Wantagh Nature Trail: A hidden gem for hikers

The landscape along Merrick Road west of Wantagh Parkway is the familiar cavalcade of modern Long Island.

Pizzeria, yoga studio, 7-Eleven, Dunkin' Donuts, deli . . . .

Then soft meadows, maple trees golden with autumn, geese and blue herons alighting on a tranquil lake.

A moment later: tanning salon, day spa, law office, auto body shop.

Wait a minute: Was that tantalizing glimpse of nature a hallucination?

It was not.

The brief Brigadoon-like vision is actually a window into a place of substance and significance: Mill Pond Park, 54 acres of Nassau County parkland that extends north to Sunrise Highway, across which is the equally bucolic 58-acre Town of Hempstead preserve, Twin Lakes.

The two are connected by the first "new" hiking trail in Nassau County in 25 years - the 3.6-mile-long Wantagh Nature Trail.

"It truly is a hidden treasure," says Richard Schary of Bellmore, a board member of the Long Island Greenbelt Trail Conference, who, along with his wife, Lisa, a fellow board member, spearheaded the blazing of the trail and the cleanup of the green spaces around it. It's been open for five years but remains a largely hidden gem.

The Greenbelt group is known for its hikes in more open areas, including the Pine Barrens. But "not every trail has to be wilderness," says vice president Tom Casey. On the Wantagh trail, "you can look in one direction and see the suburbs and look in another direction and see a different world."

The group's long-range goal is to incorporate the Wantagh Nature Trail into a larger network of hiking paths from Northern State Parkway down Wantagh Parkway to Jones Beach.

A hike on the trail opens a window to the natural world and reveals layers of Long Island's history - some of which you can literally trip over.

Sites of early mills

On a cold October afternoon, the Scharys guide a visitor along the trail. From Merrick Road, at the main entrance to Mill Pond Park, we head north, skirting the western end of the pond along the 3-foot-wide trail that's marked by white blazes on the trees.

"Turn around," Schary says, a short distance in. "What do you see?"

Already, the strip malls, traffic and other sights and sounds of suburbia have vanished. We're in the woods and surrounded by water: rivulets trickling under the leaves or meandering off into the underbrush.

Mill Pond and Twin Lakes are part of Long Island's natural drainage system - the network of creeks, streams, lakes and ponds that run south from the mid-Island moraine to the bays and ocean, and that once helped make Long Island such a fertile farming area.

Historians believe the first mills in what is now Wantagh were established in the early 1800s. An 1873 map of this area - then called Ridgewood Station - shows Mill Pond under the name Jones Pond, presumably because one J.S.S. Jones lived on Merrick Road just to the west.

The map indicates a grist mill on the south side of the road (near the site of the current 7-Eleven), and another mill is shown further north, near the Twin Lakes, on what is today Old Mill Road. According to a 1980 article in the Nassau County Historical Society Journal, the mill probably began operations in 1820. (Across the street from the mill's site, and now marked with a historic plaque, is the 1794 house of Revolutionary War soldier Benjamin Birdsall. But historians aren't certain if he had any link with the mill.)

Such mills were common in mid-19th-century Long Island. There were mills all along the south and north shores, says Nassau County historian Edward Smits. "Local farmers were raising grains. They'd have it milled, some for their own use and some to sell."

By World War I the mills were gone; by the 1950s so were most of the farmers.

The Mill Pond-Twin Lakes corridor survived, in part because of its proximity to the Wantagh Parkway, the route to Jones Beach constructed by Robert Moses in time for the state park's opening in 1929. "It was part of Moses' design," Smits said. "Most of the north-south parkways in Nassau follow the same route as the natural waterways."

Pump house patrols

The trail veers west, and suddenly we're stepping over large rusted pipes running along the ground. We follow these to a graffiti-covered stone cottage, a site littered with a pile of empty beer cans.

"It's a problem," Schary says of the site's attraction to loiterers. "But the cops have been good. They patrol here regularly, and it's a lot better than when we first started hiking back here."

The pipes and the cottage - actually, a pump house - are remnants of the 19th-century network that transported water from the streams and ponds of Long Island to Brooklyn.

When the fathers of what was then a separate city of 400,000 became concerned about a reliable water supply, they looked east. An 1867 report by the Brooklyn Water Co. said the surest source of clean water would be "the supply from the pure and never-failing [Long] island streams." The original conduit, complete with steam-powered pump stations, ran east along the South Shore from Brooklyn to Hempstead Lake. An 8-foot-wide pipeline delivered 20 million gallons of water a day. It was later extended further east and included Mill Pond and its pump house. According to Smits, the water works were active well into the 20th century, as a backup supply for Brooklyn. 

Twin Lakes and its ghosts

Hikers emerge from nature at Sunrise Highway, which must be crossed to get to Twin Lakes. (Fortunately, there is a stoplight at the intersection with Old Mill Road and Lakeview Road.) On the north side we cross into the preserve, where the verdant surroundings are clear of discarded cans and empty wrappers. "The Town of Hempstead has done a great job back here," Schary says.

He again steers his visitor to a particularly good vantage point and says, "Look!" A tranquil lake is framed by trees, a bucolic setting worthy of an oil painting. "You can't believe you're on Long Island here, right?"

Actually we can - Long Island circa 1873.

There are fish in these lakes, and in warmer weather you'll see anglers here, casting for trout, pickerel or bass. (A state Department of Environmental Conservation license is required).

Osprey, snowy egrets and blue herons are commonly seen here, too, as are turtles of various sizes and varieties.

Now we veer east and again come face to face with modern Long Island: Here the trail runs parallel to the Wantagh Parkway, on the remnants of an old paved path constructed along with the parkway. We're several feet from the roadway, where cars zoom by. "They go so fast," Lisa Schary says. "And look at this curve."

Indeed, a sharp bend in the parkway lies ahead. The potential dangers of such a curve are evident a few feet further down the trailside, which is marked by the remains of makeshift memorials to victims of car accidents. There are flowers, candles, photos, teddy bears, some almost a decade old, others recent.

The trail then twists back into the woods and follows the descending path back to the entrance to Mill Pond to conclude our hike.

There, on Merrick Road, the occasional driver turns toward the park, with an expression of seeming surprise or curiosity. The existence of the trail seems to be a well-kept secret.

"The general reaction we get," says Lisa, "is . . . 'I never knew this existed!' "