Burlingame Trails Truly a Community Gift

Peggy Hubbard used the trails in the woods behind her house and barn on Burlingame Road nearly every day of her adult life. She loved the outdoors and paid attention to every detail of the woods and fields. She also enjoyed sharing the trails with walkers, skiers and the local hunt club. All she asked was respect for nature and for the private property owners.

Other families owned adjacent woods, and their children rode horses and explored “the Woods” and knew all its trails and stories.

In 1992, Sarah Auchincloss and her family donated 30+ acres to CPF as an ongoing tribute to the Sedgwick, Knapp, Hazard, Burlingame and Hubbard families who together shared these woods. Sarah trusted CPF and the community to take care of these treasures and make her land part of a bigger trail system.

That happened in 2008 when Peggy Hubbard left 118 acres of ”the Woods” she loved so much to CPF through her will.

These gifted parcels today form the core of the Burlingame Trail system. Flanked on the east and west by its Fairchild Hill and Sherman’s Gulch trails, with important links across private lands, CPF’s 8 miles of Burlingame Trails are enjoyed by hundreds of community members for walking, skiing and snowshoeing and for horseback riding by permit.

Trail maintenance is a collaboration by CPF, Limestone Creek Hunt and adjoining landowners.

The donors wrote: “It is hoped that this living memorial will bring pleasure and enlightenment to everyone involved, and that future generations will accept the responsibility that goes with the enjoyment.”