Porter West Preserve — Attraction in Bloomington

Right now (June 2025), the preserve is still recovering from the high-wind storms during spring. All pathways are, at some point, inaccessible due to fallen branches, fallen trees, and overgrowth (poison ivy, bramble, and ticks). One fallen tree even took the ground of the pathway with it! Whichever path you take, you’ll eventually have to turn around. And the fun hilly path in the northeast area is totally blocked off.

On top of that, mosquitos are swarming like crazy right now. I could hardly hear the birds and frogs over the roar of mosquitos flying around my head. And I was using a pretty powerful bug spray, too.

If you’re planning to hike here, I recommend Griffy instead. The environment is pretty similar, the trails are accessible, and there are far fewer mosquitos. The only downside is there are more people there.

Porter West still has some benefits -great nature smells you can’t even get at Griffy -the loud frogs are incredible! -outside of town, so there’s fewer people to share the trail with

For me, these benefits are FAR outweighed by current issues. The only reason I can imagine someone preferring Porter West over other hiking areas is if they live...

It was OK. The cemetery is close to the parking lot. It was interesting and very old. Good place to do grave rubbings. The rest of the trail was kinda meh. No bad. Good place to take kids. Fairly easy. I'd say it was about 2 miles if you take the main loop?

It was maintained well. It just wasn't the prettiest place around here to hike but worth going once just to go somewhere new for a crubbing.

I would imagine there are a lot of mosquitoes in the summer.

I do wish there were some sort of historical information markers, it seems like there used to be a quite old structure at one point. Or some history on...

I used to enjoy hiking here, but the trail has been in complete disarray this summer. I hiked here a few weeks ago and it was completely overgrown. I thought it was a fluke and went back again today. I should have brought a machete - those responsible for trail maintenance are clearly not doing their job. If I want to roll around in tick, chigger, and poison ivy infested wilderness, I can just go to my backwoods. This is unacceptable. I'm adding some random pictures of...