After more than 60 hours of planning, clearing, and building, Chester Land Trust President Bill Myers says a new trail at the Constance Baker Motley Preserve in Chester is ready for hikers.

The project had been discussed since the land trust purchased the 6.7-acre parcel of land at 100 Cedar Lake Road in 2016, Myers says.

“Finally, this spring, I took it upon myself. I said, ‘It’s time,’ and headed up in early March and I started,” he says. “I followed the [National Park Service] trail guidelines.”

In the initial stages of trail development, Myers flagged the boundaries of the Constance Baker Motley Preserve and then laid out the trail with orange flagging.

“When you lay out the trail, you look for highlights, for views and ridges, anything that is kind of an interesting feature, different features that would be eye appealing,” says Myers.

At its highest elevation, this means ridge lines to the south, and hardwoods to the north. The trail also features a valley and ridge along with a brook.

“You’ve got the sound of the stream, a beautiful stream,” says Myers. “It is pretty impressive.”

Nestled in the topography of the mountain laurel and ridges that are trademarks of neighboring Cockaponset State Forest, the half-mile loop trail is considered a “natural terrain trail.” This means it closely follows the design of the naturally occurring landscape.

The name, “Little Rock Nine Loop Trail” is a nod to the trail’s topography and one of Motley’s most significant civil right cases, in which she won enrollment of nine African American students into racially segregated Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

“If you’re on the trail, it’s really rocky, so it’s named appropriately,” says Marta Daniels, a member of the Chester Land Trust and trustee of the Chester Historical Society. “I smiled when I heard it mentioned the first time.”

The Little Rock Nine Loop Trail has a moderate to difficult trail level rating, with several steep inclines and declines including a section of stone staircases built by Myers.

“It is challenging because it’s rather steep…You have to be careful and just take your time,” says Daniels. “Bill spent a lot of time building the steps and making it safe. It’s very beautiful.”

A kiosk at the trail head describes the accomplishments of Motley, an African-American civil rights activist, prominent lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and first woman and first African-American woman chosen as borough president of Manhattan, New York City.

Motley was also the first African-American woman senator in the New York State Senate and the first African-American woman appointed as a federal judge. She owned a home in Chester since 1965, using it as a weekend retreat and place for respite.

“The preserve is important because the public can access a point in the life of Constance Baker Motley as a seasonal resident of Chester and important player in American history,” says Daniels.

Additionally, Myers says of the preserve, “this is the first one that we bought out of our funding, so that makes it unique and it’s one that has upland hardwoods in it, it’s the type of terrain that you would want to do a footpath in.”

The Constance Baker Motley Preserve was added to the Connecticut Freedom Trail in October 2019.

A bronze plaque from the State of Connecticut denoting this distinction was recently installed on a local granite stone, transported, and set at the preserve by Dan LaPlace, a resident of Chester.

The Connecticut Freedom Trail “designates sites that embody the struggle toward freedom and human dignity, celebrate the accomplishments of the state’s African-American community and promote heritage tourism,” according to the organization’s website.