West Rock State Park | New Haven / Hamden CT

Watch our video and then read about our trip below

West Rock State Park, sprawling over three different towns, is a trap rock ridge with a number of hiking trails, interesting features and sweeping vista points. With the reopening in our state going well I haven't been able to go on a longer hike until recently. On this trip we decided to hike most of the "Regicides" Blue Trail and then visit the southern view point for a total hike around 7 miles.

This hike starts by Judges Cave, an interesting rock formation with some pretty amazing history behind it. Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell were among the group of British judges who sentenced King Charles the 1st to death. When his son Charles the 2nd regained the throne he ordered all the involved judges (Regicides) to be hanged, drawn and quartered. These 3 fled to America and eventually were hidden away here at Judges Cave, and this is why the trail is known as "The Regicides". Anyone who lives in New Haven will recognize these names as famous local streets already.

After exploring the rock formation we headed up the trail located adjacent to the parking lot. The first leg of the trail is best described as and up and down course along the ridge, with half viewable vistas and constant sharp rocks along crumbling old stone stairways. Eventually you'll come to a steep descent that immediately shoot back up, and this is where you'll discover an interesting and noisy tower covered in graffiti. This seems to be the air system for the highway tunnel that runs directly through West Rock and serves as a nice practice spot for artists.

Once you ascend the hill by the tower you come to the second part of the trail. This area is probably the part we enjoyed the most. There are 3 very different fenced in radio/communication systems, several "road" crossings and some nice easy forest walking. You'll have come to the end of this section when you arrive at the first major vista point. This is where the real ridge hike begins, this third section becomes increasingly rocky, with near constant up and downs.

The path comes to an intersection of several trails just south of a vista point on the map, but what we discovered was.... a giant parking lot. So this bears some explaining: the entire hike along the ridge was done only 30-40 feet away from a paved road. You cannot see this road from the trail but it follows the entire course of the hike from the tower onward. This is the same road you see blocked off at the bottom of the park when first pulling in and many people walk/bike up the road instead of parking up top and hiking. It seems the road is still used for maintenance of the radio towers but, based on the parking lot, I think it may have been public use and this was likely a great vista point in the past. Unfortunately, despite the map still showing a vista, it is no longer the case.

At this point we turned around and decided to head back as we were short on time because they close this park at the early hour of 6pm! Using the road to head back instead of the ridge saved us quite a lot of time. I didn't quite anticipate how rocky this trail was going to be and my running shoes weren't the best choice, so the road was welcome relief honestly. On the way we discovered a great vista that we somehow missed on the way north. We could not figure out how it was possible to miss but we somehow managed! We also had an encounter with a deer jumping out 10 feet in front of us, with my zoom lens still in my back pack of course! Before we packed it in, we took one last quick trip through Judges cave with the camera just to film the inside. We left the park with 10 minutes to spare, the ranger driving by to let us know we were the last ones left.

A few days later we made a stop here again on our way somewhere else, we had missed the southern view point due to time constraints and I wanted to see what I heard was a spectacular view. This definitely was worth going out of the way for, it lived up to everything I love about a good view. From here you are able to see East Rock state park, all of New Haven, and Long Island. This view can be reached by car, no hiking necessary but there is also a second little hidden view point located west just past the picnic area ; )

Overall I think there are some great views here, interesting things to see and grand history behind the park. That said, I believe this park used to be better, crumbling rock stairways and old paved roads leading to a non existent vista on the map tell me so. The trail itself is far rockier then we thought, I would say not suitable for most dogs, and because the road is located so close by I can't help but feel a little cheated for some reason. It's still worth doing so don't let any of that turn you off, but I wish this park got some love from the state because it could be so much more!