What’s the best place to fly kites, go sledding, or find a hemlock tree in East Rock Park? A new interactive website lets neighbors share those tips, and more.
The new site, East Rock Park inside & out, was the outcome of a project done by a group of students at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
“The purpose is to use the park as a connector of neighborhoods,” forestry student Haley Gilbert, one of the site’s creators, said at a gathering last week for the site’s launch.
Traditional maps may show a park’s infrastructure, said Gilbert, but not the myriad ways that people use the park. The site’s designer, Eudald Lerga, found a way to layer that information on top of a basic lay of the land provided by Google Maps.
The site works a lot like seeclickfix.com: Visitors can click on a point on a map of East Rock, add text and/or a photo describing it, and share their experiences in a public forum.
Instead of pothole complaints, this site features photos of pretty vistas, info on where to find hemlocks and sugar maples, and reports of where to go to kick a soccer ball, shoot archery, or sled down a hill.
The result is, in the words of the site’s creators, “a compiling of social and ecological information, collected and communicated by the surrounding communities and park users, on an interactive web-based map.”
The site was the culmination of an extensive research project on the uses and history of the park. Gathering string for a 127-page research paper, a team of students hit the streets, interviewing people from surrounding neighborhoods on what the park means to them.
They uncovered some interesting tidbits about the park: It was incorporated in 1881, when the city parks commission took it by eminent domain. The city took it from a man of questionable sanity, who tried to set up a resort mountain house at the summit, then when that failed, resorted to building an ark. The man barricaded the entrances and charged visitors a dime to enjoy the view from the summit.
Over the years, East Rock Park was home to a zoo, restaurant, hotel, and a hermit, who lived among the trees until he froze to death one winter, according to the students’ research.
The site is being hosted by the Friends of East Rock Park, so that it can have a permanent home if its creators leave town. Click here to check it out.