|
|
|
There are many beautiful spots in Plymouth where you can walk, picnic and enjoy nature.
Billington Street Park
20 Billington St.
This park area is a continuation of the nature trail that follows Town Brook westerly. This site had a succession of mills that produced anchors, tacks and nails from 1790 to 1960. There are picnic tables and a covered footbridge located here.
Brewster Gardens
Entrance at corner of Water and Leyden Streets
This pleasant and peaceful park is located at the mouth of Town Brook on the waterfront. It encompasses the original garden plot that was granted to Elder William Brewster in 1620. The Pilgrims settled here because of the abundant availability of fresh water of Town Brook and the many springs as well as the thatch that grew along the edges that would provide necessary roofing material for houses. Today, Brewster Gardens links the waterfront and the downtown business district and forms the beginning of the park lands and trails that follow Town Brook inland to its headwaters at Billington Sea in Morton Park.
Center Hill Preserve
Located along both sides of Center Hill Road in southeast Plymouth
The 78-acre preserve includes 2,600 feet of frontage on Cape Cod Bay, extensive dunes, coastal woodland, a portion of Center Hill Pond, dramatic bluffs that provide spectacular views of Cape Cod Bay and a large tract of upland forest. The property was acquired by the Town of Plymouth through the Community Preservation Committee with the assistance of the Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Mass. Parking areas on Center Hill Road contain information and maps of the trails.
Depot Park
9 North Park Ave.
This ornamental park was a gift from the Old Colony Railroad in 1924. Although the trains, depot and hotel have long since gone, the park still offers a pleasant welcome to visitors today.
Eel River Headwaters Preserve
At the corner of Boot Pond Road and Long Pond Road
The land consists of 35 acres of cranberry bogs and upland that were purchased by the Town’s Community Preservation Committee in 2005. The site is being restored to its original, natural state: an endangered Atlantic White Cedar Wetlands, which is of ecological and global importance. The preserve includes walking trails that link with the existing trails at the Russell Mill Pond Preserve across the street.
Ellisville Harbor State Park
Ellisville Harbor offers great views and the opportunity to walk, bird watch, swim and sightsee. Ellisville is located south of Plymouth Center – take Route 3A south through Manomet and the park will be about 5-1/2 miles farther down 3A on your left. Free parking is available; there are no lifeguards or restroom facilities.
There are many beautiful spots in Plymouth where you can walk, picnic and enjoy nature.
Billington Street Park
20 Billington St.
This park area is a continuation of the nature trail that follows Town Brook westerly. This site had a succession of mills that produced anchors, tacks and nails from 1790 to 1960. There are picnic tables and a covered footbridge located here.
Brewster Gardens
Entrance at corner of Water and Leyden Streets
This pleasant and peaceful park is located at the mouth of Town Brook on the waterfront. It encompasses the original garden plot that was granted to Elder William Brewster in 1620. The Pilgrims settled here because of the abundant availability of fresh water of Town Brook and the many springs as well as the thatch that grew along the edges that would provide necessary roofing material for houses. Today, Brewster Gardens links the waterfront and the downtown business district and forms the beginning of the park lands and trails that follow Town Brook inland to its headwaters at Billington Sea in Morton Park.
Center Hill Preserve
Located along both sides of Center Hill Road in southeast Plymouth
The 78-acre preserve includes 2,600 feet of frontage on Cape Cod Bay, extensive dunes, coastal woodland, a portion of Center Hill Pond, dramatic bluffs that provide spectacular views of Cape Cod Bay and a large tract of upland forest. The property was acquired by the Town of Plymouth through the Community Preservation Committee with the assistance of the Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Mass. Parking areas on Center Hill Road contain information and maps of the trails.
Depot Park
9 North Park Ave.
This ornamental park was a gift from the Old Colony Railroad in 1924. Although the trains, depot and hotel have long since gone, the park still offers a pleasant welcome to visitors today.
Eel River Headwaters Preserve
At the corner of Boot Pond Road and Long Pond Road
The land consists of 35 acres of cranberry bogs and upland that were purchased by the Town’s Community Preservation Committee in 2005. The site is being restored to its original, natural state: an endangered Atlantic White Cedar Wetlands, which is of ecological and global importance. The preserve includes walking trails that link with the existing trails at the Russell Mill Pond Preserve across the street.
Ellisville Harbor State Park
Ellisville Harbor offers great views and the opportunity to walk, bird watch, swim and sightsee. Ellisville is located south of Plymouth Center – take Route 3A south through Manomet and the park will be about 5-1/2 miles farther down 3A on your left. Free parking is available; there are no lifeguards or restroom facilities.
