There are no shortage of places to view garnets, Connecticut’s state mineral. Tolland’s Garnet Ridge Drive describes what must have been on view before developers got to it. Just down the road is the former Burgundy Hills Quarries and an abandoned garnet mine. The garnets were too fractured for use as jewelry, and anyway, that gem had fallen out of fashion a century prior. The quarry venture was not a total loss for the Cramers, who sold both the stone used in Rockville’s Fox Hill Tower and that for President Eisenhower’s farmhouse hearth.

Neither of those sites, though, are on the Connecticut Garnet Trail, a new and apparently obscure “specialty trail” which is not to be confused with a hiking route.

My first stop on the trail is in the same central west area of Tolland, but within an industrial park I have no memory of stepping foot in during the entire time I lived in the town decades ago. It’s expansion in the mid-1990s, despite lack of tenant buy-in, also went unnoticed. I was only vaguely aware of Dari Farms (because I do pay attention to ice cream) which recently closed up shop. I can’t say I’ve given much thought to the few employers in Tolland at the time, but I did have my eyes open when it came to rocks — especially those that sparkled. 

The Gerber Drive roadcut is just before that Dari Farms entrance, and before reaching a church that has taken over a woodworking shop. Littleton Schist towers, and with some poking around, it can be climbed. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be. The outcrops are not bare rocks. Covered in moss, lichen, trees, and a metal art sculpture, they might be better to view from street level than on top.

Let’s pause this for a minute. You might be wondering what kind of person goes out to look at garnets on Thanksgiving instead of watching a televised parade or cheering runners in Manchester or preparing a half dozen dishes for an elaborate dinner. This one. Cruising for rocks is not unlike birdwatching, except it’s easier to do if your eyes have trouble focusing.

OG ocean floor sediments — AKA, the ancient Iapetos Ocean —  formed schist. This can seem improbable at a location that is now around 50 miles from Long Island Sound, but there does not seem to be any disagreement among geologists on this fact.

The fact that garnets are abundant in Connecticut doesn’t mean they aren’t worth slowing down to look at. It’s our collective lack of awe that enables us to carve up fields into McMansions, decimate forests for cul-de-sacs and single-family housing, and pave over the landscape to such an extent that we struggle to imagine what was here before. It’s not that progress is bad, but that what is often labeled progress is no such thing.

True progress looks like developing quirky “trails” like this one, and actual trails, and maintaining open space, such as we see happening statewide through the expansion of land trusts. Maybe the Garnet Trail is too delightful for you to handle, but our tiny state has other offerings that deserve attention.

All of this is to say that Tolland has three roadside attractions and they are all rocks. 

For more info than you ever knew you needed to know about garnets, check out the Connecticut Garnet Trail Guide.