Minnie Island State Park is a public recreation area occupying a tiny island at the southern end of 529-acre Gardner Lake that is split by the townline between Salem and Montville, Connecticut.

Minnie Island State Park

Gardner Lake State Park is one of Connecticut’s small but important park locations in the southeastern part of the state. At only nine and three quarter acres, this park principally provides boating and recreational access to the 528 acre Gardner Lake.

Gardner Lake, situated on the border between Bozrah, Montville, and Salem in southeastern Connecticut, is home to Gardner Lake State Park which is located on the lake’s south shore in Town of Salem. The park was added to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s (DEEP) long list of park properties in 2001. The lake is natural in origin, though a 168 foot long earthen dam raises the water level 4 feet, bringing the average depth to 14 feet and providing a surface area of 529 acres. It reaches its deepest point at 39 feet near Minnie Island State Park, which is both the only island in the lake and Connecticut’s smallest state park at 0.88 acre.

The lake is named after the Gardner family, who originally owned much of the land in the area. In February of 1895, a grocer by the name of Thomas LeCount decided he wanted to move his house. Rather than dismantling and rebuilding it, he decided to wait until winter and pull his house across the lake. He got about 100 yards off the south shore of the lake when the house slipped into a large snow bank. Thomas could not right the house without breaking the ice. Eventually, he decided to leave it for the night and come back in the morning to solve the problem. Overnight, the mill operators drained some of the lake’s water for power. This caused the house to crack through the ice, pitching over at a steep angle. It stayed there until spring, and sank into 15 feet of water when the ice thawed. For many years the second story and attic remained above water looking much like a lighthouse. Children fished from it in the summer and skated through it in the winter. Some fishermen claim that on quiet nights they can hear mermaids playing the piano that sunk with the house.

Since 1993, the DEEP has stocked the lake with walleye, whose population continues to expand, and which join excellent populations of bull head and catfish. The boat launch on the southern shore was paved and lined in the fall of 2008, providing parking for 54 vehicles. Boat speeds on the lake are limited to 6 mph from sunset to 8:00 AM.

Gardner Lake State Park

Hopemead State Park is an undeveloped public recreation area on the eastern shore of Gardner Lake, 8 miles west of Norwich, Connecticut. The state park covers 60 acres in the towns of Bozrah and Montville and is managed by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. 

Hopemead State Park

Acquired by the state in 1989, this nearly 600 acre park spent its first eleven years known as Red Cedar Lake State Park. Since then, the quiet woods and modest sloping hillsides have played host to Mother Nature silently reclaiming her landscape from the late 19th and early 20th century intervals of deforestation and animal pasturage. But its 20th century history showed signs that it was not always quite so pastoral.

The eastern Connecticut town of Lebanon is the tenth largest in the state and is dominated in the southern portion of the town by the 133 acre Red Cedar Lake. Lebanon by any standard of measurement is rural, but the land east of the lake, the land that makes up the only state park acquired in the 1980s, could certainly be categorized as ’uninhabited’ at the time of purchase. For, in addition to the lake, the 459 acres of post-agriculture woodland combine to make this location, what would come to be known as Mooween State Park, one of the twenty largest contiguous state parks in the system; a location with very special importance to many individuals.

For four decades, beginning in 1921 and continuing through 1960, the eastern shore of the lake was home to a popular summer retreat for boys: Camp Mooween. All the elements of a classic summer camp dominated the sloping shoreline: dorm buildings, main hall, ball fields and boat house. The brainchild of enthusiastic naturalist and inventor Barney Girden, the camp counted among its notable alumni Edwin Land who later invented the Polaroid camera and Julius Silver, a key figure in the founding of Brandeis University.

Girden’s forty years of ‘graduates’ were so closely knit that once the acreage that encompassed the camp became a state park, they rallied to endorse a name befitting their memories. They were convincing enough to have the park renamed in 2000 to retain, at least by name, some of the flavor of their old camp days: hence the designation Mooween State Park. Today the concrete footprints of the camp ruins are the only reminders of a past era in this otherwise densely wooded, beautifully set park.

