As friends and I neared the 950-summit of Talcott Mountain in Simsbury the other day, we could see the red roof of a cupola poking above the pines. Each step higher revealed more of the castle-like structure: gabled-roof peaks, arched windows on a brass overhang, and finally, white stucco walls rising from a fieldstone base.

Andy Lynn, Phil Plouffe and I issued a collective “Wow!”

We had reached one of Connecticut’s most distinctive structures, the 165-foot-tall Heublein Tower.

Gilbert F. Heublein, a German immigrant who made his fortune distributing Smirnoff vodka and A.1. sauce, constructed the tower in 1914 to fulfill a promise to his fiancée, later his wife, Louise, that he would build her a “castle on the mountain.”

What a promise! Built with reinforced concrete and foot-thick iron girders that were anchored into bedrock to withstand 100-mph winds, the six-story tower contained luxurious bedrooms on each floor and a penthouse ballroom, where the Heubleins held lavish parties and entertained house guests.

The tower now is a high point, literally and figuratively, for hikers along the Metacomet Ridge, a 200-million-year-old traprock upthrust that extends from Long Island Sound to the Vermont border. Here in the Nutmeg State, it is often called “the spine of Connecticut.”

We began our hike near the Summit Ridge Drive entrance to Talcott Mountain State Park off Route 185. Although the park is open year-round, a metal bar blocks cars from reaching a parking lot near the end of Summit Ridge Drive during winter months, so we parked on the side of the access road and walked a few hundred feet uphill to the trailhead.

Rather than start hiking on the blazed Tower Trail, though, we continued a short distance to the end of Summit Ridge Drive, and entered an unmarked but well-tramped path just left of a Life Star helicopter pad.

This route rose steeply and then hugged the lip of a sheer cliff, offering an expansive vista of the Farmington River Valley far below. Although impressive, the view includes roads, housing subdivisions and commercial buildings – much less pristine than the unbroken swaths of forest seen from other high points in Connecticut.

No matter. Soon, we rejoined the wide, smooth Tower Trail, looped around Heublein’s monumental edifice, and then veered onto the single-track, rocky Metacomet Trail. Lush corridors of mountain laurel soon enveloped us, and we passed clusters of white pine and red cedars.

This winding trail also led us along ridges with sweeping views of the river valley before reconnecting with the parking lot to complete a 3.5-mile loop.

“Such a long way to go for such a short hike,” I said. We had driven an hour north from New London. “You guys want to find another trail nearby?”

Andy and Phil agreed, and we were in luck: a map showed that 787-acre Penwood State Park beckoned directly across the street. It took us less than five minutes to drive to a parking lot on the east side of Route 185 and start a second hike.

We followed a long, dirt road past Gale Pond for more than half a mile before realizing we missed an intersection of the Metacomet Trail, so we turned around, retraced our steps, and soon resumed following blue blazes on this narrow, hilly footpath, and then returned to the parking lot via an asphalt path built nearly a century earlier.

Like much of Talcott Mountain across the street, this parcel had been privately owned before becoming a state park.

Curtis H. Veeder, an inventor, industrialist and active outdoorsman of Dutch heritage, blazed many of the trails on his sprawling, mountain property in the 1930s. He called the estate Penwood – “veeder” means “pen” in Dutch.

After Veeder died in 1944, his widow, Louise, donated his land to the state for a park, fulfilling his wish that it “be kept in a natural state so that those who love nature may enjoy this property as I have enjoyed it.” A small kettle bog near the middle of Penwood State Park is named Lake Louise in her honor.

Across the street, Heublein’s estate also was changing hands about the same time.

After Heublein died in 1937, his grandson, John G. Martin, sold the tower and surrounding property to the Hartford Times, then a leading Connecticut newspaper. The paper hosted gala parties in what became known as Times Tower; guests included two future presidents, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and actor Ronald Reagan, as well as architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

When the newspaper’s plan to open a broadcast studio for its radio station in the tower fell through, the Times sold the building and 450 acres to developers hoping to build houses and apartment buildings. This prompted neighbors to form a group called Save Talcott Mountain, which eventually persuaded the state to buy the property in 1966.

The tower is open at various hours from late May until Labor Day, when the public can tour the interior and climb stairs to an observation deck.

Phil, Andy and I were able to peek in the windows, but will have to wait a few months to climb the tower.

We hiked for another couple hours across the street in Penwood, bringing the day’s total to about seven miles and nearly 1,000 feet of elevation gain, before it was time to head home.

The drive was worth it, we agreed.

More information about both parks is available at deep.stateparks@ct.gov; (860) 242-1158.

Information also is available from Friends of Heublein Tower, a non-profit preservation society, by emailing info@friendsofheubleintower.org, or calling (860) 242-1158.