Great Getaway of the Month

Northwest Connecticut
A Patchwork Country Sampler

By Nancy and Richard Woodworth

“The Hidden Corner,” New York magazine once called it, touting the virtues of the Northwest Connecticut as a place for city people to make their second homes.

And hidden it is, this rural panoply called the Northwest Corner by its residents and the legions of Sunday drivers who have headed here for years from across Connecticut and adjacent New York.

Less than two hours’ drive from the nation’s largest metropolitan area are the Litchfield Hills, which seem to have a corner on the state's hidden treasures. Here is an unspoiled, forested countryside with more state parks and public lands than any other area in Southern New England.

Much of the land not in the public domain is owned by wealthy residents, celebrities and visiting New Yorkers, who have made this their weekend retreat or second home. The state parks and forests are relatively uncrowded and so are many of the inns, restaurants and shops that are frequented by travelers. This is a place for those who cherish nature, quiet times and a subdued sophistication.

Northwest Connecticut doesn’t shout its assets. You’ll find few of the kinds of major attractions that beckon visitors elsewhere in New England. The area simply presents itself, quietly and quaintly, for anyone to enjoy.

The Northwest Corner is a mosaic of many things and many places, too many to cover in a short getaway. It’s the estates of gentlemen farmers in Sharon and Salisbury, the covered bridges and country stores along the Housatonic River in Cornwall and Kent, the Alpine inns around Lake Waramaug, the Indian ties of old Washington and the historic firsts of Litchfield. It’s country shops, the Appalachian Trail, whitewater canoeing, chamber music concerts and sports-car races at Lime Rock.

Be advised that the Northwest Corner is rather spread out – a collection of four “pockets” that extend about 25 miles from end to end. Because even the residents seldom go between them, each pocket is best dealt with individually. The whole makes up a patchwork country sampler.

Sharon, Salisbury and the Cornwalls

The homes are larger, the shops swankier and the restaurants more expensive the farther you delve into the Northwest Corner. In this northwesternmost area, cultural attractions and the Hotchkiss and Salisbury preparatory schools have drawn residents and visitors for the good life. Salisbury has a country-perfect Main Street flanked by white clapboard neoclassical estates, small shops and bakeries, and the country’s oldest library.

Just a few miles away is Cornwall, considered by some the most photogenic of Northwest Corner towns. Each of its sparsely populated hamlets grew separately among the hills along the Housatonic River. Skiers bound for Mohawk Mountain pass near charming Cornwall Center, unaware of its existence. The covered bridge at the mountain hamlet of West Cornwall is a focus for river explorations.

Sharon epitomizes the region's quiet affluence. The homes of the Buckley family and other “Tories” from Revolutionary days line Route 41 south of town, giving the town a Yankee aristocratic flavor. More than 300 houses are a century or more old. The Clock Tower heads the long village green, where the marker says the land is “still much as it was laid out in the wilderness in 1739.”

Sharon Audubon Center, Route 4, Sharon.

Explore the countryside at this, one of five National Audubon Society centers in the country. It's as marvelous for its abundant trees and pristine lakes as it is for wildlife (Canada geese, deer, beavers, otters and an occasional bear). The Clement R. Ford Home, a handsome large old summer place, houses a fine interpretive museum, a good shop and varied workshops. But “most visitors come to walk and to learn about the land and its inhabitants,” reports the director. Half of the 860 acres form a natural sanctuary; the other half contain most of the eleven miles of self-guiding trails, two ponds and an herb garden.

(860) 364-0520. www.audubon.org/local/sanctuary/sharon Center open Tuesday-Saturday 9 to 5, Sunday 1 to 5; trails open dawn to dusk. Adults $3, children $1.50.

Music Mountain, off Route 7, Falls Village (Box 738, Lakeville 06039).

Founded in 1930 as the permanent home of the Gordon String Quartet, this is the oldest continuous chamber music festival in the United States. The performance hall and musicians’ residences were built by Sears, Roebuck and are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The acoustically perfect Gordon Hall, the centerpiece of the 132-acre campus, provides views of the gardens, grounds and hills from all 335 seats and from the lawn, permitting listeners to savor music and nature as one. Various string quartets from around the world present weekend concerts Sunday afternoons and some Saturday evenings in summer. Jazz concerts are staged most other Saturday evenings. Amazingly, the venture remains perhaps the only one of its importance to be managed by volunteers.

(860) 824-7126. www.musicmountain.org. Concerts, Saturdays at 8 and Sunday at 3, mid-June into September. Tickets, $30, students $17.

