Every other trail system in town treats dogs as a fact of life. The town's own ordinance spells out exactly when a dog can be off leash at Bisceglie-Scribner's trails, at Keene Park, and at Morehouse Farm Park. It is a rulebook built around the assumption that dogs belong on Weston's public land, with hours attached to make that coexistence work.
Then there is Devil's Den, 1,746 acres of forest, wetland and rock ledge that starts a few miles from Weston Center and dwarfs every other protected acre in town. No dogs. Not on a leash, not during off hours, not ever. No bikes either. It is the one place in Weston where the town's careful, time-of-day logic about shared use simply does not apply, because Devil's Den is not town land. It belongs to The Nature Conservancy, and the Conservancy runs it by a different set of priorities than Weston's parks department does. That difference in rules is not a footnote. It is the reason the preserve still looks the way it does after sixty years while the acreage around it filled in with ball fields, driveways and mowed lawns.
The rules nobody else in town follows
Weston's animal ordinance, laid out in Chapter 12 of the town code, treats most public land as negotiable. Dogs can be off leash on Scribner and Bisceglie trails before 9 a.m. year round, and before 2 p.m. on weekdays from September to June. Keene Park has its own window, open to dogs from July through the start of November. Morehouse Farm Park and the town's playing fields get their own carve-outs too. Read the whole chapter and what you find is not a ban. It is a schedule, written by people trying to let dog owners and everyone else share the same ball fields and picnic tables without getting in each other's way.
The Nature Conservancy did not write a schedule for Devil's Den. It wrote a line. No pets, no bikes, gates closed at sunset, full stop, no exceptions tied to season or time of day. That is a stricter standard than anything the town itself applies to its own land, and it is worth sitting with why a private conservation group would hold a tighter line than the municipality does. The answer has to do with what the preserve is actually managing for, which has less to do with recreation and more to do with keeping 1,746 contiguous acres functioning as one unbroken block of forest interior, the kind of habitat that only exists when nothing fragments it.
Sixty years because one woman kept buying land
The preserve exists because Katharine Ordway, a longtime Weston resident then in her fifties, began buying land here in 1966. Her first purchase was 1,100 acres from the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company, and she kept adding parcels through 1968 until the tract reached its current footprint. The name honors her father, Lucius Pond Ordway, whose estate she had inherited a share of after his death in 1948. She went on to become one of the largest private funders of land conservation in the country, and this particular stretch of Weston and Redding stayed personal to her until the end. Her ashes were scattered on a hill inside the preserve, at the spot she liked best in October when the foliage peaked, and a boulder ringed with mountain laurel now carries a plaque with her name.
That history matters for a practical reason. A preserve assembled parcel by parcel by one committed buyer, then handed to a conservation organization with its own visitor rules, does not answer to the same pressures that shape a town park. The Nature Conservancy has managed it as one of its flagship Connecticut holdings for decades, and the no-dogs, no-bikes standard is part of how it has kept 1,746 acres reading as forest interior rather than a patchwork of trailside clearings. Archaeological evidence suggests people were hunting on this land as far back as five thousand years ago, and the remains of an old up-and-down sawmill still sit below Godfrey Pond from a later era of lumbering and charcoal burning. The preserve has absorbed a lot of human use over a very long stretch of time. The current rules are simply the version built for keeping it intact through the next stretch.
The closure you need to plan around this fall
The tradeoff for that intact forest shows up every November. The Nature Conservancy has run a controlled deer hunt inside Devil's Den every fall since 2001, closing the preserve to visitors on a set of weekday blocks across late November and early December. The reasoning is specific: deer density across southwestern Connecticut has been high enough for long enough that it damages the forest understory, slows tree regeneration and thins out native flowering plants that need a lower deer population to survive. The Conservancy brings in experienced hunters who work only in the preserve's interior, away from any bordering property, and posts signage at every public entrance well ahead of each closure.
Last fall's schedule, confirmed by Patch, closed the preserve on these dates:
- November 19 and 20
- November 24, 25 and 26
- December 1 through 4
- December 8 and 9
Eleven days total, spread across four blocks, every one of them a weekday. That pattern has held for years. As of this writing in late August, The Nature Conservancy has not yet posted the 2026 dates, which typically get announced by early-to-mid November through signage at the preserve and coverage from local outlets. Whatever the exact dates turn out to be this year, the shape will almost certainly match: weekday closures only, concentrated between mid-November and the second week of December, never touching a weekend. If a Saturday hike is the plan, the hunt will not interfere with it. If a weekday visit is the goal, it is worth checking the posted schedule before making the drive.
What the trail actually looks like right now
The main loop through Devil's Den runs about 7.4 miles with roughly 777 feet of elevation gain, a three to three-and-a-half hour hike that most people rate as moderate rather than difficult. Some hikers clock the full loop closer to eight miles depending on which spurs they take. Recent reviews describe well-built stream crossings and sturdy overpasses at the water crossings, along with sections of overgrowth the farther you get from the parking area, especially past the first mile and a half. Biting flies show up as a recurring complaint in warmer months, which makes an early fall visit, once the heat breaks but before the November closures start, a reasonable window to aim for.
The preserve closes at sunset every day, no seasonal extension, so a late-afternoon start in October needs to account for how early the light goes. Parking is limited, particularly at the lot on the south side off Pent Road, and it fills on clear weekend mornings. The entrance sits at 33 Pent Road, reached from the Merritt Parkway by taking Exit 42 onto Route 57 north for about three miles before turning onto Pent Road. A trail map at the kiosk is worth grabbing before setting out. Several visitors over the years have noted getting turned around inside the preserve without one, and 1,746 acres offers plenty of room to lose your bearings.
If you're bringing the dog somewhere else
None of this makes Devil's Den a bad plan for a fall weekend. It makes it a specific one, suited to a hike without the leash and without the bike rack. For the days when the dog is coming along, Weston's own parks stay the better bet. Bisceglie-Scribner Park has a swimming pond, picnic areas and the Kiwanis Fitness Trail, all governed by the town's own leash-law hours rather than an outright ban. Morehouse Farm Park offers the same kind of accommodation for anyone whose fall plans include both a hike and a dog that expects to come. The town's parks and nature page lays out both properties alongside the rest of what Weston maintains for public use.
Knowing which preserve plays by which rules is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that only comes from actually spending time in a town rather than reading about it. Weston rewards that kind of attention, in its trail system and in everything else that makes daily life here work. If you're weighing a move to a town where a sixty-year-old land gift still shapes how a Saturday goes, or you're already here and thinking about what comes next for your own property, Barbara Sweeney Homes knows this ground well enough to talk through both. Reach out to schedule a free consultation whenever the timing is right for you.
