The Best State Parks In New England

Six New England state parks are worth a full day on foot before you ever open the car door again. Each one holds a payoff you have to move to reach. You walk down into a gorge at Franconia. You climb to a summit at the end of the Appalachian Trail in Baxter. You gain a ridgeline over Penobscot Bay at Camden Hills. On this list you get more from the climb, the paddle, or the long trail loop than from the parking-lot view. That is the thread I used to choose them. Lace up and pick your first one.

Franconia Notch State Park, New Hampshire

Start at Flume Gorge, and you feel it the moment you step between the walls. The granite rises nearly 800 feet on both sides at the base of Mount Liberty, and a boardwalk trail leads straight through the cut. The full White Mountains loop out of the gorge covers about two miles, or roughly ninety minutes of walking for most people. That is the warm-up. From there you can climb onto the Appalachian Trail, rope up on the Cannon Cliffs, or cast for trout on Profile Lake where the old Notch road passes through. The paved Recreation Path is the spot for easy miles, a flat route the length of the notch for riders and runners who want distance without traffic. Cool off with a swim at Echo Lake when you are done, then duck into the New England Ski Museum by the tram base to see how people first threw themselves down these slopes.

Baxter State Park, Maine

Serious hikers point their trucks north into Maine for one reason, and that reason is Katahdin. At 5,267 feet it is the tallest mountain in the state and the northern end of the Appalachian Trail, so the summit doubles as a finish line for thru-hikers who started in Georgia months earlier. The climb is long and rocky, and the exposed Knife Edge is not a route to take lightly. Percival Baxter, governor from 1921 to 1924, spent decades buying this land and handing it back to Maine to keep it forever wild. Today the park runs to more than 209,000 acres of forest, ponds, and streams with very few facilities by design. You come here to camp, paddle, fish, and watch for moose, black bears, and white-tailed deer. Pack out everything you carry in, and book parking and campsites well ahead in peak season, because the gate turns cars away once the day-use lots fill.

Nickerson State Park, Massachusetts

Nickerson trades the surf for freshwater, which is the surprise of camping on Cape Cod. The park spreads across 1,900 acres of pine and oak in Brewster, and glacial kettle ponds sit scattered through the woods instead of a single stretch of beach. Cliff Pond and Flax Pond both have sandy swimming areas fed by clean groundwater, so you can paddle out in a kayak in the morning and swim off the shore in the afternoon. The land once belonged to Chicago banker Samuel Nickerson, whose family later gave it to Massachusetts for a park. An eight-mile paved bike path links the campground straight into the Cape Cod Rail Trail, which runs for miles past ponds and cedar swamp. There are 418 campsites here, including six canvas yurts that sleep four if you would rather not haul a tent. Reserve early, since the good sites near the water disappear fast once summer hits.

Gillette Castle State Park, Connecticut

The trails at Gillette Castle follow an old railroad bed, which makes for some of the most unusual hiking in Connecticut. William Gillette, the actor who made his fortune playing Sherlock Holmes on stage, built a quarter-scale narrow-gauge railroad around his estate in the 1920s to ferry guests up to the house. The three miles of track are long gone, but the walking paths still run the route over stone trestles and through a dark, low tunnel high above the Connecticut River. The stone mansion itself sits about 200 feet over the water on a hill in a chain called the Seven Sisters, and tours run daily through the warm months if you want to see the trick locks and hidden mirrors inside. Gillette started the castle in 1914 and finished it in 1919, and Connecticut bought the whole property in 1943 to open it to the public. The best trick here is the riverside campsites, which you can only reach by canoe or kayak paddling in from the water.

Camden Hills State Park, Maine

Camden Hills packs two summits and thirty miles of trail into a wedge of land above Penobscot Bay, and you get saltwater views from both peaks. Mount Battie is the quick one, an 800-foot climb to a stone tower with a straight-down view of Camden Harbor and the islands scattered across the bay. You can hike it in under an hour or drive the auto road to the top if your legs are already spent from another park. Mount Megunticook is the bigger prize at 1,385 feet, the tallest peak on the mainland Atlantic seaboard, reached by a steady climb through hardwood forest. On a clear day you can pick out Cadillac Mountain in Acadia to the east. The park runs to more than 5,700 acres of ridgeline and shore just north of Camden, with a large campground and hot showers at the base. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the view from Battie into her poem "Renascence," and hikers still stop cold at the top of it today.

Colt State Park, Rhode Island

Colt State Park sits with its entire western edge along Narragansett Bay, and riders and paddlers come for that shoreline. Four miles of paved path curve along the water through 464 acres of open fields and old stone walls, and they tie directly into the East Bay Bike Path heading up toward Providence. The land was the showcase farm of industrialist Samuel P. Colt, nephew of the famous gunmaker, and Rhode Island bought it in 1965 to turn it into a park. Two bronze bulls still guard the main entrance from the farm days. You can fish the bay in both salt and fresh water, launch a kayak, or ride the flat miles with the wind coming off the water. The open fields near the shore are built for flying a kite or spreading out a picnic after a long ride.

Which Park To Hit First

Your choice comes down to what you want under your boots. Head to Baxter or Camden Hills if you are chasing a real summit, since you have to earn the view on Katahdin and Megunticook. Point toward Nickerson or Colt if the plan revolves around water, paddling, and flat miles on a bike. Franconia Notch gives you a bit of both, with a gorge walk, cliff climbing, and easy paved mileage all in one notch. Gillette Castle is the oddball, a hike along an old railbed with a stone castle at the top of the hill. Any of the six holds a full day outside, so the only wrong move is planning to see them all in one trip. Start with the closest one and go.