New Haven, Traprock City
An urban circuit hike like none other in New England
What if I told you that in New Haven, the built prestige of Yale and Frank Pepe is overshadowed by two titanic monuments to the volcanic power of nature? Just like Seattle has Mount Rainier and Naples still has Vesuvius, the Nutmeg State’s second largest municipality is flanked by a duo of eye-popping traprock ridgelines that loom hundreds of feet above the cityscape, sculpted by time and tectonic activity. It’s impossible to miss the dark, ragged cliffs of these behemoths from the highways or streets that offer direct views. They look like something you would encounter in the Outback. Or in the pages of a Tintin book.
These twin ridgelines are known as the New Haven rock parks—East Rock Park and West Rock Park. And they’re a wondrous primer on the origin and appearance of Connecticut’s most distinctive and pervasive rock. “Traprock” is the industrial term for igneous rock, formed by the cooling and solidification of lava, and the Nutmeg State is chock full of the stuff. When the supercontinent of Pangea began to come apart at the seams, it left long cracks in western and central Connecticut, from which magma bubbled up and spilled over the landscape. Once hardened, the leftover traprock was mostly dark brown in color, and so it remains today. You’ll often find shards along higher elevation mountain trails. But it’s sheer cliffs like those at the rock parks where you can witness the local heft of traprock in fittingly dramatic fashion.
The duality of the rock parks also presents an enticing possibility. You can take the train or bus to New Haven early in the morning, and challenge yourself to a rock circuit hike that involves summiting both the east and west rock! I had been planning to do this for my Hike Every City tour of the northeast this past spring, but soggy weather that would have left the traprock trails dangerously slippery prompted me to reschedule the jaunt for fall. And I’m really glad that I did. Because at this moment, New Haven is positively awash with amber, sienna, and all the other colors that people pay millions to witness in the northeast each October. A New Haven rock circuit hike will put you in the thick of the foliage for a comparably low price, with bragging rights thrown in for free. (“Yeah, but have you ever climbed New Haven?” you ask at a future networking event, stirring your cocktail and cocking an eyebrow.)
There’s no singular way to do this. Both West Rock Park and East Rock Park are scribbled with footpaths that offer multiple access points and overlap with each other. Going for a loop hike in each park, including summit access, will add up to around 5 miles. And as for getting from one rock park to the other, you can take the more grueling approach and walk a distance of 3-ish miles through residential areas. Or you can climb aboard a CTtransit bus and give your glutes a momentary reprieve. And as for nourishment, you can save your appetite for the end of the circuit hike, or treat lunchtime as a moment for enjoying the greasier side of New Haven culture.
Here's how my traprock circuit went down.
I decided to begin with East Rock Park, on the tonier side of town not far from the Yale campus. I wanted to start with the more familiar elements of New Haven and then progress into territory that doesn’t appear on tourism slideshows. And it took about one minute after turning onto East Rock Road to see what awaited me. The great mass of traprock rose over the Mill River and the leafy Prospect Hill neighborhood like a fossilized kaiju. It was hypnotic. Even when I crossed the river and began walking along a forested road that had been closed to cars, I kept waiting for the presence of the massive traprock formation to reveal itself again. I was ready for a brutal climb.
And yet, it never came. A dirt path on the side of the road took me uphill through a tunnel of yellowing leaves, at an improbable patient grade. Even as the path became traprockier and crumbly, it never grew steep enough to quicken my breathing. The first stop was Whitney Peak, one of the peaks of East Rock Park (a traprock ridge has many summits) from which I enjoyed a partial city view amid tallgrass. From there, I continued to the far more popular Soldiers and Sailors Monument atop the broader high point of East Rock Park, crossing an auto road and ambling along ledges where chain-link fences have been installed to keep people from being victimized by the traprock cliffs. The views of downtown New Haven and Long Island Sound became relentless: almost wearing out their welcome by the time I got to the monument.
But the crown jewel of East Rock Park, in my humble opinion, isn’t the urban vista. It’s the way you climb or descend to that vista on the south side of the ridge: the Giant Stairs Trail. This is exactly what it sounds like—a series of gigantic stone stairs, carved into the traprock cliffs, with winding metal handrails installed to aid one’s unnerving passage up or down the staircase. In all my years of urban hiking, I’ve never seen anything this thrilling, beautiful, and dangerous in a city park. On certain segments of the Giant Stairs Trail, there’s such a distance between the handrail and the stairs themselves that a child could easily become airborne if they leaned in the wrong direction. But that didn’t stop a very small boy from hopping down the stairs behind me, with such nimble confidence that I stood aside and let him and his pursuant father pass by.
