Skip to main content

Lovers Leap State Park and Falls Bridge - New Milford, Connecticut

Image
By

 


Located in New Milford, Connecticut, Lovers Leap State Park is a 160 acre state park. The name Lovers Leap is based on a legend that involves starcrossed lovers; an unidentified white man and Lillinoah, a Native American princess who was the daughter of Pootatuck Indian Chief Waramaug, that chose to leap to their deaths. The park has a number of walking paths and are split into three sections. There are the Old Factory Trails, the Waramaug Loop, and the Hurd Estate Trails found around the park. Each section of the park has their own sights to see, including a castle, ruins and overlooks of Lake Lilinonah.  The historic iron bridge over the Housatonic River is frequently the main attraction.

The Falls Bridge, which is an iron bridge built by the Berlin Iron Bridge Company of East Berlin, Connecticut, is a 173 foot lenticular truss bridge over the Housatonic River and was built in 1895. It is one of only a handful of iron truss bridges remaining in Connecticut. A similar bridge upstream on the Housatonic River called the Boardman Bridge was built a few years prior and local officials in New Milford were pleased by that bridge, so when a proposal to replace the Falls Bridge was made, they decided to go with a similar design. Once construction was completed, the bridge cost $7,938 to build. The bridge carried traffic until 1977. In 1994, efforts to restore the Falls Bridge begun, and after securing the $1.9 million in funding, restoration took place between 2004 and 2006, when the bridge reopened for pedestrian use.

Overall, Lovers Leap State Park is a pleasant place to visit and explore. The bridge is one of the focal points of the park and celebrates an era where there were once over 1,000 iron truss bridges crisscrossing the Constitution State. One of the other points of interest in the park is a rock formation with an overlook of Lake Lillinoah, where it is said that the princess and her lover leaped into the river below where they met their watery demise together.













How to Get There:



Sources and Links:
Damned Connecticut - Damned Hike: Lover’s Leap State Park, New Milford
Explore Connecticut - Lovers Leap State Park
CTMQ - TSTL’15.8: Lover’s Leap State Park
Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection - Lovers Leap State Park
Labels:
Location: Lovers Leap State Park, 178 Short Woods Rd, New Milford, CT 06776, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's In a Name?: When the Roads Really Do Tell a Story

By
  Our tagline on the Gribblenation blog is "because every road tells a story". Some roads tell different stories than others. Along our travels, we may see historic markers that tell us a little story about the roads we travel or the places we pass by. Some historic markers are more general, as to telling us who lived where or what old trail traversed between two towns. During my travels across New York State and other states or provinces, I pass by many historic markers, some with interesting or amusing references to roads. I wanted to highlight a few of the markers I've seen along my travels around the Empire State and help tell their stories. Those stories may be as specific as explaining the tales of a tree that was used to help measure a distance of eight miles from Bath to Avoca in Steuben County, as referenced on the Eight Mile Tree historical marker above. They may also help point the way along historical roads first used centuries ago, or may help tell a local l...
Post a Comment
Read more

2018 Mojave Road Trip Part 2; The deadly desert highway (California State Route 127 and Nevada State Route 373)

By
After leaving Barstow via Old Highway 58 my next destination was in Death Valley.  To access Death Valley from rural San Bernardino County required a trek on north on Interstate 15 to California State Route 127 which becomes Nevada State Route 373 at the state line. Along I-15 I encountered the road sign oddity that is Zzyzx Road about eight miles south of Baker.   Zzyzx Road is a four mile road that used to go to the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa.   The spa was founded in the 1940s and the owner made up the name "Zzyzx" to claim it was the last word in the English Language.  The spa has been shut down since the 1970s and is now part of a Desert Studies Center for California State University. The southern terminus of CA 127 in Baker is located at I-15 exit 246.  CA 127 is a 91 mile north/south highway which runs to the Nevada State Line in Inyo County.  CA 127 is called Death Valley Road from I-15 northward.  South of CA 127 ...
4 comments
Read more

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

By
  Over the years, I have made plenty of trips to Ontario, crisscrossing the southern, central and eastern parts of the province. Living in Upstate New York, it's pretty easy to visit our neighbor to the north, or is that our neighbor to the west? Ottawa is one of my favorite cities to visit anywhere in the world, plus I've discovered the charm of Kingston, the waterfalls of Hamilton (which is on the same Niagara Escarpment that brings us Niagara Falls), the sheer beauty of the Bruce Peninsula, and more. But I hadn't explored much of Cottage Country. So I decided to change that, and what better time to go than over Memorial Day weekend, when the daylight is long and I have an extra day to explore. On the third and final day of my trip, I started in Huntsville and made my way through Muskoka District and Haliburton County, passing by many lakes along the way. I stopped in towns such as Dorset, Haliburton and Bancroft before making a beeline down to Belleville and then over th...
Post a Comment
Read more