BNRC builds new trail at historic Basin Pond

Andrew Groff and Bryan Emmett install new sign

With help from the Lee Land Trust, the Resources Council celebrated the opening of its new trail at Basin Pond in East Lee on November 4. The trail offers a relaxed 2.1 mile loop-and-spur tour through a landscape of stone, wetland, and historic tragedy.

Today Basin Pond (also known as Mud Pond or Lake Lee) is more or less as nature would have it: a natural bowl, made deeper by beaver, filled by springs and water running down from the mountains, a nesting, loafing and feeding spot for wildlife.

But twice in its history, developers have dammed the wetland to advance their own ends. In the 19th century the goal was to store water for industry. In the 20th, developers built a lake and began selling waterfront lots.

Astonishingly, both groups made the same mistakes, building rotten dams at a spring-laced site. The first dam collapsed in 1886, the second in 1968. Nine lives were lost in total. East Lee's industrial district was essentially erased in 1886, and the 1960s dream of a "leisure home" development went up in a cloud of lawsuits and bankruptcy.

After the second collapse, the Clark-Aiken company, owner of a massively damaged mill downstream, acquired title to the pond and surrounding land as part of its settlement for the catastrophe. Many years later the company sold the land to conservationist N. Robert Thieriot, who bequeathed the property to Berkshire Natural Resources Council upon his death.

Modern-day hikers will find that this trail works much more sympathetically with its surrounding landscape than the earlier efforts to "improve" the property. Sophisticated trail design and often elaborate stone work have gone into creating a comfortable route that keeps feet dry while allowing the abundant water on the site to follow its natural path downhill to the pond.

As with the Council's other trails at Olivia's Overlook, Stevens Glen and Bob's Way, the Basin Pond Trail was designed and built by Peter S. Jensen & Associates of Great Barrington (see www.bnrc.net/bnrctrails for more information).

Individual volunteers and BNRC staffers joined crews from the Student Conservation Association, the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps and Landmark Volunteers in helping Jensen bring the trail into existence.

Our thanks to the BNRC members whose contributions helped build the trail, and to the project's generous lead funders: The Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation, The Nion Robert Thieriot Foundation, and The High Meadow Foundation.