New Michigan State Forest
New Michigan State Forest is located in the towns of Plymouth and Pharsalia in Chenango County. Access is made easy by the nine mile Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Truck Trail that passes atop a forested plateau and offers visitors many perspectives for understanding the landscape’s natural and cultural history. Dark stands of planted spruce are interrupted by wide open vistas created after a tornado touched down on the forest in 1998. The roadside fire ponds with laid up stone and neatly channeled waterways recall the fastidious work of the CCC. A woodland cemetery pays tribute to Revolutionary War heros, and the miles and miles of stone walls are monuments to the brute labor necessary for transforming forest into farmland. The cows and plows are gone but the walls remain as a reminder of both a faded agriculture and nature’s power to reclaim the fields with lush sylvan growth.