On Valentine’s Day in 2024, a small group of activists trudged through the snow to a high chain-link fence surrounding hundreds of acres of woods in Bridgeport. In their arms, they carried thousands of handwritten cards pasted onto large paper hearts: love letters to the forest that for decades had been cordoned off from the rest of the city.One of the activists, Jhoni Ada, said she remembered first catching a glimpse of the woods while passing by on the school bus. Throughout high school, she said, the trip became a daily respite, the sight of the greenery soothing. Later, she became an organizer with the Sierra Club’s local chapter.“My eyes would be glued to the trees as they were whizzing by,” Ada said. “I remember just thinking: this is definitely not for public access, because I never really saw anyone walking around.”The property, Remington Woods, was used for decades as a testing ground for munitions developed by the Union Metallic Cartridge Company and, later, Remington Arms. After Remington closed its last manufacturing facility in Bridgeport in 1986, the property underwent a decades-long cleanup effort overseen by a successor to Remington’s former parent company, DuPont.
That effort, now nearing its end, is giving way to plans to preserve large portions of Remington Woods for public use — which advocates are hailing as one of the largest such conservation efforts along the heavily urbanized East Coast in nearly a century.
