“The ABCs of Newtown” is a series tying each letter of the alphabet to something in Newtown. This week we continue with a look at the open space available to Newtown’s residents and visitors.

One-fifth of Newtown’s 38,644 acres is open space. This is land available for walking or hiking, sometimes with dogs, maybe horseback riding, bicycling, canoeing or kayaking, fishing, picnics, or just enjoying the scenery. It’s land that is available for passive use by the public.

The Town of Newtown has approximately 3,000 acres of open space, according to Deputy Director of Land Use Steve Maguire.

Maguire points out “open space” can mean many different things.

“There’s real property ownership, which falls into town-owned open space, and there’s private associations, like Newtown Forest Association, the private land trust that preserves open spaces,” he explained. “There are also private land trusts, like The Nature Conservancy, and even Northeast Utilities, which is a subset of CL&P back in the day.”

Newtown Forest Association owns 1,450-1,500 acres, according to Executive Director Trent McCann.

“We divide our properties into public open space — places that have trails, a kayak launch, or fishing access, things like that — which is the majority of our property, versus our ‘forever wild’ sites,” McCann said. The latter, he explained, “are really more for the intrinsic benefits of nature itself, where we’re not necessarily inviting people to come in.”

Combined, that means just over 12 percent of Newtown’s roughly 36,900 acres are open space.

Beyond that, however, the State of Connecticut has another 3,000 acres of open space thanks to the Upper and Lower Paugussett State Forest locations “and various state properties,” Maguire pointed out.

Additionally, there are “about 400 acres of these smaller Nature Conservancy and random private properties” in town, bringing the grand total to “roughly 8,000 preserved acres, or 20 percent of the town right now” that is considered open space, he said.

Open space owned by the town is generally open to the public, Maguire said. Most of the open space owned by the town has been acquired by donation or the subdivision process.

“You’ll usually see an open space piece of land stuck into nearly every subdivision,” he said. “You’ll have a little tract of land going through.”

The public has the right to access that land, even if it isn’t easy to access or the most inviting.

Thanks to the Open Space Conservation Subdivision, some of the work-arounds for open space have been eliminated. At least 50 percent of land is now required to be donated by a developer as open space, Maguire said. The developer is granted a “little bit of a density bonus,” he said, while in turn the Town receives a larger tract of open space.

“It helps with the conservation component and it gives more viable, larger tracts of land, as opposed to these little pockets that are stuck in between houses with these little access strips,” he added.

The two entities are not connected — “We are two entirely different agencies,” Maguire said at one point — but they do complement each other.

“I think we’re definitely above average than a lot of other surrounding areas in the percentage of land available here as open space,” Maguire said. “A lot of thanks goes to Newtown Forest Association and being such an established land trust.”

NFA is the oldest land trust in the state.

“I think Newtown has a lot of conserved land, especially for the size of the town,” he said. “We’re the fifth largest town, area-wise, in the state.”

NFA is also the largest private landowner in town. It is in the midst of a campaign to add another 60-plus acres of pristine land at Deep Brook Farm to its holdings.

The property, separated into two continuous parcels at 32 and 21 Deep Brook Road, would directly connect to the already existing municipal Dickinson Park, creating a vast open corridor for both hikers and ecologically sensitive wildlife alike.

Each gentleman has their favorite location in town. McCann said Cherry Grove Farm Preserve is “a place absolutely worth exploring.” One of the most recent acquisitions by NFA, the 45.8-acre parcel “is a piece of land that absolutely tells a story, and is at all different stages of their natural reclamation,” he said. Visitors can see remnants of a gravel quarry alongside the former working farm.

“It’s a very unique, cool place,” he said. “No matter how many times you go there you can take a different route and explore a different pocket of it. It’s definitely a property I’m glad NFA was able to preserve.”

For Maguire, who can easily access and enjoy the walking trails of Fairfield Hills by taking a few steps from his office, there’s a hidden gem of open space he likes to visit on occasion. A small tract along Hemlock Road, along Pootatuck River, “a hidden little tract along there offers good fishing and it’s this quiet little recluse that’s tucked down the hillside.

“It’s a little over an acre and a half and it’s this cool little place.”

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.