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An early 1960s Volkswagen Beetle is framed by other metal items in the junkyard off the Red Trail on Oct. 31, 2009. |
Having items dumped on public property is a common problem and West Rock has certainly endured its share of unwanted trash. Springside and Wintergreen Avenues along the park’s southwestern border are locations where people commonly dump household items like furniture. The New Haven Public Works Department is responsive to complaints filed on the See, Click, Fix website and hauls away the junk in a timely manner.
This page focuses on two junk piles at West Rock along with items dumped along Baldwin Drive and their resulting clean-up by volunteers. These are all good examples of an answer to the question, “How do you tackle a big project?” Answer: A little bit at a time and over time the project gets completed.
The larger junk area of about half an acre is located to the west of the Red Trail, 0.25 miles north of the green gate on Mountain Road, located at the turn in the road between 660 and 670 Mountain Road.
The smaller junk area of about a quarter acre is located on the west side of West Shepard Avenue, 0.05 miles north of the gate by Rayzoe Terrace.
Baldwin Drive is 5.6 miles long and had trash dumped alongside its entire length, but certain areas stand out as being particularly affected.
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Truck parts and other assorted metal items litter the woods of the Red Trail on Oct. 31, 2009. |
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Hot water heaters point toward the Volkswagen Beetle off the Red Trail on Oct. 31, 2009. |
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A metal “octopus” designed to distribute air and a metal spreading tool are among the items dumped in the woods off the Red Trail, as seen on Oct. 31, 2009. |
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The back of a tanker truck is the largest item dumped in the woods off the Red Trail, as seen on Oct. 31, 2009. |
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A metal spreader and other metal items are visible near the Red Trail, as seen on Oct. 31, 2009. |
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Metal items are scattered around the back side of the site by the Red Trail on Oct. 31, 2009. |
Red Trail Junk Pile North of Mountain Road
I started volunteering at West Rock in 2007 and my first choice of projects was reblazing the Red Trail, including blazing the section north of Mountain Road, which had no trail blazes at the time. I first noticed this junk pile in late 2009 and added it to my West Rock Wish List page on this website. With many priorities to address, ranging from trail blazing to storm damage clearing to invasives cutting, I did nothing about this junk pile for many years.
Finally, in 2022, I found the time to start working on this project off the Red Trail. The first step was getting the approval of the Connecticut State Parks and Forests division to proceed with the clean-up, which we received from then State Parks Director Tom Tyler at a meeting of the West Rock Ridge Advisory Council. This approval is required because anything more than 50 years old could be considered a historical site, requiring an archeological survey, and the items in this area dated back 50 or more years.
This junk pile is located on a small portion of a 55-acre parcel the state purchased on Aug. 13, 1976, as it was assembling parcels of land to create West Rock Ridge State Park. The roughly rectangular shaped property extends north from Mountain Road toward Baldwin Drive.
As told to me by neighbors and dog walkers and visible on older aerial photos, the property was used as an orchard as evidenced by the lines of trees in those photos. The current gravel road from the green gate has existed for a long time as part of that orchard. With the change in ownership, the road connection was shifted east around the existing homes to join Mountain Road at the curve. When it was privately owned, the road intersected Mountain Road between the two houses west of the gate.
The orchard owner allowed a heating contractor to dump items at the back edge of the orchard. The evidence is clear because much of what volunteers have been removing has been this type of equipment, including eight furnaces, eight hot water heaters, 21 furnace motors, 20 smaller electric motors, and 12 transformers. Other items that are not from a heating business include seven 50-gallon metal drums and the tanker part of an oil truck used for delivering oil to homes.
Someone was using the area for bulky waste because we have also found a refrigerator, an oven, two washing machines, a pool liner, gutters, a Volkswagen Beetle, 67 car and truck tires, and parts of a truck that has too little remaining for easy identification. We also found eight twin mattress sized metal bedframes with the wire mesh to support a mattress. In addition, we found a cache of glass windowpanes buried near the oil tanker that filled 15 five-gallon sized plastic buckets.
They were also dumping household trash as under the soil was bottles and cans, carpeting, carpet padding, latex paint, a garden hose, a toilet, and more. As of April 20, 2024, volunteers filled 109 shopping bags and 31 plastic buckets (the 5-gallon size) full of this household trash for proper off-site disposal. The glass panes mentioned above are included in this figure.
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Metal items were arranged in the woods off the Red Trail north of Mountain Road in November 2022 after some were piled there by volunteers from others parts of the site. |
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A pool liner was among the trash dug out of the ground in the junkyard area off the Red Trail, as seen on Jan. 29, 2023. |
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Some large items still needed to be moved from the woods to the edge of the trail on March 22, 2023. They were moved to the trail and loaded into the dumpster on April 15, 2023.
