Mystery Cutter Clears A Path

A whodunit has arisen in the woods of West Hills.

About a quarter of a mile into the West River Open Space trails, the trunk of a fallen oak tree around three feet in diameter lies triumphantly in the middle of a manmade path.

Around the tree’s body thick, chainsawed chunks have been masterfully carved out to create three stairs: a passage for passersby.

When Stephanie Fitzgerald of the West River Watershed Coalition (WRWC) stumbled upon the wooden steps, she was immediately curious as to who had mysteriously and skillfully cleared the obscured path.

“Our weekly volunteers have not carved this log. The parks department has not done it,” she noted. ​“Who did it?”

The West River Open Space is a city-owned park that is, in the view of the handful of WRWC volunteers who visit its trails every Saturday morning, unjustly overlooked.

A rotted footbridge once connected the Pond Lily Preserve at East Ramsdell Street to Valley Street, where the trail continues all the way to Edgewood and West River Memorial Parks through Orange Avenue. As of now, the trails on opposite sides of the river can look onto one another, but otherwise remain fragmented.

The goal of the WRWC, and evidently some anonymous wood-carver or wood-carvers, is to create one continuous and accessible trail from the north end of Bethany, where the West River begins, all the way to New Haven Harbor: the West River Greenway.

A Frank View

On Wednesday, Fitzgerald’s husband, Frank Cochran, went for a walk through the West River woods.

In one hand he held a rake to scrape out invasive weeds. In the other he carried a book about the history of the Geometric Tool Company, a business created during the early 20th century which was located in the West River area.

“The entire space is an industrial zone that was just left to revert to woods,” Cochran said.

The main entrance to the trails is behind a basketball court on East Ramsdell Street off Whalley Avenue. The river is barely visible behind a thick screen of bamboo. The corner of the parking lot is, in the words of Cochran, treated like a ​“dumping ground.”

However, a few feet from the concrete lot are miles of rich soil and stubborn roots.

Before the area became overgrown with Oriental Bittersweet and Japanese Knotweed, the river was used to power several paper mills, produce cotton, and grind wheat. The land was also home to places like the Geometric Tool Company, the Diamond Match Company, and two foundries.

Now the space, which is protected from development by the city but otherwise largely ignored, is full of wetlands reminiscent of past-life ponds and crumbling stone walls.

A few feet into the woods, Cochran paused and pointed across the river into a residential backyard.

“That’s a Dawn Redwood tree,” he said. ​“Someone must have brought it back from China in the 1930s or ​‘40s.” The tree stood out, its peak at least 20 feet above all nearby foliage.

As he kept on through the trail, he pointed out the work that he and other WRWC members have accomplished over the past year on the site.

Cochran has lived in New Haven for 53 years, since he came here to begin his 45-year legal career that included many environmental cases. Each Saturday, Cochran comes out to the woods and works for two to three hours, ​“fast, and without breaks,” at the place that he described as his ​“vacation spot.”

He is usually joined by about five other volunteers from the WRWC. ​“We’re all retired, old white guys who like to work out in the woods,” Cochran said.

Though Cochran discovered the West River open space around ten years ago, he did not start working on the trails until this past fall. He and Fitzgerald mainly volunteered at Edgewood Park, from which they live only a block away.

The volunteers’ current work mainly consists of cutting down the persistent bamboo shoots that take only two weeks to grow back and obscure the pathways. Another goal is freeing baby trees from thick vines that snake around their limbs and stunt their growth.

Future Steps

While Cochran said that it would take about 40 years of weekly volunteering to conquer all of these invasive species, he does have additional hopes for the future of the park.

These include covering the trails with gravel or stone dust from the Yale School of Forestry and planting some more berries, which already naturally grow in a few areas. He would also like to clear out the brush that blocks views of the river in warmer months to create some more scenic spots.

His main aim is to keep developing younger trees; Cochran stated that he has recently transformed into a true ​“tree fan.”

“The tree is the best asset there is for climate change,” he asserted. He said that time spent outdoors is a neglected pathway to health.

Since the pandemic sent most of Connecticut into the privacy and isolation of their homes, Cochran and his friends have continued their Saturday tradition of nurturing public land. 

“I believe the best thing to do during a pandemic is to take care of your own immune system, and the best way to do that is to get outside,” said Cochran. Within the woods, the small group was able to divide their collective to-do list and spread out with generous distance between them.

At the site of the carved tree trunk, Cochran stopped to appreciate not only the impressive stairs, but the quality of the wood. ​“I’d love to build some furniture with it,” he said. Instead, the sawdust and slabs of wood will probably, with time, decompose back into the ground.

After one stepped easily over the three wooden steps, the broken footbridge was only a two-minute walk away through ​“fine trees and open space.”

At the bridge, the stream’s rapids came into focus.

“There’s the wonderful sound of water going over the rocks,” Cochran remarked.

The wooden slats in the middle of the bridge were missing. Parts of the bridge had been covered with wooden boards, but those were also soft and rotted through. Even the metal structure was rusted and unstable. ​“It’s definitely an unsafe bridge,” Cochran said.

The origins of the bridge were yet another mystery to Cochran, though he guessed that it was likely built sometime in the 1980s.

While the newly carved steps offer heightened accessibility within the woods, the bridge serves as a theoretically ​“critical link” into an open, grassy field across from West Rock Stream Academy and onto more trails that stretch behind an affordable housing project.

The WRWC has been pushing for the bridge to be replaced for around four years. Cochran said that while City Engineer Giovanni Zinn has insisted that the bridge remains ​“a high priority,” no progress has been made due to ​“lack of political pressure.”

“We’re looking for a hard and fast promise to get the bridge done before the end of next year,” Cochran said.

Zinn himself said that he supports the project and ​“loves the WRWC,” but that the primary issue is one of funding. He estimated the bridge will cost about 150,000 dollars to replace.

There are also technical difficulties. Given the amount of erosion, Zinn said the entire bridge will need to be replaced. This will mostly likely have to be done with a crane, which means the wooded, narrow area leading to the bridge would have to be cleared out to make space.

Zinn said that he is actively looking at options, and once funding is secured the process of installing a new bridge should take about three months.

Cochran and Zinn both noted that there are other bridges, such as one in Edgewood Park, that receive more traffic and are therefore more likely to be prioritized, even if they are in better condition than the West River footbridge.

There is also a plan in the works to replace the current affordable housing in front of the trails with a mixed-income project throughout the next year. Though Cochran said the developers are currently focused on construction and planning out the details of the future buildings, he and the WRWC hope to draw their attention to the woods behind the houses.

The trails could improve the walkability and connectedness of New Haven and serve as an important feature for prospective residents.

Mystery and intrigue serve an important role in the West River woods. Following archaeological clues and animal tracks has led Cochran and others to discover a vast amount of information about the history of New Haven and the natural world, and strengthened their relationship to the area.

The unknown identity of the West River wood carver adds to this sense of mystery. It also reflects the fact that the work of the WRWC and other volunteers often goes overlooked by the city and its residents. Volunteers spend their weekends caring for the shared city space like fairytale elves who repair the shoemaker’s shoes while he sleeps.

However, the work that goes into the trails should be seen, just as the government’s plan for the park’s improvement should be clear and public. Invested individuals are paving the way by naming concrete steps that the city can take, like replacing the bridge.

Cochran and the WRWC prefer forestry to detective work, but they hope that the bureaucratic mystery of when and how the broken bridge will be fixed may be solved in the near future.