Becket Hill State Park Reserve is a public recreation area lying adjacent to Nehantic State Forest in the

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

of Lyme,

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

. The

state park State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...

is as an undeveloped, walk-in park totaling with no officially listed activities. It is managed by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

History

Becket Hill State Park Reserve is named for an early settler of the area named Beckwith; the land was part of the

Nehantic The Niantic (Nehântick or Nehantucket in their own language) were a tribe of Algonquian-speaking American Indians who lived in the area of Connecticut and Rhode Island during the early colonial period. They were divided into eastern and wester ...

tribe's territory. In 1961, the land for the reserve was given to the state by the

George Dudley Seymour George Dudley Seymour (October 6, 1859 – January 21, 1945) was an American historian, patent attorney, antiquarian, author, and city planner. He was the noted authority and foremost expert on Nathan Hale, the American Revolutionary War hero. ...

Trust, to become the 76th designated Connecticut state park. Beckett Hill was listed on the ''Connecticut Register and Manual'' for 1962 as having 260 acres of undeveloped land.

Activities

The reserve is an undeveloped, walk-in park with access through the Lyme section of Nehantic State Forest, which is entered from

Connecticut Route 156 Route 156 is a Connecticut state highway running from East Haddam to Waterford. Route description Route 156 begins at an intersection with Route 82 in southeastern East Haddam and heads southeast into Lyme. It continues south through Lyme int ...

. Bushwhacking is required as no roads or trails cross from the forest to the state park reserve. The reserve's boundary with the state forest is created by Uncas Lake and Falls Brook, a stream that connects Uncas Lake with Norwich Pond. Boat launches for non-motorized craft are located on each. The waters are stocked with

brook A brook is a small river or natural stream of fresh water. It may also refer to: Computing *Brook, a programming language for GPU programming based on C *Brook+, an explicit data-parallel C compiler *BrookGPU, a framework for GPGPU programming ...

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used ...

and

rainbow trout The rainbow trout (''Oncorhynchus mykiss'') is a species of trout native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia and North America. The steelhead (sometimes called "steelhead trout") is an anadromous (sea-run) form of the coasta ...

; other fish include

largemouth bass The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, but ...

yellow perch The yellow perch (''Perca flavescens''), commonly referred to as perch, striped perch, American perch, American river perch or preacher is a freshwater perciform fish native to much of North America. The yellow perch was described in 1814 by Samu ...

and sunfish.

References

External links

Becket Hill State Park Reserve
Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection
Nehantic State Forest Map
Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection {{authority control State parks of Connecticut Lyme, Connecticut Parks in New London County, Connecticut Protected areas established in 1961 1961 establishments in Connecticut