Lime Rock Park, 497 Lime Rock Road (Route 112) in Lime Rock, (800) 722-3577, is billed as “the road racing center of the East,” staging sports car races on summer holidays and other weekends through mid-October. The track weaves through 350 acres around grassy knolls on a plateau beneath the hills. It’s truly a park, with a natural amphitheater in which spectators watch the racing from blankets and lawn chairs on the grassy hillsides. Access to the race paddocks allows fans to get up-close to both cars and drivers. Actor Paul Newman races here. If that and the scenery aren't enough, there sometimes are vintage race cars and NASCAR stock cars doing their thing.

TOURING. Mount Riga is the generic name for a series of peaks stretching northwest from Salisbury to the Connecticut-Massachusetts-New York junction. Here you can hike the Appalachian Trail, swim or camp at South Pond, visit a restored stone iron furnace from the days when Salisbury was a major producer of iron, climb Bald Peak or Bear Mountain, or drive (on dirt roads) across the scenic heights of Connecticut's highest area to Mount Washington in the Berkshires. The state and Mount Riga Inc., an association of 90 old-line Salisbury families who summer there, own most of the land, which you reach from Washinee Street, west of Route 44 at the Salisbury Town Hall.

Twin Lakes, just northeast of Salisbury off Route 44, is one of the most scenic places imaginable and one we've often passed without realizing it was there. Mount Riga and Canaan Mountain are backdrops for these two beautiful lakes dotted with homes and, on the east side off Twin Lakes Road, a public beach and boating area. A drive along Between-the-Lakes Road or an afternoon boat ride are good ways to enjoy the area.

Cathedral Pines, a centuries-old stand of gigantic pines near the foot of the Mohawk Mountain ski area, was reduced nearly to rubble by a tornado some years back. Drive along winding Essex Hill Road from the ski area access road to see the devastation, just as nature left it, and the new growth. You come out of the spiked forest into an open field where cows graze; just beyond is Marvelwood School and Cornwall Center. An historic marker advises that writer Mark Van Doren “enriched many lives from his Cornwall home.”

Mohawk State Forest atop 1,683-foot Mohawk Mountain in Cornwall is perfect for foliage viewing. Drive in from Route 4, past a couple of scenic overlooks with sweeping vistas to the west. About two and a half miles in is a wooden observation tower with 35 steep steps, which you can climb for a panoramic view in all directions.

River Expeditions. Increasingly popular pastimes on the Housatonic River are canoeing, kayaking and rafting, both whitewater and flatwater varieties. On weekends from March through October, more than 400 canoes and kayaks have been counted in the 45-mile stretch from Sheffield, Mass., south to Kent – most concentrated in the twelve miles between Falls Village and Cornwall Bridge. Jennifer Clarke of Clarke Outdoors at 163 Route 7 in West Cornwall, one mile south of the covered bridge, says there's no better way to experience the area than from a canoe going down the river. Many canoeists take picnic lunches; family outings are popular, and you can get instruction, hire guides and obtain shuttle service back to your car. The standard trip takes three or four hours and canoes or kayaks can be rented by the day. Fishermen and campers find all they need at Housatonic River Outfitters, 24 Kent Road, Cornwall Bridge.

Kent

If you arrive in the area from the south, the sign along Route 7 at the town line identifies a scenic highway for the next 28 miles. The road slices along the Housatonic River through a bucolic valley flanked by hills bereft of much besides forests and wildlife. On your left you will spot sheep, goats, chickens and belted galloway cows grazing at the Rainwater Farm Project, a twelve-acre organic farm at 170 Kent Road, designed to revive the town’s rural heritage. If you stop at the farm shop or to explore the property, you might startle geese resting beneath a bench at the entrance to the Kent Land Trust’s new Kent River Walk. Later, on the right is a hillside lawn populated by the life-size steel and bronze animal sculptures of Denis Curtiss, lately titled “The Dog Show.” If not a dog, you might want to take home a giraffe, rhino or elephant.

Welcome to Kent, an up-and-coming town where the largest presence, other than the Kent School campus, are the shops, galleries and restaurants interspersed among historic homes along Main Street (Route 7). The Kent Historical Society opens a large house, Seven Hearths, built in the 1750s in the Flanders historic district north of the village, as a modest museum and art gallery in summer. Beyond is Kent Falls State Park, a 200-foot cascade ending in an open meadow. A little covered bridge leads from the parking lot to the meadow with picnic tables scattered about. Visitors may take a winding but wide pathway to the head of the falls, a short hike from the parking area.