Topography varies from a centrally located hilltop of just over 500 feet to brook valleys in the northern and eastern reaches that dip down 350 feet as they flow off of state land. The limited amount of sometimes overgrown foot trails and old roads mapped soon after the name change will help the visitor orient themselves through most of the park.


Mooween State Park

Could the round holes in the falls really be the work of the devil?  Or, just nature and water making their mark for future generations?  Visit Devil's Hopyard and find your own answer to this age-old mystery.

In 1919, the former State Park and Forest Commission obtained an 860 acre parcel located in the Millington section of Haddam. The principle feature of the park, Chapman Falls drops more than sixty feet over a series of steps in a Scotland Schist stone formation. The falls also once powered "Beebe's Mills" which were named after the original owner. The mills operated until the mid 1890's.

A search for the origin of the name "Devil's Hopyard" reveals a wide variety of different stories; none of them are verifiable and all are likely to be more fiction than fact. One of the most popular of these stories is about a man named Dibble, who had a garden for growing hops used in the brewing of beer. It seems that through usage, Dibble's Hopyard became Devil's Hopyard. There are records of several farmers having hopyards in the area, but there is no mention of a landowner named Dibble. However, Dibble might have been a tenant.

Another tale focuses on the potholes near the falls, which are some of the finest examples of pothole stone formations in this section of the country. Perfectly cylindrical, they range from inches to several feet in diameter and depth. These potholes were formed by stones moved downstream by the current and trapped in an eddy where the stone was spun around and around, wearing a depression in the rock. When the rock wore itself down, another would catch in the same hole and enlarge it. We know this now, but to the early settlers the potholes were a great mystery that they tried to explain with references to the supernatural. They thought that the Devil has passed by the falls, accidentally getting his tail wet. This made him so mad he burned holes in the stones with his hooves as he bounded away.

The park today offers some of the finest birding in the state and fishermen find the clear, cool stream water an excellent source of brook trout.



Devils Hopyard State Park

Visit Nehantic State Forest and discover what the first forest in New London County has to offer.

Nehantic was the first state forest in New London County, and has all been purchased since 1925. Considerable difficulty was experienced in selecting the site. Although there is a great deal of wooded land in the county, it is so cut up by open farm lands that large areas of forest in one block are difficult to find. The land is mostly covered with a second growth of hardwoods. There are a number of good trout streams in the forest.

The forest takes its name from the Nehantic Indians, whose ranging grounds once extended from Wecapaug Brook, in what is now Rhode Island, to the Connecticut River. Shortly before the settlers arrived the Pequots had invaded Nehantic territory and annexed about half of the land claimed by the tribe.

Nehantic State Forest Native American Burn Demonstration Area
A 16 acre forest stand has been intentionally burned repeatedly to simulate the structure of the forests of Southern Connecticut just prior to European settlement. Native Americans often burned much of the forest in order to make the forest more habitable. The burns increased grasses which attracted their game animals, increased berry production, and facilitated the collection of firewood and acorns as well as numerous other benefits. The burn area is more open than adjacent forests as the fire killed much of the thin bark trees in the understory as well as the occasional overstory tree. The stand is located near the main entrance to the forest off Route 156 just south of the village of Hamburg.

Nehantic State Forest

Stoddard Hill State Park is a public recreation area located on the eastern shore of the Thames River, about five miles south of Norwich, in the town of Ledyard, Connecticut. The state park covers 55 acres and offers facilities for boating, fishing, and hiking.

Minnie Island State Park Maps

Salem, CT

Minnie Island State Park Description

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Parks

State Parks near Minnie Island State Park

Minnie Island State Park Maps

Salem, CT

Minnie Island State Park Description

Nearby Parks

State Parks near Minnie Island State Park

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