Heights Park Quarried For Hidden Gems

Talk about a geological, paleontological, and historical marvel. 

That’s Quarry Park Preserve, which was the site on Sunday of an hour-long walking tour that began at the Friends Meeting House at 225 East Grand Ave. in Fair Haven Heights. It was led by the New Haven Bioregional Group​’s Aaron Goode and Friends of Quarry Park Founder Tracy Blanford.

The aim of the tour, Goode told a spirited crowd of 75 on the brisk weekend morning, ​“is for this park to become better known and better appreciated, by the people in the neighborhood, in the city, and throughout this area.” 

Take brownstone, also known as New Haven redstone, an example of which Blanford pointed out early in the walk, bearing testimony to the park’s quarry past.

“This stone was used to build Lighthouse Park, the Grove Street Cemetery wall, and a lot of churches around here,” she said, amid the crunch of leaves under hiking boots in the sun-dappled woods. 

Then there are the dinosaur fossils. Mine owner Freeman Clark discovered them. Othniel Marsh, the legendary Yale paleontologist, identified them, including a specimen of Aetosaurus arcuatus, which now resides in the Peabody Museum collection.

“Who can resist discovering that there was a dinosaur in New Haven?” said New Havener Gail Hall, following the narrow trail demarcated with branches in the bracing air. 

There are also the reports of artifacts from the Quinnipiac people who inhabited the area until the 17^th century, as well as a shoe from the 1920s. 

For all that, Goode said, Quarry Park ​“has not gotten the love and attention it deserves.”

That’s where Blanford comes in.

The Russell Street resident has spent the last 35 years living beside and enjoying the park — one of her kids found that 1920s shoe — and the last 25 or so seeking to reclaim its magic from encroaching neighbors, illegal trash dumping, and dying beech trees, among other issues.

“Your neighborhood is your responsibility, and taking care of it is just what you should do,” she said, in explaining why her group has recently stepped up its efforts to re-mark the trail, add perennials to make the entrances more inviting, and clear away invasives, Miller Lite bottles, and discarded mattresses. 

“After quarrying [which ended in the early 1900s], people started throwing trash in the quarry pits,” she said. A site marker at the Friends House entrance notes that, in addition to broken glass, other findings include ​“a cobbler’s sewing rig, a horse harness, a horse shoe, an old iron, and a cart axle.” 

By then, Blanford had reached an example of conglomerate rock. ​“Some of it is made up of large sediments like sand and pebbles and some of it looks like cement,” she said. 

Soon the group passed alongside a concrete foundation.

“This was a proposed low-income housing project started and abandoned in the 1970s,” Blanford said. ​“The neighbors opposed it, so the land was designated as an open space.”

She stopped again at a mound of dirt. ​“As the quarrying was happening, they needed to remove top soil and pile it up in places, so these are from the top soil just being put somewhere,” she said.

Kel Youngs stood nearby, listening intently. A retired environmental studies teacher at Barnard Magnet School, he’d come from Milford. 

“One thing that’s fun in the summer is to come here, it’s about 10 degrees cooler than anywhere else, and it’s like natural air conditioning,” Blanford said.

The group continued along, past upturned boulders, past slickenslides, formed, Blanford said, ​“by the friction from sliding and moving along a fault.” Birds twittered. The sun peeked through the trees.

“It’s a little rough from here down to the larger quarry, so just bear with it,” she called out. 

“Let’s do this,” someone said. 

On the way, the group passed a blasting hole. 

“That was one of the quarrying techniques they used,” Goode said. ​“At first they used hand tools in the 1600s and 1700s, but by the 19^th century, they were using dynamite. There’s a lot of different engineering techniques they used over that 250 years they did quarrying operations here.”

Soon the group reached an amphitheater-like quarry with a 40-foot brownstone cliff commonly known as the Redstone quarry. 

“This is the main quarry,” Blanford said. ​“I come over here sometimes at dusk and see coyotes moving in and out of their dens on the far side.”

It’s also the site of the aforementioned discovery of dinosaur fossils, specifically the specimen of Aetosaurus arcuatus in 1895. 

“It was found by Freeman Clark [who owned the quarry], but he didn’t know what it was, so he notified Othniel C. Marsh [the Yale paleontologist] who was able to come and identify the specimen and have it carefully removed to the Peabody,” Goode said. 

On the way back, Goode pointed out a ridge. ​“In the 1890s, railroad workers moved the tracks from the west side of the quarry to the east side which required blasting a tunnel through the ridge for steam trains going to New London, Providence, and Boston,” he said. 

“That’s now the Amtrak Northeast Corridor used by dozens of trains every day. When you’re on the train, you lose track of where you are in New Haven because the corridor is sunken, but you’re traveling under Grand Avenue and Russell Street through our little residential neighborhood.”

As he spoke, Goode happened to be standing between two logs split to create a passageway. He gestured at Marty Lendroth, a volunteer, who had cut the logs to make the path accessible.

“I’m a recently retired East Haven firefighter, and I just want to pay it forward,” said Lendroth, adding, as he took in the sparkling sun and the fresh air, ​“how can you beat this?”