Sloane-Stanley Museum, U.S. Route 7 North.

When artist-writer Eric Sloane died in 1985, he left an enormous legacy, including the museum that bears his name and displays a collection of his beloved early American tools made by hand. He designed the barn-like structure for the purpose. Wooden shovels and bowls, baskets and pitchforks, axes and scythes are grouped in ambient settings. Horse-drawn sleighs and other artifacts are shown along with Sloane paintings in the gallery. A wing houses a reproduction of the artist’s studio from nearby Warren. Adjacent is a rustic cabin that Sloane built in two weeks when a TV film was being made of his book, The Diary of an American Boy. Below the museum are the remains of the Kent Iron Furnace, which produced pig iron in the 1800s.

(860) 927-3849. Open Wednesday-Sunday and holidays, 10 to 4, mid-May through October. Adults, $4, children $2.50.

Museum of Industrial & Agricultural Machinery, Kent-Cornwall Road, Kent.

Just north of the Sloane-Stanley Museum and sharing a common entrance are seven exhibit buildings housing antique farm and factory machinery under auspices of the volunteer Connecticut Antique Machinery Association. A couple of steam engines on a narrow-gauge railroad track mark the site. Esoteric collections of early tractors, farm implements, internal combustion engines and steam engines are housed in the Agricultural and Industrial halls. The Mining Museum chronicles aspects of the area’s early iron industry and displays Connecticut minerals.

(860) 927-0050. www.ctamachinery.com. Open May-October, Wednesday-Sunday 10 to 4. Donation.

Lake Waramaug's Alpine Country

Nothing in the area seems quite so European as sitting on the terrace of the Hopkins Inn for lunch or a pre-dinner cocktail and gazing down the hillside on Lake Waramaug. The lake reminds some of those in Austria and Switzerland, and the surrounding inns capitalize on it. Off in worlds unto themselves east of the lake are quaint New Preston, a hamlet that seems to consist primarily of exotic shops, and picturesque Washington Depot and Washington, the former nestled in a valley and the latter perched on a hilltop.

Hills rise sharply above the boomerang-shaped Lake Waramaug, and a scenic, nine-mile-long shore road winds slowly around. Its sylvan shoreline is flanked by substantial summer homes on manicured lawns. Three country inns sit not far from water’s edge. At the west end of the lake is Lake Waramaug State Park, a wonderfully picturesque site, its picnic tables scattered well apart along the tree-lined shore, right beside the water. The lake’s Indian name means “good fishing place.” It’s also good for swimming and boating, and is mercifully uncrowded. On the north and east sides of the lake are the forested Above All and Mount Bushnell state parks.

Mount Tom State Park in nearby Woodville is often overlooked. Right beside Route 202 is a 60-acre spring-fed pond for swimming; the excellent beach facilities include individual changing rooms. Picnic tables are smack dab on the shore and scattered along the hillside. A mile-long trail rises 500 feet to a tower atop Mount Tom.

The hilltop village green in the postcard-perfect community of Washington is as classic as any in Connecticut. Large houses and prominent churches surround it, and off to one side is the Gunnery School's interesting campus. The Gunn Historical Museum, housed in a 1781 wooden structure near the green, is open Thursday-Saturday 10 to 4 and Sunday noon to 4, free. It has a fine thimble collection, dollhouses, spinning wheels and western Indian baskets.

The Institute for American Indian Studies, 38 Curtis Road (off Route 199), Washington.

Dedicated to Indian relics and archeological digs, this establishment made history some years back when a team uncovered a fluted “clovis” spear point, which they say confirms Indians at the spot 10,000 years ago. A mastodon skeleton inside the contemporary museum shows the type of animal they would have hunted. There are arrowheads, very early Indian pottery, sandstone dishes and dioramas of early Indian life. Also on the premises are an Indian longhouse, a simulated dig site and an unusual, specialized museum shop with handcrafted copies of items in the collection. A twenty-minute habitat trail takes the visitor through stages of geological and botanical development in Connecticut.

(860) 868-0518. www.birdstone.org. Open Monday-Saturday 10 to 5, Sunday noon to 5. Adults $5, children $3.

Hopkins Vineyard, 25 Hopkins Road, New Preston.

