Pachaug State Forest OHV Trails

Pachaug State Forest is Connecticut's largest state forest at approximately 27,000 acres, managed by CT DEEP in the towns of Voluntown, Griswold, Sterling, and Plainfield in the northeastern corner of the state, the Quiet Corner of Connecticut, a low-density rural region that borders Rhode Island and sits at the geographic edge of the Connecticut River lowlands and the sandy outwash plains of the southeastern New England coastal watershed. The forest's scale gives it a trail network scope that Mattatuck and most other Connecticut state forests cannot match: the Pachaug OHV trail system runs through the outwash plain terrain of the Pachaug River watershed on sandy, well-draining soils that maintain rideable conditions year-round, a significant advantage over the clay and rocky substrate that can make western Connecticut state forest trails marginal after rain. The sandy outwash terrain is characteristic of the southeastern Connecticut glacial geology: the Laurentide Ice Sheet's outwash deposits in this part of the state produced the sand and gravel plains that give Pachaug its distinctive trail feel, with fast-draining open-forest trail surfaces through pitch pine, scrub oak, and mixed hardwood vegetation on the sandy upland. The scale of the Pachaug forest means the OHV trail network is meaningfully larger than any other CT state forest system, with loops that allow multi-hour riding without repetition. ATVs and registered dirt bikes are the permitted machine classes. The Pachaug State Forest headquarters (860-376-4075) in Voluntown provides current trail status, seasonal closures, and information on the portion of the trail network currently designated for OHV use.