Sleeping Giant (Connecticut)
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The Sleeping Giant, or Mount Carmel, is a trap rock ridge system located in the Mount Carmel neighborhood of Hamden, Connecticut. It is approximately ten miles north of downtown New Haven.
It is best known for anthropomorphically representing a slumbering human figure, and the ridge's profile features distinct "head", "chin", and "chest" sections. Local Native American tribes considered the mountain to be the resting physical form of a destructive spirit. In their eschatology, it is presaged that Sleeping Giant will arise again one day to wreak destruction.
The hill is the focus of Sleeping Giant State Park, which features
- 1500 acres (6 km²) of forest and rock outcrops,
- a dozen principal hiking trails in a 30 mile system,
- continuation of its Blue Trail beyond the park on the 23 mile Quinnipiac Trail, with connection to the 7-mile Regicides Trail,
- additional cross-country skiing and equestrian trails,
- a picnic area with picnic tables, small fireplaces, a roofed pavilion, flush toilets (except in winter) and two composting toilets (year-round) and
- popular trout-fishing areas along the Mill River.
(Camping by the public is no longer permitted, and the former camping facilities adjacent to the picnic area are well along in returning to open forest.)
Gianttower.jpg
A castle-like four-story stone lookout tower (built by the WPA) stands at the summit on the Giant's chest. It is reached by a 1.6-mile graded dirt road (closed to vehicles) with its 600 or so feet of elevation gain distributed nearly uniformly over that length, at undemanding grades. Its top, at approximately 750 feet above sea level, offers long views of much of New Haven and some of Hartford Counties, over more than 270 degrees of the compass, and (atmospheric conditions permitting) across the Sound to the Shoreham area on Long Island.
Without extravagant exaggeration, Sleeping Giant enthusiasts describe the trails as offering all of the terrain types found elsewhere in New England -- "but not very much of each". (For instance, the legendary mile-long (1.5 km) boulder-jumble of the Maine border's Mahoosuc Notch is echoed on the Giant by about a ten-foot (three meter) stretch.)
The picnic and parking areas at the main entrance, in the southeast corner of the state park, the Tower Path, and the Tower structure, are maintained primarily or exclusively by state employees of the Department of Environmental Protection.
In addition, a private volunteer organization, the Sleeping Giant Park Association (SGPA), conducts routine maintenance of all the hiking trails except the Tower Path, including clearing trails of the results of storm damage to trees, and regularly rejuvenating the painted blazes delineating the courses of trails. This group previously asserted the contractual restrictions on the trap-rock quarrying operation on the Head of the Giant, eventually purchased back the mining rights to ensure the quarrying could not resume, acquired the land of the present state park, and donated it to the state under perpetual restrictions. It is the oldest volunteer group for Connecticut state parks, and it continues its land-acquisition roles. Projects by it, and by Scouting and other occasional public-service projects, regularly make Sleeping Giant the most strongly volunteer-supported forest or park project in the state.
External links
- Official Sleeping Giant State Park Web site (http://dep.state.ct.us/stateparks/parks/sleepinggiant.htm)
- The Sleeping Giant Park Association (http://www.sgpa.org/)