George Dudley Seymour State Park & Higganum Meadows WMA

Happy to See Mour
George Dudley Seymour State Park & Higganum Meadows WMA, Haddam
October 2024

I don’t know why the state decided to split what is one tract of public land along the border of East Hampton and Haddam. To the north (East Hampton), it’s Hurd State Park. To the south (Haddam), it’s George Dudley Seymour State Park. And yeah, to the south of that is Higganum Meadows WMA. It’s all one relatively seamless tract of land that you can hike to and from.

But you know what? I’m glad they did this and I’m sure there were reasons for doing so.

Why? Because now we get to learn about George Dudley Seymour, the Haddam park’s namesake. I love George Dudley Seymour. He probably deserves more than this smallish, lower-tier state park. His work and influence is still important to this day – and especially to this website. More on him in a second… and no, the town of Seymour is not named for him.

There’s a parking lot at the end of pavement on Clarkhurst Road. From there, the only way to go is to continue down the road past the gate. I immediately crossed a bridge and happened to notice a fairly well defined gorge to the right. Hm. Let’s go check it out.

I scrambled down the very steep embankment and was shocked at how cool Axelson Brook was cutting through the stone and under the bridge.

A real photographer could get some really nice shots here. I think my two pictures above are pretty rad and that’s with an iPhone in whatever default setting with perhaps one second of caring about the framing and composition. If that.

Back up to the old road/trail, I ambled through the pretty woods for a bit which gives us time to learn a bit about this place.

The park was once the site of Clarkhurst, the estate of wealthy Higganum (part of Haddam) harrow manufacturers George, Henry and Thomas Clark. In addition to living at Clarkhurst, the family used the land as a testing ground for agricultural equipment. Henry Clark’s daughter, who took possession in 1921, sought to develop the site for recreational use but the property saw steady decline with the coming of the Great Depression. It was owned by Marion Gutherie from 1942 until 1960, when it was purchased by the state for $60,000 using funds provided by the George Dudley Seymour Foundation.

Okay, cool. So that’s how the park got its name. I think some people new to this area will be surprised at the massive rock outcroppings and towering cliffs here. (These same features exist at Hurd State Park, but are no less cool to see.)

So, about this Seymour guy…

George Dudley Seymour was born in Bristol and practiced patent law in Washington, D.C., and then in New Haven. Seymour was a former vice president of the American Federation of Arts, a trustee of the Wadsworth Atheneum, and chairman of the State Commission of Sculpture. He was a close friend of William Howard Taft, John Singer Sargent, and Gifford Pinchot. (Some of you may recognize Pinchot not just for his national forestry work, but for Connecticut’s largest tree which is named for him.)

So Seymour was into the arts. Nice. And it would be enough if he’d stuck to that. But he did not…

Seymour extensively researched the life of the patriot Nathan Hale. He led the campaign for the statue of Hale on the Old Campus at Yale, and convinced the federal government to print a Nathan Hale postage stamp in 1925. In 1914, Seymour purchased the Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry, which he restored and gifted to the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society (now Connecticut Landmarks). Upon his death, Seymour gifted to the United States government the life-size bronze statue of Nathan Hale by sculptor Bela Lyon Pratt; the statue is located at the south facade of the United States Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Oh, so Seymour was into the arts and history. Nice. And it would be enough if he’d stuck to that. But he did not…

Seymour was a leading figure in the municipal development of New Haven, and was the city’s most fervent proponent of the City Beautiful movement. The City Beautiful influence in New Haven was responsible for a series of formal public buildings, such as the New Haven County Courthouse and the New Haven Free Public Library, with traditional columns and pediments that reinforced the role of the green as a civic center of classical dignity. In 1908, Seymour persuaded Yale to open the Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Yale University Art Gallery to the public on Sunday afternoons.

Oh, so Seymour was into the arts, history, city planning, and museums. Awesome. And it would be enough if he’d stuck to that. But he did not…

In addition to the namesake park this page is about, George Dudley Seymour personally and through his foundation helped to acquire seven state parks and a state forest. The parks include: Beaver Brook in Windham and Chaplin, Becket Hill in Lyme, Bigelow Hollow in Union, the aforementioned Hurd in East Hampton, Millers Pond in Durham, Platt Hill in Winchester, and Stoddard Hill in Ledyard. He also helped acquire a large portion of Nathan Hale State Forest. I love how he covered so much of the state.

So Seymour was into the arts, history, city planning, museums, forestry, land preservation, and public recreation. Hm, would it be fair to say he’d be a CTMQ fan? I have no idea, but I’m surely a George Dudley fan. “His” park with Hurd protects two and a half miles of Connecticut River frontage, not to mention all the land behind it.

Back to my walk… after the crumbled asphalt and the towering stone ledges and cliffs (and a trail that will take you to Hurd), the trail leveled off along a swamp which then gives way to agricultural fields before the river. Apparently the grass species here predate European colonization and farming and I guess that’s a rarity in Connecticut. While that’s cool, it really just looked like another field to me – surrounded by wild grape which filled the air with its noxiously sweet scent as I walked.

I went straight to the river, past several side trials cut into the fields. This place is certainly a “Choose Your Own Adventure” park, so go for it. It’s pretty difficult to get lost.

After taking a moment at the “beach,” I wandered the fields a bit. They are muddy and some of they paths are somewhat difficult footing. Swaths of these fields make up the Higganum Meadows Wildlife Management Area. The state stocks these fields with like 20,000 ring-necked pheasants every year for the pleasure of being shot.

After wandering around a bit, I retraced my steps back to my car. You can access Hurd from down here as well, taking a path up to the powerline cut and to another crossover trail. I’ll save that for another day.

Shout out to George Dudley Seymour and his own overlooked state park.