This year, Sleeping Giant State Park turns 100 years old! Creating the park was not easy or quick. This is a dynamic story of early 20th century confliction priorities and hard-reached resolutions: destructive commercial interests, the public’s passion for preservation, and thorny legal battles. The cast includes neighboring businessmen, Yale scholars, captains of industry, and the Park Association’s founding members whose love for the Giant ultimately prevailed. This talk by Trina Mace Learned will follow twenty-five years of fascinating twists and turns that culminated in the beautiful park we love today.
Trina Mace Learned’s passion for Sleeping Giant State Park came out of a graduate photography course, taken at Wesleyan University during the pandemic. Weekly assigned hikes led to the discovery of structures in the west end of the park; curiosity led to a master’s thesis inspired by the origin of those buildings and the adjacent abandoned quarry. When not snapping pictures of the Giant, Trina is the Executive Director of Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, chairs the city’s Historic District Commission, and sits on the boards of the New Haven Museum and the Sleeping Giant Park Association.