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Northwest Corner The Litchfield Hills region of northwestern Connecticut is a rolling, forested landscape of hidden treasures. Here are historic villages and an unspoiled countryside with more state parks and public lands than any other area in Southern New England. While Connecticut residents view their back-woods playground as charming and sophisticated, the New York celebrities who make it their second home find it quiet and quaint. Off the beaten track, quaint Riverton became a destination following the restoration of the old Lambert Hitchcock chair factory on its original site beside the Farmington River. Employees can be observed weaving, woodworking, rushing and stenciling behind the gift shop and furniture showroom at the Hitchcock Chair Co. Factory Store. Store personnel open the fine Hitchcock Museum in the Old Union Church by appointment. The People’s and American Legion state forests along the Farmington River provide picturesque picnicking, camping and fishing sites. A wealthy early summer colony, the Norfolk area along the Massachusetts border includes secluded estates and a lively summer music season that once gave it the title “the Lenox of Connecticut.” The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Yale Summer School of Music carry on the century-old tradition with summer concerts in the redwood-lined Music Shed on the hilly grounds of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel estate west of the village green. The Hotchkiss and Salisbury preparatory schools, lakes
and nearby cultural attractions have drawn residents and weekenders to Salisbury
and Lakeville, adjoining towns in the northwesternmost corner.
Music Mountain in the Falls Village section of Lakeville hosts the
oldest continuous summer chamber music festival in the United States. Lime
Rock Park, one of America’s oldest sports car tracks, is a bucolic
setting for summer races. Cornwall and its related hamlets are as rustic and quaint as Connecticut gets – a touch of Vermont in Southern New England. Hills rise sharply on either side of the Housatonic River, which is known for good canoeing, kayaking and rafting. A covered bridge leads into West Cornwall, which has something of the air of a small Wild West mountain town. A panoramic view is offered from an observation tower in Mohawk State Forest atop 1,683-foot Mohawk Mountain, site of Connecticut’s largest ski area. New Preston, a charming hamlet of exotic shops and galleries, hugs the bank of a river just beneath Lake Waramaug. The boomerang-shaped lake reminds some of those in Austria and Switzerland, and the surrounding inns capitalize on it. Set astride a hill overlooking the lake is Hopkins Vineyard, one of the state’s best farm wineries. Lake Waramaug State Park at the west end of the lake is a wonderfully scenic site, its picnic tables scattered well apart along the tree-lined shore, right beside the water. It's also good for swimming, fishing and boating, and is blessedly uncrowded. On the north and east sides of the lake are the forested Above All and Mount Bushnell state parks. Not far from Lake Waramaug on Route 202 toward Litchfield is Mount Tom State Park, with a 60-acre spring-fed pond for swimming and picnic tables poised at shore's edge. Considered the state's finest example
of a typical late 18th-century New England village, Litchfield is
the place to which we steer first-time visitors to Connecticut. The
entire center of the village settled in 1720 is a National Historic
Landmark. While Williamsburg had to be restored, Litchfield simply has
been maintained by its residents as a living museum. Most of the old
homes and buildings are occupied. Some are opened to the public on Open
House Day one Saturday in July. The Litchfield Historic District
is clustered around the long, wide green and along North and South
streets (Route 63). The statuesque, gleaming white Congregational Church
is said to be the most photographed in New England. Note the bank and
the jail sharing a common wall at North and West streets. Along North
Street are Sheldon's Tavern, where George Washington slept (he visited
the town five times), plus the birthplace of Harriet Beecher Stowe and
the Pierce Academy, the first academy for girls. South Street is a
broad, half-mile-long avenue where two U.S. senators, six Congressmen,
three governors and five state chief justices have lived. Here too is
the Tapping Reeve House and Law School (1773), the first law
school in the country. The house with its handsome furnishings and the
tiny school with handwritten ledgers of students long gone are open in
conjunction with the Litchfield Historical Society Museum at 7
South St., which has four galleries of early American paintings,
decorative arts, furniture and local history exhibits. Just east of town are Haight
Vineyard & Winery, the oldest farm winery in Connecticut, and Topsmead
State Forest, a 511-acre preserve atop a knoll a mile east of
Litchfield Center offering scenic views, picnic sites and trails as well
as an English Tudor mansion that was once the summer home of the Chase
brass family of Waterbury. South of town along Route 63 is White
Flower Farm, one of the nation's more unusual nurseries. Famed
almost as much for its erudite catalog as for its nursery stock, it
welcomes visitors to the ten acres of display gardens and a sales center
from which few go home empty-handed. The gardens are especially gorgeous
in late spring and summer, and the begonia display in the greenhouses is
viewed from July through September. Material excerpted from New England's Best, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2002. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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