West Newbury, Massachusetts

Total Acres: 20

Year Conserved: 1999

Property Description

This property offers a 5-mile loop linking Greenbelt's Indian Hill Farm, Pike's Bridge Road, Dew Meadow, Currier Meadow and Ordway Properties.

Special Features:

This trail will take you on a tour of five Greenbelt properties, offering some outstanding scenery and high quality wildlife habitat. Starting at the 21-acre Indian Hill Farm Reservation, conserved in 2008, you will find spectacular views, a varied terrain and an exceptional combination of natural communities, including mature hardwood stands with towering oak and maples, open fields full of grassland birds and wildflowers, and beautiful, hand-crafted stone walls along the field edges and in the woods.

Please make note of private land crossing     

Get Out and Run (Or Hike or Walk)

About 5 miles.

Take the trail up hill from the parking lot at Indian Hill Farm Reservation. At the top of the hill, go straight or left. Either way, you will eventually loop back to the same trail you started on. Back at the parking area, cross Indian Hill Street to the Atherton Trail Connector. This trail takes you across private land owned by the Atherton and Currier families, who donated conservation restrictions on this land to Greenbelt. This trail section through field and woods is popular with horse riders and is excellent for hiking.

Turn right onto Pike's Bridge Road, an abandoned gravel road that connects Garden Street to Turkey Hill Road that has changed little since Colonial times. This section is a well-known birding spot, and is great for viewing spring migrants such as warblers. Pike's Bridge Road also offers spectacular views of the Artichoke River and adjacent wetlands. As you approach Turkey Hill Road, you will pass Greenbelt's Atherton Field, Dew Meadow and Currier Meadow parcels.

Turn right onto Turkey Hill Road. You are a short distance from the 55-acre Ordway Reservation. If you turn left into Ordway Reservation, you can explore a well-marked loop trail that passes through open fields, hardwood stands and alongside freshwater wetlands. Watch closely for white-tailed deer and turkeys as you pass the old apple trees and stone walls that are remnants of this property's agricultural past. Return to Turkey Hill Road; continue on to South Street and then back to Indian Hill Street, where you will make and easy descent back to the Indian Hill parking lot.

Parking

Park in the small lot at the entrance to the property on Indian Hill Street. Parking is limited to four cars.

Directions

From Route 95 northbound:

Take exit 56, Scotland Road. Turn left off the exit ramp. Travel 0.4 mile and turn right onto Indian Hill Street. The property is located 0.9 mile on the left-and side of the street.