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The Red Trail metal pile was even larger on March 22, 2023. |
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A volunteer loads a metal item into the dumpster on April 15, 2023. |
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A backhoe prepares to dump a hot water heater into the dumpster on April 15, 2023. The back hoe loaded a few remaining items into the top of the dumpster after it was filled by volunteers who did most of the loading by hand. |
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The entire metal pile and some additional items fit into this 40-yard dumpster, as seen on Saturday, April 15, 2023. |
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The pile of 60 tires, along with bags of fiberglass insulation from inside hot water heaters and a refrigerator, awaited collection from state workers, as seen on April 15, 2023, and were removed on May 16, 2023. |
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This wooded area once full of metal items has been almost completely cleared of them, as seen on April 15, 2023. |
Red Trail Junkyard Cleanup Timeline
I started on my own in January 2022 by gathering small items that I could take out for disposal and piling up larger items for a future collection: one pile for metal items, one pile for tires, and one pile for any trash I could not remove in a particular visit. I did nothing on this project for most of 2022 as I worked on other priorities, including reblazing the Regicides and Sanford Feeder Trails, and doing the seasonal pruning back of all trails. I resumed my collection in later December 2022, again piling larger items and taking home the household items for disposal.
We had work events with multiple volunteers to pull items out of the ground and consolidate them in the center of the site. These took place on Feb. 19 and Dec. 17, 2022. I made trips on almost a weekly basis for anywhere between half an hour to two hours at a time from January to March 2023, typically going there after leading a hike at West Rock or a nearby area. I scheduled these hikes for the exact purpose of putting me in the area to work on this project.
Other volunteers began joining me for these post-hike Sunday collections in March 2023. We then moved the items from the woods about 100 to 150 feet over to the side of the trail on March 25 and April 2, 2023. Adding to the challenge of moving them, we had two bursts of hail during the morning on March 25 and some rain toward the end of our collection in the afternoon.
On April 15, 2023, volunteers had more fun than doing taxes by loading up a dumpster with all the metal items we had moved to the side of the trail, plus half a dozen larger ones from the pile that had remained in the woods. One volunteer who lived nearby used his backhoe to crunch down the items, allowing us to get all the collected metal items into the dumpster. Through Sept. 2023, a total of 10,880 pounds of metal had been removed from the site.
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Volunteers began the second phase of the Red Trail junkyard cleanup in November 2023, gathering the remaining junk items into this pile in the woods near the trail. |
Phase II of the Cleanup
This project is now about 98 percent complete. The cleanup resumed in November 2023 after the danger of disturbing a yellow jacket nest and getting stung has passed. We also waited out the peak tick season. The first task required cutting and pulling the invasive plants that had grown over the summer, including barberry and winged euonymus, along with clearing a patch of non-native forsythia. We also had to rake the leaves that were hiding the trash. Another job was cutting up and moving out of the way many fallen branches.
In a series of clean up days from November 2023 to April 2024, the focus shifted to the lower slope of the area at the back where volunteers pushed and rolled the hot water heaters and furnaces to a temporary staging area in the woods. They also dug furnace motors and household trash out of the ground. As they pull up things sticking from the ground, they find even more household trash.
Four volunteers moved the metal pile from the woods to the side of the Red Trail on Saturday, April 13 with tremendous help from five Quinnpiac University students who are part of the men's ice hockey club. The students moved many large metal objects, including a wide metal farm spreader, which one of the regular volunteers had cut into smaller pieces.
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A Quinnipiac University student moves a hot water heater from the woods to the side of the Red Trail on April 13, 2024. |
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Quinnipiac University students and adult volunteers move metal items from the woods to the side of the Red Trail on April 13, 2024. |
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Quinnipiac University students pose in front of the metal pile along the side of the Red Trail on April 13, 2024. |
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The metal pile along the side of the Red Trail on April 13, 2024 was loaded into a dumpster on April 20, 2024. |
I met the driver from Sims Metal on April 19, 2024, and he dropped off a 40-yard dumpster. On that day, I pulled up assorted pieces of metal and trash that were just below the surface, putting the metal in the dumpster and removing the trash.
Volunteers returned on Saturday, April 20, 2024 to load up the dumpster. The major task was moving the tanker part of an oil truck that was moved by the same volunteer with the same backhoe from 2023. With all that we collected, the dumpster was essentially full. The other task we accomplished that day was removing the last of what we could remove of the glass panes buried in the ground near the tanker.
