Shape the Vision of Six Lakes

Your Future, Your Outdoors, Your Hamden

Thank you for your interest in shaping the future of Six Lakes Park/Olin Powder Farm. We need voices like yours to guide and inspire our community-driven vision.

The Six Lakes Park Coalition is calling for the restoration and conservation of Six Lakes/Olin Powder Farm as an act of restorative justice for southern Hamden and a park for the benefit of all. 

We’re hosting a series of community visioning sessions to discuss how the use of this space would best serve the neighborhood, conduct hands-on mapping, and open conversation with neighbors.  Refreshments will be served!

Visioning Sessions Dates & Times

To promote environmental justice and the participation of historically underrepresented communities, the first 100 registrants who live within the boundaries of any state-designated environmental justice block group in southern Hamden will receive $10 gift cards at the end of the full session they attend. You can check this map to see if you qualify (see light orange shading).

History of Six Lakes

Six Lakes is a 102.5-acre forested wetlands bordered by the Farmington Canal Rail Trail on the west, Treadwell Street on the north, and Putnam Avenue on the south. The property features mature forests, hiking paths, and six beautiful ponds. Home to more than 80 species of birds, as well as fish, turtles, small mammals, and deer, its diverse habitats include a cattail marsh, a red maple swamp, and a 150-year-old oak-pine forest as well as wetlands that connect to the Regional Water Authority’s Lake Whitney water supply.  

Also known as Olin Powder Farm, the Six Lakes property is owned by the Olin Corporation. Olin and its subsidiary, Winchester Arms, used the site for gunpowder storage and munitions testing. In 1986, the CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) ordered Olin to clean up industrial pollution on the property, a job that was only partially completed and has recently been restarted. Six Lakes is connected physically, hydrologically, and historically to the adjacent Newhall neighborhood, which underwent its own large-scale environmental cleanup by Olin beginning in the early 2000s, due to the advocacy efforts of community leaders.