Evans Family Meadows

Good Times
Evans Family Meadows, Bloomfield
November 2026

This is a Traprock Ridge Land Conservancy Property.

Life is funny.

I was on my 2025 CTMQ hiatus, necessitated by my career and my son’s activities. I had just simply stopped doing “CTMQ stuff” for a while, and I was enjoying it. I spent several weekends doing things around the house and, well, doing nothing. I needed that.

Then I passed a new sign along Tunxis Avenue (Route 189) that piqued my interest. I had noticed another new sign down at the Van Otterloo Preserve nearer my house, so I knew this newer sign was a Traprock Ridge Land Conservancy sign. And I knew that there were properties that the organization planned to clear trails in, so maybe this was one of them.

It was. And it is. And here we are.

It was that sign, which is literally in between two suburban houses on a busy road that got me off my butt and back into the woods for the next several weekends through the fall and winter. (Granted, this was also a time when I had a load of time off of work and Calvin was in between soccer weekends, but still, it really was that sign.)

And let’s be clear: Evans Family Meadows is not a property that should inspire anyone to change their lifestyle. It is flat, fairly featureless, short, choked with invasives, and passes behind houses, has a road walk, nears a train track, and passes by some illicit dumping.

Let’s hike!

The Wintonbury Land Trust (precursor to the Traprock Ridge organization) in August 2017 acquired an important Urban Forest and Watershed parcel just 1.25 miles from Bloomfield Town Center.

The property is about 23 acres, which includes meadows, streams, wetlands, and hardwood forest. That sounds a lot nicer than what I wrote above. I find this particularly interesting:

The Evans parcel will be part of the planned East Coast Greenway through Bloomfield, offering .4 miles of wooded route options to the Rail-Trail Planning Team. A future Land Trust trail project will be to resurrect the East-West ‘Wintonbury Trail’ and link it into the planned East Coast Greenway on this parcel. The land also links to a local trail directly west as part of the Reservoir #3 public access.

I kind of understand that and how it would work. But that mythical East-West Trail, hoo-boy, you know I love any mention that. When I hypothesized how it would course through Bloomfield, I had it south of here, but time will tell.

At some point in the 2020’s, the trails were cleared and blazed. The sign went up in late 2025 at some point, and here we are. You must drive down a muddy drive and park, literally, next to someone’s driveway. It’s a little uncomfortable. (You can also park over on Dorothy Drive I suppose).

The trail starts in a mowed field and the paths are very clear as you can see in my pictures. I found my way to the back of the field, across a bridge, and into the woods. The trail courses south and does its absolute best to be “woodsy” and I’m sure it’s more hidden from the houses in the summer. But let’s be honest, this isn’t the best trail around.

“But it’s great that it exists,” I told myself as I popped out onto Dorothy Drive before dipping back into the woods again, now heading north back to my car. The trail gets a little funky here, as there’s a clear right-of-way but that’s not really the trail. That’s for people to dump couches and tires, apparently. The trails dips and doodles next to this wide path, before ultimately joining it and returning to the field.

Above it is mentioned that you can connect to “local trails” and the Reservoir #3. You can – it’s across Tunxis Avenue – but I never thought that place had hiking trails. I still don’t believe it does, but I guess I’ll check it out to be sure.

Thank you Evans Family! These woods are awesome for local kids to explore and it’s great that they are now protected with trails.