Sleeping Giant State Park

State Park · Hamden, Connecticut

A two-mile traprock ridge north of New Haven that from the right angle really does look like a giant lying on his back - head, chin, chest, hip and knees, in that order, which is how everyone learns the trail map. It is basalt, the same volcanic spine that runs up the middle of Connecticut, and the cliffs on the south face are genuine rock rather than a wooded hill. Around thirty miles of trail cross about 1,500 acres, from the wide gravel Tower Path that any reasonably fit person can walk to the Blue Trail over the head, which involves hands-on scrambling and is the reason for most of the rescues here. At the top of the Tower Path is a 1930s stone observation tower built by the WPA, open and free, with a ramp spiralling up inside it and a view to Long Island Sound. It was saved from a quarry by a campaign that ran for decades and it is the most-walked hill in the state. The head still carries the scar of the quarrying the campaign stopped, which is the one part of the view that is not scenery.

200 Mount Carmel Avenue, Hamden, Hamden, Connecticut, 06518, United States

Open daily year round from roughly eight in the morning until sunset, as Connecticut state parks generally are. The stone tower is open in daylight hours and is free. The parking fee, where charged, applies seasonally and is collected at the main entrance. Trails are not cleared in winter and the upper ridge can be closed after storms. There is no overnight access and no camping.

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