Bates Woods

Bates Woods is approximately 85 acres of historic woodland trails around wetlands and ancient rock ledges in northwest New London, Connecticut.^[1] The park accounts for nearly half of the city's 221 acres of public open space, or about 6 percent of New London's total land area.^[2]

A BioBlitz surveying event in 2003 identified 1,691 species in Bates Woods in less than 24 hours,^[4] including the goldcap moss-eater moth (Epimartyria auricrinella), which has been called a living fossil.^[5] Stone walls and other park features date to the Works Progress Administration and earlier centuries.^[6]

Connecticut State Archaeologist Nicholas F. Bellantoni has noted the possibility that evidence of American Indian life could be uncovered in Bates Woods, particularly where stone outcroppings would have provided shelter for migrating tribes.^[7]

The natural history of Bates Woods goes back millennia before it was known as Bates Woods. For centuries after the founding of New London in 1646, the area known today as Bates Woods was called Cedar Swamp. The Cedar Swamp is mentioned in the "Incorporation of the City of New London" in its municipal code; the land of John Ashcraft is mentioned, too, after whom Ashcraft Road is named, which feeds into the main eastern entrance of the park today.^[8]

In the 18th century, Joshua Hempstead, in his Diary of Joshua Hempstead of New London, Connecticut, Covering a Period of Forty-seven Years, from September 1711, to November, 1758, makes many mentions of his work in the old Cedar Swamp.^[9]

In the 19th century, Frances Manwaring Caulkins, the most well-known historian of the city, makes 9 mentions of the Cedar Swamp in her History of New London, Connecticut: From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1860.^[10] Of swamps in New London, Caulkins says they "have enjoyed the reputation of being haunted — not generally, however, by ghosts of the dead, but by living bugbears — such as old Indians, deserters from English ships, witches, and trampers."^[11]

Fast forward to the twentieth century and Bates Woods was purchased by park commissioner George S. Palmer on April 2, 1912 at a cost of $8,000 “for [the] purposes of a public park.”^[12] A year earlier, the local newspaper reported that “20 men [were] at work to quarry and cut the stone in what is called Bates Woods” for the spire at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea church on Huntington street in downtown New London.^[13]

The purchase of 100 acres in Bates Woods for a “picturesque public park” signaled a watershed year for New London, as the city bought hundreds of acres of land for a comprehensive park system that was being designed by landscape architect John Nolen.^[14]

During its first decade as a park, however, concern began to grow that Bates Woods was not being properly managed.^[15] High school students called for improving the park,^[16] and The Tattler section of The Day newspaper expressed a desire for a “bigger and broader policy in the matter of maintaining city parks.”^[17]

41°21′14″N 72°07′16″W / 41.354°N 72.121°W / 41.354; -72.121