After such an intoxicating tango with death, I left East Rock Park feverishly hungry for New Haven’s signature dish: apizza—chewy and charred crust, minimal cheese and tomato sauce, and traceable Neapolitan heritage. Modern, one of the finest apizza joints in the city, is half an hour away from East Rock Park by foot. But I was too ravenous to risk a long wait, just to place an order. (Sally’s and Frank Pepe carry the same liability.) So I decided to take a wild gamble on Brick Oven Pizza, a highly-rated nook in the Dwight neighborhood. A quick ride on the 228 bus and a walk across the New Haven Green was all it took to find the place, and let me say, the gamble paid off. The pizza was amply portioned—you can order it by the slice here—and best of all, you can wolf it down outdoors on a sawdust-covered patio next to a giant pile of the logs that are used to light up the brick oven itself. After being immersed in one of New Haven’s naturalistic environments, I appreciated being so close to the roots of my wood-fired lunch.
The slices were so massive that I took one of them in a to-go box on the 241 bus—my ride to the bottom edge of West Rock Park. I had chosen West Rock Playground (which is primarily an athletic field) as my entryway. Located at the intersection of Edgewood and Amity, the playground is part of a grittier area where you have to watch out for broken glass on the sidewalk, and where crude holes cut through fences can offer easier access to hiking trails that have been gratuitously fenced off. I was once again mesmerized by the sight of all that traprock looming over the field, and as I chewed the last of my pizza, I was also skeptical that reaching the top of such a massive rock formation would only require 1 mile of gentle climbing.
In this way, and others, my ascent of West Rock mirrored climbing the East Rock. The path I followed along the southeast ledges of the rock was expertly placed on sections where the slopes were gradual and spacious—never once invoking vertigo or cardiovascular fatigue. The views from the top were just as abundant as those I had enjoyed earlier in the day, but with a noticeable difference. Here, the high-rises of downtown New Haven seemed much farther away. Whereas East Rock Park felt like a curiosity in a city, West Rock Park felt like the beginning of something much bigger: the long series of traprock ridgelines that continues north through the Nutmeg State, into the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
The other distinction, which I had forgotten about when planning the hike, was Judges Cave. Those of you who read my prior story about people who’ve hidden out in the woods may recall that this cave—actually a crack in a very large rock—was used as a primitive shelter by a pair of 17th Century judges who, along with several peers, had condemned King Charles I to death for abusing his power. The king’s son managed to get the throne reinstated and decided to settle the score by hanging, drawing, and quartering the judges who had sent his father to the grave. A small handful of these judges fled England for the American colonies, but even across the Atlantic, two of them couldn’t shake the thought of running into a royal spy in New Haven. The cave became their sanctuary, until they absconded permanently to Hadley, Massachusetts.
How does one even process all these historic threads for one place? At one point, the woods of New Haven were covered with molten lava. At another, they were a shelter for fugitive justices fleeing a vengeful monarch. And now they’re an oasis for urban hiking dirtbags like me and you: wiping apizza crumbs on our socks, tripping on traprock shards, and wondering if we can catch the 6pm train from Union Station back to wherever it was that we set off from, earlier that day.
That’s New Haven, baby. America’s Traprock City. Go hike it today. Because we can.
CLICK HERE for a map of East Rock Park trails
(and CLICK HERE for a map of my loop route)
CLICK HERE for a map of West Rock Park trails
(and CLICK HERE for a map of my loop route)
I’d like to offer a big THANK YOU to every one of you who took the time to fill out the annual Moss Review reader survey over the last few weeks! Your feedback has been both affirming and thought-provoking—sharpening some ideas I’ve had for new Mind The Moss stories and features for 2024. Some of which I will be announcing as we get closer to the end of the year.
I would like to specifically address one thing that was noted in the survey feedback. As some of you may have discovered when exploring the AllTrails profiles for trails highlighted in the newsletter, the option to print a paper version of an AllTrails map is something that you have to unlock with a paid AllTrails subscription. This is rather unfortunate BUT there is a simple workaround. What you can do on the free version of AllTrails is click on the interactive map of a trail, zoom in to your optimal closeness, and then, take a screenshot of the trail map. You can then print out the screenshot, which will save as a JPG or PNG file. The result is very similar to what you would get by utilizing the Print A Map feature, and I say that as someone who pays for AllTrails.
Finally, before I run out into the Substack word limit, I strongly recommend pairing your New Haven traprock circuit hike with a theatrical screening of Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon. Yes, it’s 3.5 hours long, and as this piece from The Ringer demonstrates, every minute of those 3.5 hours is warranted. The overlooked story of the Osage Nation murders that took place in the early 20th Century—at the hands of white ranchers who wanted to extract the Osage people’s oil wealth—this movie is basically an ensemble showcase of cinematic wizards bringing their A-Game. Marty, Leo, Lily Gladstone, De Niro, Thelma Schoonmaker, the late Robbie Robertson, Tantoo Cardinal, Rodridgo Prieto…even Brendan Fraser gets to show up toward the end and steal a few scenes. In the current movie landscape, swamped with lifeless franchise sequels that treat audiences like simpering idiots, this film is an event. Don’t miss it.