On a recent Friday afternoon me and a few friends hit up the abandoned road that sits atop the West Rock ridge in New Haven/Hamden CT. West Rock juts out from a flat landscape and rises several hundred feet above the South central Connecticut city of New Haven.
The road was built back in the 1930s during the great depression. According to the New Haven museum;
Baldwin Drive was a public works project during the Great Depression. While it is often credited as being a WPA project, the road was built in 1933 to 1934, before the formation of the Works Progress Association in 1935, and therefore was most likely a project under the Public Works Administration (PWA) banner.
The road today is hike-able and bikeable. It is paved, but that pavement is severely cracking but is passable for bikes. There are a few spots with the pavement has worn away so much its just loose gravel but you can ride about 6 miles along the ridge and stop to see some of the cliff views (500+ feet high) along the way. I’d recommend a fat tire bike/ebike for the best traction.
