Its features include the Lake Compounce Amusement Park (and its "non-ski lift"), "Tory Den", the "Mile of Ledges", colonial era cemeteries, several caves (including the "Indian Council Caves"), waterfalls, cliff faces, woodlands, swamps, lakes, river flood plains, farmland, historic sites, and the summits of Pine Mountain and Southington Mountain.

Site-specific activities enjoyed along the route include hunting, fishing, horseback riding, boating, bouldering, rock climbing (access), and swimming.

Views from the ledges include agrarian land, suburbs, small towns, river corridors, the eastern Berkshires and Metacomet ridgelines, and metropolitan Bristol.

The Tunxis Trail passes through land located within the following municipalities in Connecticut, from south to north: Southington, Wolcott, Bristol, Plymouth, (East Plymouth aka Terryville), Harwinton, Burlington, Canton, New Hartford, Barkhamsted, Hartland as well as Granville, Massachusetts[1][3] The Tunxis Trail follows the western wall of the geologic formation known as the Hartford Basin.

[4] The upper Connecticut and Farmington River valleys were the lands of the Native American indigenous people called the Massaco, a sub-tribe of the Tunxis, who were affiliated with the Wappinger.

The name Tunxis, a word in the Quiripi family of Eastern Algonquian languages, derives from the indigenous term Wuttunkshau for "the point where the river bends".

[5] When Europeans first arrived, the "Tunxis Sepus" territory consisted of a 165-mile square area bounded by Simsbury to the North, Wallingford to the South, to the northwest by Mohawk country, and on the east by the current towns of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield.

• The locations of several British "loyalist" families are near the southern terminus of the White Dot Trail in Terryville (Plymouth) and Harwinton, such as the former homestead of Stephen Graves.

• The Tory Den, a boulder cave located to the west of the "Miles of Ledges" on the border of Terryville (Plymouth) and Burlington, was a hiding place for Loyalists during the American Revolution.

• "Satan's Kingdom", north of Nepaug State Forest, was considered a territory of rogues and unsavory elements during the colonial American era.

[9] Extensive flooding in ponds, puddles and streams may occur in the late winter or early spring, overflowing into the trail and causing very muddy conditions.