Through April 2024, a total of 18,300 pounds of metal has been removed from the site. Instead of gradually rusting away over many decades, this steel is being recycled into new products.
This project was quite labor intensive and took a great deal of time. I spent 100 hours on this project, while other volunteers contributed another 194 hours of service. Truly, this was a team effort.
Looking to the future, the area still needs some more work. There are a few metal objects sticking up out of the ground. Just under the surface broken glass and other trash items can be seen. I plan to return in December 2024 to see what else I can extract. There is no need for another dumpster, as the large items have been hauled out. The area will never been fully cleaned up, but the bulk of it has been removed.
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A driver drops off a 40-yard dumpster on April 19, 2024. |
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A volunteer in a backhoe lifts the oil tank truck back on April 20, 2024. |
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A volunteer in a backhoe places the oil tank truck back into the dumpster on April 20, 2024. |
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A hot water heater drops from the backhoe into the dumpster on April 20, 2024. |
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The dumpster is nearly filled with metal items taken from the woods, after the last items were loaded on April 20, 2024. |
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With all the items loaded into the dumpster, the Red Trail is cleared of metal on April 20, 2024. |
Cleanup Involved Multiple Tasks
Part of the clean-up involved cutting and pulling the various invasive plants that had invaded the area, including Japanese barberry, multi-flora rose, winged euonymus, and Japanese honeysuckle vines, plus forsythia, which does not spread like the invasives, but it is non-native. There were also many downed trees to clear. These shrubs and trees needed to be removed simply to gain access to the trash they were covering.
One task involved taking apart the hot water heaters, removing the fiberglass insulation and bagging that for disposal, taking out the cement that was used at the base, flattening the thin metal skin, and carting out the heavy interior tank. I have also removed the cement from the hot water heaters and broken pieces of concrete block for proper off-site disposal. As of April 2024, the cement took up enough room to fill 19 shopping bags. There are still many more pieces of cement to collect and remove, a project I will likely tackle in December 2024, after a hard freeze that kills any potential yellow jackets that may be nesting in the ground.
Six of the furnaces still had glass vials with mercury inside, used as thermometers. I carefully wrapped them in a paper towel for cushioning and placed them inside a plastic jar with a twist-top lid. I brought them to the Regional Water Authority Haz-Mat collection site at Long Wharf in New Haven in June 2023.
We also carted to the trail the 60 car and truck tires we found. The state removed them in May 2023 at a cost of $438. The other seven tires we found in late 2023 to April 2024, I removed for disposal.
One interesting side project was trying to identify the vintage of the Beetle, which was no easy task because there was no VIN number on the car, the hood, or the engine lid. Further, the tires were all missing, and Beetle looks changed little from year to year. Using online photos as a reference, I determined the car is at least a 1960 model because it has a push button door handle. It can be no later than a 1964 because it has the size of the back side window seen on this model up to 1964. In 1965, the rear window is much larger.
The car probably dates to no later than a 1963 because in 1964 the sunroof became metal and the West Rock car had no sunroof, meaning it may have been cloth that rotted away. The photos I took of the VW model before volunteers dismantled it do not show the interior clearly, which would help to further narrow down the year.
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When the homeowner on West Shepard Avenue was still alive, he would pile stumps and brush at the junction with the gravel Sanford Road, as seen on Oct. 31, 2009. These stumps and logs are long gone by 2023. |
West Shepard Avenue Junk Pile
The West Shepard Avenue junk pile was created by the former homeowner at 574 West Shepard Avenue Rear, the house on the west side of the road between the gate by Rayzoe Terrace and Baldwin Drive. The homeowner was described by those who knew him as a “character” who did what he wanted and was using state land for his own purposes.
He died in 2011 and the family let the property just sit there before Citibank and subsequently the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) took possession in 2017. The state of Connecticut wanted to add the 3.1-acre property to the park, but there was at a stalemate for years over the required paperwork to complete the sale. Apparently, Fannie Mae had certain forms it wanted completed and the state, being the state, had its own way of doing things, and the two sides could not agree, so the property remained unsold.
The stalemate was broken in 2023 when an anonymous donor fronted the $80,000 needed for the West Rock Ridge Park Association to buy the property, which it did on January 12, 2023. The association, in turn, sold the property to the state in March 2023, filling a gap in state property ownership in that area.
On the east side of West Shepard Avenue, opposite his house, the former homeowner cleared an area of woods about a third of an acre in size in which he accepted tree trunks for drop-off and then processed them into firewood, which he sold.
