Trail Recon: Racebrook Tract

CT NEMBA Trail Ambassadors Paula Burton, Ed Perten (pictured left), and Mark Lurie met at the parking area for Racebrook Tract on Saturday morning (2/14) to take inventory of the existing trails and to assess the feasibility of introducing new single track. It was still pretty cold, probably around 25 degrees and everyone came prepared for a cold ride.

You may recall Paula was the recent recipient of a new bike that was won through NEMBA's trail care series raffle, however, today she brought her hard tail with studded tires. Later in the ride she gave us a demonstration of how to ride the ice. She made it look very easy. As for Ed and I, we had to stay in the snow on the sides of the trail which made pedaling alot of work, especially for me riding my single speed. Here is a little video I made of Paula riding on ice.

The Racebrook Tract is open space owned by the towns of Orange and Woodbridge. It lies between four roads, Routes 34 & 114, the Wilbur Cross Parkway, and Johnson Rd (Woodbridge) and Dogburn Road (Orange). Entrance to the parking area is off Rte 114 just north of the Rte 34 intersection. Permitted activities include: include hiking, cross country skiing, bicycling, horse back riding, and fishing in Race Brook and Colburn Brook. Special rules for the latter two activities are posted at the Ox Shed near the trail entrance. Only the Ox Shed has since fallen in disrepair, so if there is any limitations to activities it is unknown at this time.


It is a unique park, just minutes from New Haven and the Wilbur Cross Parkway. All the existing marked trails are all dual track trails, which are primarily graveled over the past years for various other uses as in the construction of powerlines through the park. With the exception of the red trail, none of the existing marked trails are very challenging, which is perfect if you have young kids that you would like to introduce to mountain biking.

The Red Trail in the Woodbridge section of the park is in the worst condition and is the only trail with a any kind of challenging climb because it's very long.

(looking downhill)

(Looking uphill)

There are a lot of hikers and dog walkers using this park so if you do venture out to it, please be courteous of them. Here is the map of the ride. We explored a few of the off shoots that don't appear on the map. Most these unmarked trails seem to be for logging. There is an access road that ends at a gate just short of the Parkway. The area east of the Purple Trail (P) is reserved for logging and is quite torn up from these operations.

We found an unmarked road that connects the Red and Green Trails west of the powerlines. Clearly, this trail/road was used in construction of the powerlines. Between the Red and White trails there is the start of the loan single track trail that has a pretty good climb at the end of the trail. It looks like the back entrance to what was an old camping area with a rotten picnic table and an old, rusted out hand water pump 50 yards further towards the white Trail.

From the brochure there was a tunnel build between the Wepawaug Reservoir and Maltby Lakes to divert water for the City of New Haven back in the early 1900s. My guess is that this might have been an operations area for the workers in the past. The pump, pictured, below is an area that looks like it might have supported some sort of work area.

Not pictured, although I took quite a few pictures of was a raised bed of shale tailings that came from the contstruction of the tunnel. The bed extends from the intersection of the White and Red Trails to Race Brook. On the other side of the stream the bed continues which leads me to believe that this tunnel actually crossed over, rather than under the stream in some sort of pipe.

Currently, Ed is putting together a trail proposal to build a new single track trail here. The idea is to put in a multi-use trail that is a little more challenging than the dirt roads and dwelves into the interior and outer sections of the park.