A hillside location with a good view of Lake Waramaug marks this family operation personally run by Bill and Judy Hopkins, dairy farmers turned winemakers, and their offspring. The rustic red barn provides a quick, self-guided tour, an attractive showroom and tasting area, and the country-sophisticated Hayloft Wine Bar upstairs, where on weekends you can order a cheese and pâté board and wines by the glass and savor a view of the lake. The gift shop sells wine-related items like baskets, grapevine wreaths and stemware. The winery's cat may be snoozing near the wood stove, upon which a pot of mulled wine simmers on chilly days. On nice days, sip one of the eleven varieties of award-winning wines – perhaps a hearty cabernet franc or an estate chardonnay – in a small picnic area overlooking the lake.

(860) 868-7954. www.hopkinsvineyard.com. Open Monday-Saturday 10 to 5, Sunday 11 to 5, May-December; Wednesday-Sunday in March and April, Saturday-Sunday in January and February.

Litchfield

Connecticut's finest example of a late 18th-century New England village, Litchfield is the place to which we take first-time visitors to the region (we have relatives who make a beeline there almost every time they visit). You should, too, if you're anywhere in the area.

The entire center of the village settled in 1720 is a National Historic Landmark. While Williamsburg had to be restored, Litchfield simply has been maintained by its residents as a living museum. Most of the old homes and buildings are occupied. Some are opened to the public on Open House Day one Saturday in July.

The Litchfield Historic District is clustered around the green and along North and South streets (Route 63). The statuesque, gleaming white Congregational Church is said to be the most photographed in New England. Where else do a bank and a jail share a common wall as they do at North and West streets? The young attendant pointed them out proudly from the information center on the green. South Street is a broad, half-mile-long avenue where three governors, five state chief justices, six congressmen and two U.S. senators have lived. Landmarks include the birthplaces of Ethan Allen, Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, plus Sheldons Tavern, where George Washington slept (he visited town five times). Sarah Pierce opened the first academy for the education of women in America on North Street in 1792. Here too is the Tapping Reeve House & Law School (1773), the first law school in the country. The house with its handsome furnishings and the tiny school with handwritten ledgers of students long gone, including Aaron Burr, John C. Calhoun and 130 members of Congress. It’s open Tuesday-Saturday 11 to 5 and Sunday 1 to 5, April through mid-November; adults $5, students $3. The fee also includes admission to the Litchfield History Museum, which has seven galleries of early American paintings, decorative arts, furniture, textiles and local history exhibits.

White Memorial Conservation Center and Nature Museum, 80 Whitehall Road, Litchfield.

Just west of Litchfield are 4,000 acres of nature sanctuary bordering Bantam Lake, the state’s largest natural lake. Thirty-five miles of woodland and marsh trails are popular with hikers, horseback riders and cross-country skiers. This is a great place for observing wildlife, birds and plants in a variety of habitats. Almost every outdoor activity is available, including bird-watching from a unique observatory in which groups can watch birds undetected, and swimming at Sandy Beach along Bantam Lake. For the more sedentary, dioramas, giant hand-painted and photo murals and mounted animals in the recently expanded nature museum depict the natural diversity found outside. The state-of-the-art facility has good collections of Indian artifacts, an unusual exhibit on the art of taxidermy, a working honeybee hive, a lifesize beaver lodge, a fluorescent rock cave, 3,000 species of butterflies, live animals and an excellent nature library and gift shop.

(860) 567-0857. www.whitememorialcc.org. Grounds open free year-round. Museum, Monday-Saturday 9 to 5, Sunday noon to 5. Adults $6, children $3.

White Flower Farm, Route 63, Litchfield.

This institution three miles south of Litchfield is a don't-miss spot for anyone with a green thumb. In fact, people come from across the country to see the place made famous by its catalog, wittily written by the owner under the pen name of Amos Pettingill. Ten acres of exotic display gardens are at peak bloom in late spring; twenty acres of growing fields reach their height in late summer. Greenhouses with indoor plants, including spectacular giant tuberous begonias, are pretty all the time.

(860) 567-8789. www.whiteflowerfarm.com. Shop and grounds open daily 9 to 5:30, April-Christmas.

Topsmead State Forest, Buell Road, Litchfield.

Little known but a great destination for a tranquil outing in the country is this 511-acre preserve atop a knoll a mile east of Litchfield Center, the onetime summer estate of an heiress to the Chase brass fortune of Waterbury. It offers scenic views, picnic sites and trails for hiking and cross-country skiing. An ecology trail is marked by interpretive signs. The finely crafted English Tudor mansion that was once Miss Edith Chase’s summer home is opened occasionally for guided tours.

(860) 567-5694. House tours, Saturday and Sunday noon to 5, second and fourth weekend of month, June-October. Grounds open year-round. Free.

Material updated from The Ultimate New England Getaway Guide, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth, copyright 2005.