The same homeowner also created an area south of his property about a quarter acre in size on the west side of the road that he used as his personal dumping ground. To keep anything from growing, he placed two-inch thick foam insulation pads on the ground in the entire area. The PVC pipes he placed there can easily be seen in the aerial photos from the Hamden GIS maps.
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This aerial view from the 2007 Hamden GIS maps shows piles of logs on West Shepard Avenue at the junction with Baldwin Drive and also along the east side of West Shepard Avenue. |
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The junk pile south of the property at 574 West Shepard Ave. is clearly visible in their aerial view from the 2007 Hamden GIS maps. The map incorrectly labels the road as Baldwin Drive. |
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This 2006 aerial photo from the Hamden GIS maps clearly slows a large pile of logs opposite the barn (top) and house (bottom) at 574 West Shepard Ave. |
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This annotated aerial photo from the 2019 Hamden GIS maps shows the former privately owned property at 574 West Shepard Avenue rear as highlighted in gray. The green arrow points to an area of state property that the former property owner cleared. The logs visible in 2006 are long gone. The red arrow points to the junk pile on state land with the white PVC pipes clearly visible. The road in correctly labeled as Baldwin Drive. The GIS maps list three properties, two on the west side of West Shepard Avenue, and one on the east side as all being 574 West Shepard Avenue Rear. |
I worked on this project starting in January 2018 and worked on it periodically through the year, mostly by myself and occasionally with help from others. I then did nothing on this project again until one visit in September 2021 and another in May 2022. Finally, I returned to project on a more regular basis with five visits from October and November 2022.
With those visits, I pulled up the foam insulation, as I collected the trash and stacked the bricks. I carried out bags and buckets filed with trash for proper disposal off-site. In 2018, another volunteer removed a truckload of junk, including some of the larger items.
In November 2022, I used a hand truck to wheel down to the West Shepard Avenue gate the larger items for collection by the state. This included PVC pipes, a cut up telephone pole with metal foot pegs, the sides to a wooden trailer, a metal bedframe, and plenty of rotted wood.
The last major item to remove from this junk pile took place on Jan. 1, 2023, when another volunteer and I rolled out a metal tank to the gate. Someone had taken most of the PVC pipes from November 2022, but the rest of the items were still there. I listed them on the Hamden See, Click, Fix site, and the town of Hamden quickly took them away.
Prior to moving items to the gate, someone had taken about half the bricks from the pile. The remaining 100 bricks I wheeled up West Shepard Avenue and placed them in a wash out section of road where they were soon covered by gravel pushed into the gully by rainstorms.
The total trash removed included the following: 37 buckets of trash with bottles, cans, and pieces of foam insulation, 120 gallon-sized flowerpots, 12 car tires, 15 PVC pipes about 10 feet in length, 15 sheets of foam insulation, three metal grates, comforter, two plastic bins, pile of bricks 4 feet by 4 feet by 3 feet high, cut up section of telephone pole, wood sides to a trailer, boards covered with chicken wire, metal bedframe, and metal oil tank.
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The junkyard off West Shepard Avenue is partially cleaned up and organized on July 22, 2018. |
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An oil tank rests under a tree behind trash, bricks, and planting pots in the junkyard off West Shepard Avenue on July 22, 2018. |
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The former junkyard off West Shepard Avenue has all major pieces of junk removed and the area can now regenerate, as seen Jan. 1, 2023. |
Baldwin Drive Dumped Areas
Baldwin Drive was open to the public from the late 1930s to about 1982 and has been disrespected by people who used the road and left their trash behind. The areas most affected were the wide sections of the road, which were presumably places people could park to enjoy the view from the top. In any given stretch of road, it has been easy to fill a bucket or more with bottles that people tossed into the woods. They have been there a long time, as evidenced by their designs, such as the squat brown Schmidt’s beer bottles, or the seven-ounce Miller Pony bottles.
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Assorted bottles and cans lie in the leaves along the shoulder of Baldwin Drive on Dec. 29, 2020, looking just as they did when they were likely tossed there in the 1970s. They were removed by volunteers and recycled or placed in the trash, depending on their condition. |
Glen Lake Overlook
The area most affected is the only actual pull-off on the west side of the road, located 2.8 miles north of the junction with Regicide Drive, the park’s entry road. From this overlook, there are screened views of Glen Lake in Woodbridge. The Regicides Trail crosses through the area, and the North Summit Trail descends into Woodbridge.
Summer 2008 was the one year I was a paid seasonal state employee, earning the princely sum of $12 per hour. This job allowed me to drive a state pickup truck and I was also able to get help from other seasonal employees. We filled the pickup truck five times with junk from the slope below the area, including a steel tank, a gas station sign, gas station hoses, two mattress frames, and the roof to a pickup truck.
