Indigo Woods

This trail is sprinkled with large trees, especially oaks, tulip-poplars and beeches. Trees with shallow root systems may be toppled by winds, especially where the water table is close to the surface. Understories here have dense stands of spice bush, wild azalea, sweet pepperbush, dogwoods, and, of course, skunk cabbage and false helebore in the wet swales.

At the start of the Trailhead, the trail immediately turns right and crosses the river on a gravel bar. Once across, the trail splits. One branch, a spur trail, leads away from the river along a wire fence, the east boundary of Indigo Woods, to an opening in the fence where the trail turns sharply right (east) onto private land. From this point on, the trail, which is blazed but not mapped, continues along paths and old roads to either the Double Loop Trail to the north, or near the Camp Hadley Trail to the east.

The other branch, the main trail, leads west along the north bank of the river. After crossing the river to an old road, the trail splits and forms the base of a loop. The trail straight ahead, upslope, will return to this point via the right branch. The trail continues straight and eventually passes along a stone wall and into an old meadow. The trail then continues along the river and leads close to the beginning of the site of an old mill dam to the west. Here, there are piles of stones that were initialled and dated by Madison and Guilford selectmen as they periodically reconfirmed the location of their towns’ common boundaries.

Crossing the stream on step stones to the northern side of the dam leads to views of the sluiceway that directs water to the mill site. The trail follows atop the sluice wall to the mill foundation, and then crosses the river once more. From this point on, the trail traces the southern bank of the river within its floodplain to the base of the loop.

Crossing the river once more, leads back to the trailhead or to the spur trail north to where it joins an old woods road and then passes through a stonewall and wire fence.

The wall marks the end of the Indigo Trail and the beginning of the aforementioned unmapped trail on other private lands. Following this trail, leads to a branch to the north that joins the Double Loop Trail. straight ahead the trail passes east and then sharply north and over a high promontory before eventually ending on Warpas Road a few hundred feet west of its junction with Copse Road, near the entrance to the Camp Hadley Trail.

The Mill was active in the early and mid-1800s. This mill was used for sawing ship timber and other timber for Eber Hotchkiss, Hiram Wilcox and other local boatbuilders. Although the extensive ruins of the dam, sluiceway and mill are still very evident, little documentation of its construction and ownership is available.