Follow the bike route signs to the trailhead in Sperry Park.
The route takes a 1.8-mile detour on sidewalks and paths around the town center. Not far up the trail you’ll enter hardwood forests around Avon. Bump-outs on the 400-foot former railroad bridge across the Farmington River allow trail users a better view of the river. Both end up in Simsbury, though the river trail is 16.5 miles compared to 11 miles on the canal trail. Trail parking is available on either side of this gap at Mill Street in Southington and Northwest Drive in Plainville.Īrriving at Red Oak Hill Road in Farmington, you can go straight to stay on the canal trail or left to the trailhead of the Farmington River Trail.
The railroad corridor is still in use through this area, but an off-road trail option is being studied. The longest gap on the trail is between Lazy Lane in Southington and Northwest Drive in Plainville. Northern Section: Plainville to the Connecticut–Massachusetts State Line You’ll get another history lesson at the circa 1890 Southington Train Depot and Museum just past Meriden-Waterbury Turnpike/CT 322 in Southington. You can learn more about the historical canal at the Lock 12 Historical Park in Cheshire. With a little imagination, the mountain appears as a reclining giant from head to toe. As you enter Hamden in 2.5 miles, you’ll pass through nearly 3 miles of green space surrounding Lake Whitney, which provides a reserve source of drinking water to the area.Įntering the Mount Carmel neighborhood, on the right you’ll pass Sleeping Giant State Park, which rises to a rocky outcrop and summit observation tower. (Plans are under way to extend the trail another 2 miles to Long Wharf Nature Preserve in New Haven Harbor.) Heading north, the path travels through a narrow park. Yale University anchors the trail’s southern terminus, with easiest access off Hillhouse Avenue. Southern Section: New Haven to Southington It also meets both ends of the 16.5-mile Farmington River Trail, which is shaped like a C between Simsbury and Farmington. From Simsbury south to New Haven, the trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a developing trail network that will span the Atlantic Seaboard. Today, the trail runs through the population centers around New Haven in the south to the more rural communities, forests, and farms in the north.
As the rail corridor became disused in the 1980s, a citizens group pushed for the rail-trail project. Mergers and acquisitions created the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, which operated until 1969 when it was consolidated into Penn Central. The New Haven and Northampton Company replaced the canal with a railroad between New Haven and Plainville by 1847.
Built between 18 to get farm products to market on boats towed by horses and mules, it became obsolete in the railroad age. The paved pathway follows the Farmington Canal, once the longest in New England. Across the state border, the trail connects with Southwick Rail Trail, part of a developing trail system that will one day span 25 miles to Northampton, creating a key interstate route. A multiyear work in progress with only a couple of gaps remaining, the trail will total 57 miles when finished. Completed segments span Connecticut south to north, from New Haven to the Massachusetts border, for nearly 50 miles. First a canal, then a railroad, and now a trail define the history of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.
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