I also removed many buckets worth of broken glass bottles. In addition, I swept the pavement closest to the viewpoint, which was challenging to do because the glass pieces drop into the uneven pavement.
Since 2008, I have revisited the area to pick up more broken glass. In August 2016, I filled three buckets with bottles and other trash. Most of the slope is clear, but the pavement remains a work in progress.
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Old bottles and cans and bits of broken glass from the slope of the Glen Lake overlook off Baldwin Drive fill five boxes used to collect them and remove them from West Rock on Aug. 18, 2016. Note the pop-top lid in the can next to the Budweiser can in the top box, a design that clears shows the age of these cans and bottles. |
East Side Overlook
The first pull-off area is located 1.2 miles north of Regicide Drive, on the east side of the road looking toward Lake Wintergreen. In 2014, two volunteers helped me remove bricks that someone had dumped over the side. We used them to fill the post holes by the road. We also hauled out a bunch of junk from the bottom of the hill, including a metal cabinet, two bed springs, a tire, some metal chair frames, and other sort of junk. We also collected 3 buckets’ worth of old bottles and cans, plus lots of broken glass from the slope.
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A Pontiac hubcap and a metal car part and five buckets of bottles and cans were removed from the woods off Baldwin Drive on June 29, 2018. |
East Side Rocky Slope
One area that is not an overlook that had items dumped is the east side of Baldwin Drive, 1.6 miles north of Regicide Drive and a tenth of a mile south of the Blue-White Trail. This spot is located about 100 feet into the woods, which seems odd that someone would go to that much trouble to dump items, as compared to just leaving them by the side of the road. Adding to their challenge is the fact that the rocks on that side of the road are about four feet higher than the road.
I worked on this area mostly by myself with help one day from another volunteer to cart away what I hauled out. I worked on this from 2018 to 2020. The largest item and the only remaining item is an engine block, which is still in the woods as of November 2023, due to its heavy weight. Other metal items that were removed include a torque converter, a light fixture, a car radio, part of an air cleaner, and a car horn. I also removed a load of vinyl siding, foam insulation and wires, and filled 10 buckets with trash.
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Tires are stacked in the woods on the west side of Baldwin Drive, 4.3 miles north of the main entrance, as they were being carried upslope by a volunteer on June 21, 2018. |
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The tires and other junk hauled out of the woods pose for a picture on Baldwin Drive on June 21, 2018 before being removed for off-site disposal. |
North of Yellow Trail, East Side Overlook
A multi-year group project from 2018 to 2023 has been cleaning up the east side of Baldwin Drive, four miles north of Regicide Drive, about a tenth of a mile north of the Yellow Trail at a spot where the Regicides Trail crosses the road from west to east. This wide spot in the road has few trees, probably because of the rocky slope created at this location by the widening. The entire fence line was thickly lined with invasive plants, primarily multi-flora rose and bittersweet vines. Removing the invasives allowed volunteers to reach all the trash left behind. There are still more invasives to remove, but most have been cut away.
The larger items included three metal trashcans and 55-gallon drum, which the state hauled away. Other items included a child’s fire engine with pedals, three car tires, a Pontiac wheel cover, a transmission gear, a car differential, a metal shaft, the post to a bumper jack, a porcelain sink or toilet, a child’s typewriter, a bicycle tire, and a metal post attached to a concrete base. We collected 40 buckets worth of old bottles and cans from the slope.
There is still trash to collect from this slope, which is a challenge because it is steep with loose rock.
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Boxes and buckets full of trash rest on Baldwin Drive after being removed from the east slope of the road, 0.1 miles north of the Yellow Trail on Dec. 7, 2019. |
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These milk crates and the tire were found about 100 feet in the woods near the northern end of Baldwin Drive on May 1, 2021. Volunteers loaded up a pickup truck and brought them to the main entrance for collection by the state. |
South of Lake Watrous Overlook, West Side
In the woods on the west side of the road, 4.5 miles north of Regicide Drive, just before the Regicides Trail ascent to the Lake Watrous overlook was a quantity of junk that I removed in 2018. This included two bicycle handlebars, a box fan, a car radio, a small fluorescent light fixture, and plus four buckets of old bottles and cans. In another west side location nearby, I went hundreds of feet downslope to push and carry six tires and two rims, along with a TV set, an entry rug, assorted small car parts, and 2 buckets of trash, all of which I removed from the park for proper disposal.
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Mattress springs and other pieces of metal were removed from the woods by the third switchback curve on Baldwin Drive on Nov. 14, 2020. |
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