2021-6-2, Camp Columbia State Park, Morris, CT

 On 2021-6-2, I visited Camp Columbia State Park in Morris, CT.  I made an interactive map of the park, with location numbers.  Here's a link to the map: https://arcg.is/0W4z910 .

1.  Where I parked.  The parking area was gravel and could hold maybe 30 cars.

2.  In the May 2021 issue of Connecticut Magazine, Peter Marteka wrote about Camp Columbia which he said had been, before it was a state park, a place where Columbia University had a School of Surveying which operated in the summers for Columbia's engineering students.  He called this structure "an instrument house."


3.  Did this tower have any surveying-related purpose?


3.  A view from the top of the tower.



3.  The stairway to the top starts inside the structure and moves to the outside.



3.  Apparently, the structure was built just before the United States entered World Way II.


4.  I rarely see black cherry trees that are this large.



4.  Looking up at the branches of the black cherry tree.


5.  There is a map posted here.  It's the almost the same map as you can find at https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DEEP/stateparks/maps/CampColumbiaTrailMappdf.pdf .  One difference between the map posted in the park and the map posted online is a section trail which used to be blazed orange but now is blazed blue.  The update is shown on the map in the park.


6.  Many places on the red trail had grass higher than those trying to avoid ticks would like.  Much of the red trail is in Camp Columbia State Forest which abuts Camp Columbia State Park.


7.  I actually didn't follow the white trail (which is mostly on White Memorial Foundation land) all the way to its northern end because the grass was too high.



8.  A large oak (red?) alongside of the orange trail.  The orange trail, like most of trails I hiked on, appeared to have once been a road.


9.  This section of the red trail was wet and overgrown.



10.  An old well (pre-Civil War, I would guess), behind a giant sugar maple.



11.  Visible through the thicket was a small pond that I would guess was man-made.



12.  This was along a road that was formerly paved and is still pretty much clear of plant growth.  I think this is an alternate-leaved dogwood, also called a pagoda dogwood.  Note the three tiers of branches.



12.  The flowers of the alternate-leaved dogwood. 


  

12.  A pickerel frog I saw next to the alternate-leaved dogwood.


13.  In several places in the park, there were signs justifying the cutting down of trees to create thickets which many animals thrive in.  I think enough thickets are created by other acts of man and nature and that the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection should use its resources to make its properties more useable for human visitors.


14.  The Marteka article says that tCamp Columbia opened in 1884.  One of the pillars where the formerly paved road meets route CT-109 has "1881" inscribed in the pillar's concrete cap.






David Reik

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