Mine Hill Preserve Allows Imagination To Come To Life

Mine Hill Preserve is a place where your imagination and legends both come to life.

While walking an old abandoned tramway to the iron ore mines, one can almost hear the braying of the donkeys that once pulled ore-filled carts along the rails. Farther along the trail, one might hear the tink-tink of picks extracting the ore while peering into the maw of a water-filled mine shaft.

And then there are the legends, as visitors walk the 3.5-mile trail surrounding the 360-acre preserve. One can easily imagine an oxcart traveling down the tramway as a German goldsmith was caught taking precious metals out of the mine when a box filled with silver ingots fell off.

Welcome to Mine Hill Preserve, home of the first purchase of the Roxbury Land Trust — a group that has preserved 3,316 acres of this small, turn-back-the-clock northwestern Connecticut town. While the granite quarries, abandoned mine shafts and old tramways are fun to explore, the draw of this preserve is the huge restored blast furnace and roasting ovens that take visitors back to a time when this hillside on the banks of the Shepaug River helped fuel the country's demand for iron.

At the height of its existence, a town known as Chalybes formed around the mining and smelting operation that produced 10 tons of iron per day from 1867 to 1872 and employed hundreds of mostly Polish immigrants. The town included a general store, creamery, cigar factory, hotel and even a brothel. The lone survivors — the roasting ovens, where the ore was warmed, and the furnace — are on the National Register of Historic Places. There are also plenty of old foundations, sluiceways, cellar holes and loading docks to explore.

The blue-blazed loop trail is of moderate difficulty and takes visitors from the ovens along the raised tramway past a reservoir up to the mine entrances. All the shafts have been sealed, although one's curiosity has to confirm this at each opening. Some of the shafts are sealed with cages that protect a bat hibernaculum. The mine's constant 55-degree temperature — and no chance of being disturbed by spelunkers — makes it an ideal place for bats to hibernate.

The trail continues past old granite quarries that once supplied granite for foundations and door steps to the buttresses of the 59th Street Bridge and the railroad approach to Grand Central Terminal. Towering quarries and huge slabs of granite — many with the drill holes used to split the rock — can be seen along the trail.

For those not interested in a long walk, the main furnace area is just 0.2 miles from the parking area. A yellow-blazed 0.3-mile "Nature Trail" is at the reservoir and takes visitors past charcoal pits and past the biggest chunk of white quartz I've seen in my travels across the state.

The iron operation only lasted five years, but the legacy of this lonely hill in Roxbury remains for those who visit the former town of Chalybes.

•I-84 to exit 15/Route 67. Follow through the center of Roxbury and take a right on Mine Hill Road. Historical information used in the column was found in interpretive signs at the preserve. Column ideas and suggestions are welcome. Peter Marteka can be reached by phone at 860-647-5365; by mail at The Courant, 200 Adams St., Manchester, CT 06040; and by e-mail at pmarteka@courant.com.