Bulkley Park

Bulkley’s Treasure of Bulky Trees
Bulkley Park, Rocky Hill
December 2023

This sounds weird to say about this patch of woods surrounded on all three inhabitable sides by dense housing, but this 24-acre park along the abandoned Connecticut Valley Railroad has remained untouched for a century; ever since Joseph E. Bulkley deeded it to the town with the simple instructions that “no trees be cut except those necessary to keep it in good condition.”

My cynical take on this is that the steep hills and bluffs above the Connecticut River here made it too difficult for town officials and developers to conveniently forget Bulkley’s deed. But after hiking the trails and seeing some of the monster trees, I can say that it’s true that someone somewhere is being sure not to cull these woods willy nilly.

By the way, this is Bulkley Park, named after Joseph E. Bulkley, an entirely different person than the much more famous Morgan Gardner Bulkeley (with the extraneous ‘e’) from up I-91 in Hartford. In case you get asked someday.

Of course you’ll never be asked that, but maybe you’ll be asked to take a walk here with someone. There are just over a mile of looping trails that basically go up and down the bluffs from the river a couple times. There are obstructed views of the river from some of the park’s trails. A place known by the old inhabitants of Rocky Hill as “Tryon’s Landing.” So says a brochure.

Absurdly, tradition has it, in the late 1600s, the pirate Captain Kidd sailed up the Connecticut River and went ashore on a small peninsula jutting out into the river right here. He selected a hillside and buried two chests of gold, silver and jewels. Right. If any of these Captain Kidd stories were true, Connecticut would be awash in pirate booty, from Charles Island in Milford to these random hills in Rocky Hill.

The swatch of woods is nice. They are open woods and there’s a little gully someone has named “Fern Valley.” There were plenty of ferns in December… I imagine this is a pretty cool area in June. And it was a really cool area back in the day – way back in the day:

Up from Tryon’s Landing, on land that is now in the park, was a grove in a natural hollow and amphitheater which was a splendid picnic ground. Sunday school gatherings, general town picnics, fish-fries and clam bakes were held here for 150 years up to 1871, when the building up of the railroad made a high embankment and cut off direct access to the river.

I can see that here.

I trudged all the trails – which do get a little confusing here and there as they run so closely to each other at times – and marveled at some of the massive trees and hightailed it out of there.

There is treasure here, but not of the gold and jewels variety. No, the treasure here is that this place exists in a densely populated area. And that’s good enough for me.

CTMQ’s Rocky Hill’s Town Trails