Paradise parcel closed while overgrown views are reopened

For the month of February, cross-country skiers and snowshoers are being asked not to use a popular 20-plus-acre wooded area on the west side of Paradise Road.

The hillside parcel, approximately a third of a mile from the intersection of Paradise and Broad streets, is being selectively logged, primarily to reopen views that have grown in during the three decades the land has gone unthinned, according to owner Ted Chadbourne.

The parcel is located behind 10 homes that front on Paradise, Chadbourne said, between them and the Bethel Inn golf course.

Most recreationists access the parcel’s trails — cut by Chadbourne and now maintained by the Bethel Inn Nordic Center — from the inn’s 14th fairway.

Those trailheads will be roped off while the logging is in progress, Chadbourne said, but other skiers, snowshoers and nature lovers access the parcel from the large field off Paradise.

That side of the parcel will not be roped off while the logging is in progress, he said, but there will be a driveway plowed into the field, and evidence (including chip trucks) of active logging will be obvious. (See letter, page 2)

One of the reasons Chadbourne has opted to move ahead with the logging at this time, he said, is that exploratory efforts to study the feasibility of establishing a retirement community on the property have stalled.

He said he had been holding off on the cutting, in part, because if retirement residences were to be built there, it would have made sense to wait and shape any view lines to accommodate them.

Once ‘sublime views’

While the existing homes between the parcel and Paradise will have improved views when the logging is completed, the new sightlines will not be evident to walkers, cyclists and others using the popular road.

Unless, Chadbourne said, “they have a ladder or skyhook.”

Paradise Road already provides an abundant inventory of public views, in large part due to the efforts of landowners such as Chadbourne and his brother, Bob.

But those views are far less extensive than was the case in the late 19th Century, according to Randy Bennett, executive director of the Bethel Historical Society.

“‘Paradise’ was named by the Rev. Starr King in the 1850s because of the sublime views from it toward the surrounding mountains (it was 360 degrees from the top) and the picturesque views of Bethel Hill and Mayville villages,” Bennett said.

“So open was the view that the artist who sketched the buildings in the 1878 ‘Bird’s Eye View’ of Bethel probably situated himself on Paradise to get the streetscape angles correct.

“The three tall steeples in this village -- Congregational, Universalist and Methodist (original church, not the present one), plus the Second Congregational Church in Mayville -- would have stood out plainly.”

Looking from near the site of the present Bethel Fire Station toward the open fields of Paradise, and beyond to Mt. Abram.