Chaumont Barrens Preserve is one of the last and finest examples of alvar grasslands in the world. It is a link in the chain of North American alvars forming an arc from Jefferson County through Ontario, and all the way to northern Michigan.
Learn more about this and all of Chaumont Barrens’ wonders, including its globally rare plant community, via the tabs above.
CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC
Closed to visitation during hunting season (10/21/2023-12/3/2023)
From I-81, take exit 46 (Coffeen Street) near Watertown.
The trail at Chaumont Barrens is open dawn to dusk from early spring until early fall. Opening and closing dates depend on the annual flooding cycle and whitetail deer season. For your safety and the protection of the fragile soils and rare plants, please respect closure periods indicated on the parking lot sign and remain within the established trail corridor when open.
NOTE: The preserve is closed to the public during hunting season (10/21/2023-12/3/2023)
Animals: Chaumont Barrens supports a wide range of wildlife, including porcupine, coyote, prairie warbler, clay-colored sparrow, scarlet tanager, golden-winged warbler, upland sandpiper, eastern towhee, whip-poor-will, common yellowthroat, black and white warbler, and cedar waxwing.
Plants: In spring, peaking around mid-June, visitors can enjoy a diverse succession of native wildflowers in bloom, especially prairie smoke, which can be seen nowhere else in the northeast. Many other plants make Chaumont Barrens their home: prairie smoke, blue phlox, bloodroot, balsam ragwort, yellow lady’s slipper, ram’s head, early buttercup, reindeer lichen, white cedar, white spruce, and white pine.
Chaumont Barrens is closed to the public during hunting season (Sept 27 – Dec 12). Written permission is required to hunt on Conservancy lands. To learn more about our hunting program or to obtain permission to hunt, please visit our New York hunting information page.
Explore all that Chaumont Barrens has to offer on a self-guided, 1.7-mile trail. Note that the trail is uneven in spots. Use sturdy footwear and please watch your step!
Chaumont Barrens is located in Jefferson, New York, within the Alvar Barrens and Grasslands Priority Conservation Landscape. We encourage visitors to leave no trace and carry out what you carry in. See our full preserve visitation guidelines for more information.
Please note, collection or removal of plants, insects, wildlife, fossils, etc. is not allowed. Visitation and access are limited to the primary trail system; other parts of the preserve may be traversed for research purposes if pre-approved by The Nature Conservancy. Please contact our Pulaski or Rochester offices for research and/or collection permit applications.
Alvar barrens are highly unique, prairie-like landscapes that rest atop a foundation of limestone bedrock. Scientists disagree on the reason there is so little soil on alvars—they may have been swept away during a cataclysmic drainage of glacial waters, or swallowed up by abundant fissures in the limestone.
In any case, what remains is a flat rocky terrain of grasslands, limestone woodlands, cedar forests, pavement barrens and globally rare plant communities. Alvar communities are adapted to survive extreme conditions: shallow soils, regular spring flooding, and summer drought.
This particular landscape developed after the last glacier retreated from this area some 10,000 years ago. Meltwater pummeled the landscape, cutting deep fissures into the bedrock. Over time, a striking, linear pattern of vegetation – including many prairie-type plants that are rare in New York – grew on this shallow soil. The resulting vegetation mosaic includes fossilized bedrock, deep fissures, rubbly moss gardens, and patches of woods, shrub savannas, and open grasslands.
The bedrock found throughout Chaumont Barrens is about 450 million years old. Scientists say that at that time, Chaumont was at the bottom of a shallow tropical sea near the equator.
If you look closely, you can find the remains of primitive marine animals, such as cephalopods, that lived in the ocean. These creatures were the top predator of the marine food chain and are related to the modern-day squid and octopus.
The Nature Conservancy owns nearly 1,500 preserves covering more than 2.5 million acres across all 50 states. These lands protect wildlife and natural systems, serve as living laboratories for innovative science and connect people to the natural world.
