Stone House Rd- Enfield. The ” Chunks ” Hike
A new addition to our west-side hike options, the Finger Lakes Land Trust has opened a new hiking trail for public use in October 2024.
The late property owner Margaret Bald left her iconic and historic stone house and surrounding lands located at the junction of Stone House Rd and Woodard Rd in the Town of Enfield to the Finger Lakes Land Trust in 2022 : Historic Stone House in Tompkins County to be Restored, Future Secured Through Preservation Agreement | Finger Lakes Land Trust (fllt.org) , Since acquiring the property the Land Trust has created a loop trail with a connector trail to the Finger Lakes Trail.
Ultimately the Land Trust property on which the trail through what is now known as “Margarets Woods” travels through, and the access trail towards the state park, will be taken over by the Office of State Parks and Historic Preservation and absorbed into Robert Treman State Park.
While the new trail has a small parking lot associated with it, for the purposes of this new hike we will have hikers park at the junction of Woodard and Stone House Rd on the shoulder of Stone House Rd. There simply isn’t enough room in the small Land Trust parking lot for our usual number of hiker vehicles.
Google map link to road intersection: Woodard Rd & Stonehouse Rd – Google Maps
On this new hike we will road walk the short distance to Margarets Woods, the new loop trail on Stone House Rd adjacent to the Stone House residence. At the conclusion of that loop, we’ll take the connector trail to the Finger Lakes Trail and the CCC trail into Upper Robert Treman State Park. Continuing the hike in a loop through the upper picnic area to the bottom of the Red Pine Trail and looping back to the Old Mill via the Gorge Trail will bring us back to the CCC Trail, where we will retrace our route back to Stone House Rd and our cars.
The name I’ve given this hike came about when I was pre-hiking the route with Leigh Ann V, who commented that the various portions of the hike: the loop through Margarets Woods, the access trail towards the state park, the CCC trail, and the loop through Upper Robert Treman, each have different qualities and attributes to them. Leigh Ann described the hike as being broken up into various ” chunks”, each “chunk” bringing its own unique attributes and qualities to the overall route. Much of the land we hike through here was active farmland just a few short decades ago, so it is currently a mix of scrub trees, gullies, streams, and longer established park property.
Robert Treman State Park map here: RobertHTremanTrailMap.pdf (ny.gov)
Finger Lakes Trail maps are available for purchase in paper or electronic formats here: Purchase Individual Maps – Fingerlakes Trail Conference. Sale of the maps supports the on-going costs of trail maintenance across the Finger Lakes Trail
Last edit: 02-20-2025 JFR