The Last Wolf of Connecticut

A requiem at Mashamoquet Brook State Park

Wolves. Silver-haired denizens of the wilderness? The not-so-distant cousins of man’s best friend? Or a snarling, sharp-toothed menace to sheep, chickens, and other farm animals? When it comes to the relationship between humans and canis lupus, “it’s complicated” is putting it lightly. Wolves have appeared in mythology and folklore, often as symbols of strength and courage. But wolves have also been a convenient scapegoat for ecological crises like the decline of the caribou in Canada’s northern tundra. (Carroll Ballard’s criminally overlooked Never Cry Wolf explores this in vivid and eerie detail.) In New England, wolves have been all but eradicated—often at the hands of farmers fed up with losing livestock to the occasional scavenging wolf.

One of those farmers, a Connecticut man named Israel Putnam, is reputed to have shot the last known wolf in the Nutmeg State in 1742. And deep in the rustling wilds at Mashamoquet Brook State Park—an hour’s drive from Hartford or Providence—you can follow a spiderweb of stony paths to the hillside cave in which this ecological tragedy took place. This haunting, desolate historic site is known as the Wolf Den.