Weston Wilton Forest Reserve: Trails and Decades of Conservation

"It would be our big loop," Elaine Taylor said of the walks she and her late husband, the actor Christopher Plummer, took with their four dogs on the land along the Weston-Wilton line. "We would go down to the fields with the dogs and then come back and do the loop again. The land has been part of our lives for 40 years."

That loop is now public. In December 2025, Taylor donated 8 acres to Aspetuck Land Trust. Her parcel sits across the street from Weston, in Wilton, and it became the latest piece of what the trust calls the Weston Wilton Forest Reserve. On September 20, Executive Director David Brant led a hike through what the trust's own event listing called the "newly opened" reserve. The reserve is new as a name and a trail system. The land under it has been gathered one parcel at a time since 1968.

The order in which those parcels arrived explains why the reserve walks the way it does. It also explains why it may be the most useful forest in town this October.

A Forest Bought in Pieces

Aspetuck Land Trust describes the reserve as a long-term "forest assemblage project" protecting one of the last unfragmented forests in Weston and Wilton. The trust has safeguarded 255 acres directly, and those acres connect to other protected land to form a 750-acre regional forest corridor. Here is the sequence, assembled from the trust's records and local reporting:

Most of the work is recent. Of the trust's 255 acres, 169 have been protected since 2017, funded by members and by the state's Open Space and Watershed Land Acquisition program. The state's share continued into this year. In June 2026, Governor Lamont's office announced a $578,500 grant toward the Plummer parcel, which the grant record measures at 15.84 acres. Weston Today rounded that figure to 16 acres when it reported the acquisition in December.

Why the Small Parcels Carry the Most Weight

Several of these additions are small. The 10-acre Old 2 Rod Highway Addition #1 would barely register on its own. The trust records that buying it stopped two homes from being built, and Westport resident Bill Kutik helped finance the effort. Two houses on 10 acres would have put driveways, lawns and fences through the middle of a forest the trust was trying to keep in one piece.

The reserve's trail sign explains why that mattered. The contiguous forest block is habitat for endangered species and Connecticut species of special concern, including the Eastern Box Turtle, the Sharp-shinned Hawk, the Blue-spotted/Jefferson hybrid salamander and the Long-eared Owl. Each of those animals depends on the forest staying unbroken.

The Plummer addition plays a similar role at a larger scale. The state grant description says the parcel completes a hiking loop and links to the Norwalk River Valley Trail. The trust's own description of the corridor runs further, from the Norwalk River Valley Trail on the west to protected lands on the east that include Devil's Den, Trout Brook Valley and Centennial Watershed State Forest. The loop Elaine Taylor walked with her dogs for four decades is now a link in that chain.

The Name on the Gateway

The reserve's main entrance carries the name of Daniel E. Offutt III. He was a Weston businessman, artist, builder and benefactor who lived for more than 30 years in a house he built on Kettle Creek Road, and he died in 2016. His charitable trust contributed $1 million toward the 2021 purchase of the 85-acre Fromson-Strassler property from the Town of Weston. A $625,000 DEEP grant also went into that purchase.

That purchase gave the reserve its front door. Before 2021, the Honey Hill land was reached mostly from roadside parking. The Offutt parcel added an interior lot off Upper Parish Drive and opened the north side of the forest. The trail sign at the gateway credits ALT members, the Offutt trust, the DEEP grant program, the Formanek Foundation and the Connecticut Land Conservation Council's Transaction Assistance Grant Program.

Walking It This Fall

There are two ways in. The main entrance is the Daniel Offutt Gateway at the end of Upper Parish Drive. Drive to the end of the road, take the gravel driveway, and follow it about 500 feet to the interior parking lot. Directions for the September hike gave the address as 22 Upper Parish Drive. The second option is streetside parking on Wampum Hill Road. In December, Weston Today reported plans for a pedestrian entrance off Honey Hill Road in 2026. We have not seen confirmation that it has opened, so plan around the two entrances above.

The trail map breaks the system into short blazed segments that add up to about 6.3 miles:

• White, 1.06 miles
• Red, 1.05 miles
• Purple, 0.87 miles
• Blue/White, 0.67 miles, the loop on the 2023 Old 2 Rod Highway parcel
• Green/White and Red/White, 0.48 miles each
• Blue, 0.45 miles
• Yellow/White, 0.42 miles, and Yellow, 0.41 miles
• Red/Black, 0.23 miles, and Gray/White, 0.14 miles

Green blazes mark trails on adjoining open space that ALT does not own. The map also shows Rock of Caves and the neighboring Gregg and Belknap preserves.

The rules are posted at the trailhead. The reserve is open sunrise to sunset, and visitors must stay on marked trails. Dogs must be on a hand-held leash and under the handler's voice control at all times, with a maximum of two dogs per handler, and waste must be removed. Fires, camping, mountain biking, motorized vehicles, e-bikes, alcohol and smoking are prohibited. ALT's general land-use page, last updated in 2020, allows dogs off leash at many of its properties. At this reserve the posted sign governs. There are no restrooms.

October Mornings and the Hunting Map

Fall is when the reserve's rules matter most. The sign prohibits hunting and fishing, and Aspetuck Land Trust states that every preserve it manages is hunting-free except one.

The exception is the 1,009-acre Trout Brook Valley Conservation Area. There, CT DEEP manages seasonal hunting in spring and fall from half an hour before sunrise until noon. Hunting is not allowed on Sundays. The hunting area is on the west side of the valley. More than half of Trout Brook Valley lies outside it, along with all of Crow Hill and Jump Hill, about 700 acres in total, and every access point has hunting-free trails. The trust advises walkers to wear blaze orange, avoid wearing white, and check the Bradley Road permit lot. A car parked there means someone is hunting.

The Nature Conservancy's Lucius Pond Ordway–Devil's Den Preserve does not allow hunting. It also does not allow dogs. We covered that difference in an earlier post on Weston's two large preserves. The new reserve sits differently from both:

Of the three, only the forest reserve allows a dog on a weekday morning in October with no hunting area to plan around. The reserve is far smaller than either neighbor, and its leash rule is stricter than ALT's general policy. In practice, it means a Tuesday walk from the Upper Parish Drive lot needs no blaze orange, no check of the Bradley Road lot, and no wait until Sunday.

The reserve is still growing. The 2023 ALT newsletter listed a 20.7-acre "Belknap II" acquisition as pending, and the current preserve page does not yet show it as complete. The Honey Hill Road entrance announced in December has not been confirmed as open. Members joined the September walk free, and nonmembers paid $10.

Much of Weston's character comes from land that has stayed in one piece, and that kind of continuity shapes how a property's setting holds its value over time. If you want to talk about how protected open space near your home or a home you are considering shapes its outlook, Emily Gordon is glad to walk through it with you, on the trail or at the table. Let's Connect.