to a tree showed the location of the carving ‘LVMC’ for Lebanon Five Mile Corner carved in 1693 (see the history section below).

It was like some faint historical easter egg hiding out here in the woods.  Nearly lost and forgotten for decades, inaccessible for years, the hike is unimpressive, and the location is underwhelming, but it is a remanent and a reminder of the bits of history that touch everything should we take the time to look.

History:

In 1692, four Norwich men, Samuel Mason, John Stanton, Benjamin Brewster and John Birchard bought a large tract from Owaneco, one of the sons of Uncas. This area was called the “Five Miles Square” or simply the “Five Mile” and the ‘Five Mile Rock’ fell right at the southwest corner of the tract and the surveyors etched LVMC into the rock as proof in 1693  Nearly 300 years later the Lebanon Historical Society re-located the corner marker in 1984. The other corners of the tract were marked by large trees now long since gone.  The town was only granted a public access easement in the last several years.

Links:

• Peter Marteka – Finding History in an Old Boulder (2006)

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Last updated April 15th, 2024