Bigelow Hollow State Park

In early November 2024, I visited Bigelow Hollow State Park in Union, CT, a tiny town of 785 people located in The Last Green Valley, a national heritage corridor. Much like Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and Essex National Heritage Area, both of which appear frequently on this blog, The Last Green Valley is a member of the Alliance of National Heritage Areas (ANHA), which preserves ecological and historical sites across the United States. The Connecticut area is unique for having the only dark nighttime skies on the East Coast between Boston, MA and Washington, DC, since eighty-four percent of the land is farms and forests. Bigelow Hollow makes up 516 acres (2.09 sq km) of those rural lands.

The park was established by Connecticut State Parks and Forests back in 1949, although the first conserved piece of land in the area, which includes neighboring Nipmuck State Forest, was established in 1905. The park is best known for Nipmuck Trail, a forty-mile out-and-back trail marked by blue blazes and maintained by Connecticut Forest & Park Association. Bigelow Hollow contains the northern terminus of the trail, while the two southern points are in Mansfield, CT. For those less included to hike far, the loop around the pond has plenty of pedestrian bridges and stone walls, although parts of the passageway are stony and difficult to navigate.

As for the name Bigelow, that seems to be a mystery. Both the town website and the state government portal share an anecdote that the name really is “Big Low”, an early name for the pond originally called Mashapaug by local Nipmuc, that name literally meaning “Big Pond”. The current Bigelow Pond is south of Mashapaug Pond. Bigelow was a common surname in the early United States, and members of Bigelow families did live in Connecticut. Hobart Baldwin Bigelow was a governor during the early 1880s, but he lived in New Haven County near the capital rather than Tolland County where the park is located. If this was named for a person or family, the most likely candidates were the Bigelows who lived in Bolton, CT during the 19^th century.

No matter how the park received its name, this is a quiet place to walk during the off season. The park is open from 8:00 a.m. to dusk. Be sure to bundle up with hats, gloves, and as many coats as you need, since the walk can be cold under the tree canopy. Parking is free to all from November through March, while fees are required for out-of-state visitors for the rest of the year.