GENERAL BACKGROUND:
The Ives Trail Greenway is a regional trail that links open spaces in Bethel, Danbury, Redding and Ridgefield.
The trail extends twenty miles, from Redding Open Space to Terre Haute in Bethel, northwest to Rogers Park in Danbury, past the Charles Ives Homestead, and then south thru Tarrywile Park.
It then continues southwest across Route 7 and through Wooster Mountain State Park to Ridgefield's Pine Mountain Open Space and Bennetts Pond State Park.
The Ives Trail is named in honor of Charles Ives who was born in Danbury in 1874. Ives blended classical music with Americana to create a new style of music and is noted for his original classical compositions, winning the Pulitzer prize in 1947 for his Symphony #3. Ives is Connecticut's state composer.
The trail visits his birthplace home and a mountain retreat area where he often composed.
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Col. Louis D. Conley was a retired tin manufacturing executive who, before his death in 1931, had amassed some 2,000 acres of nursery land in northeastern Ridgefield. The property extended from the vicinity of Copps Hill Plaza north along Routes 35 and 7 into Danbury. The Colonel built a large home called Outpost Farm at the summit of Fox Hill where you now stand. This mansion became the famous Fox Hill Inn from 1946 to 1970.
After the inn closed, IBM bought the house and about 700 acres for a possible corporate site. The house was razed in 1974. In 1998 the land was sold to Eureka, a development company. In 2001 Ridgefield acquired 458 acres of this land through eminent domain.
In 2002 the land was conveyed to the state for $4.25 million, after which Bennett's Pond Open Space fell under the jurisdiction of the Connecticut State Dept of Environmental Protection.
The Ives Trail markers are sufficient, but not abundant. For LOOP1 (Ives1 - Ives6) it helps to follow the Green squares.