Elmer Raymond Park
1138 Long Pond Road
Facilities include a nature trail, in addition to a baseball field, soccer field, two tennis courts, basketball court, and play structure area.
Fresh Pond Park
220 Bartlett Rd.
This small, quiet park located on the southern edge of Fresh Pond, is a popular spot for swimming and picnicking. Restroom facilities are available also. There is a Native American burial site located within the park’s boundaries that speaks to an earlier time in Plymouth’s history.
Holmes Reservation
Court Street in North Plymouth
An open, grassy field located on a busy thoroughfare in the heart of Plymouth — a treasured piece of open space in an otherwise developed city center. From the top of the field, visitors can take in distant views of Plymouth Harbor, Duxbury Beach, Clark’s Island, and Gurnet Point. Before the Revolutionary War, a section of the Reservation’s field was part of a famous “Muster Ground.” Plymouth farmers in the militia would gather here to practice shooting their muskets and marching in formation.
Jenney Pond Park (site of the Jenney Grist Mill)
Spring Lane, off Summer Street
This park continues westerly from Brewster Gardens following Town Brook and features a replica of the original John Jenney Grist Mill (c.1636). The large waterwheel still turns the grinding stone that produces flour at the mill. The adjacent park that includes Jenney Pond (Alms House Pond) was the site of Plymouth’s “poor house.” There are benches, picnic tables and a wooden bridge from which to enjoy the park. In the spring, herring can be seen going up the fish ladder by the Grist Mill on their way to Billington Sea to spawn.
Little Island Pond Conservation Area
260 Beaver Dam Road, adjacent to Manomet Recycling Facility
The 120-acre property encompasses most of Little Island Pond. The area has good hiking trails, varied wildlife and good fishing. Limited parking is available.
Morton Park
Main entrance: Summer Street; rear entrance: Billington Street
Plymouth’s largest park area encompassing approximately 200 acres of forest and shoreline on Little Pond (43 acres) and Billington Sea (269 acres). Swimming, beaches, picnic areas, seasonal restroom and food concession facilities, approximately 2-1/2 miles of footpaths, and 4 miles of gravel roads to enjoy. Each season brings its own beauty to the woods and waters of Morton Park.
Myles Standish State Forest
The largest publicly owned recreation area in the region at nearly 15,000 acres, the park includes 16 ponds. Fifteen miles of bicycle trails, 35 miles of equestrian trails and 13 miles of hiking trails take visitors deep into the forest, which includes one of the largest contiguous pitch pine/scrub oak communities north of Long Island. The park’s main entrance is on Cranberry Road in Carver. The east entrance is on Long Pond Road in Plymouth.
Nelson Park
The park is currently closed due to major construction.
Located at the north end of Water Street, Nelson Park offers a beautiful place to walk at low tide or to take photographs of Plymouth Bay. When construction is complete, the park will include improved drainage, a play structure and a splash pad, which is a rubberized recreation pad on which children can play in water.
Russell - Sawmill Ponds Conservation Area
Located at the end of Bourne Street via a short gravel road on the right.
A 64-acre park, with a stream, ponds and trails through the valleys and hills, makes for interesting hiking, picnicking and fishing. Gravel packed parking is on-site.
Russell Mills Pond Conservation Area
Long Pond Road between Boot Pond Road and Gunners Exchange Road
A 130-acre property that includes Sawmill Pond, a majority of the upper Russell Mill Pond, woodlands and the headwaters of the Eel River.
Town Brook Nature Trail
From Brewster Gardens on the waterfront to Holmes Playground
This trail was originally a portion of a Native American path (Namassakeeset Trail) that followed Town Brook. This bountiful stream became the life thread of the Pilgrims from the very earliest days of their arrival on the Mayflower. Several dams were built along the brook’s 1-1/2 mile course to harness the water power to drive machines that produced anchors, tacks, nails, shovels and textiles over a period of more than 200 years. Fish ladders were built at every dam to allow the passage of herring to Billington Sea to spawn and then return to the ocean.
Town Forest
The Plymouth Town Forest Wildlife Conservation Easement (WCE) consists of 296 acres of mixed upland forest and forested wetlands in the Town of Plymouth. The area is managed for fisheries and wildlife habitat, open space and associated passive outdoor recreation. Common vegetation on the property includes white pine, white oak, scrub oak, red maple, lowbush blueberry, huckleberry, sweet pepperbush and common greenbrier. Pitch pine is also present throughout the area. The WCE contains frontage on both Great South Pond and Little South Pond and abuts the Division’s Cooks Pond Natural Heritage Area (NHA) and South Triangle Pond NHA.
Access is limited to a two-car parking area near the western end of Drew Road adjacent to the pumphouse on Little South Pond that is intended to provide car-top boat access to both Little and Great South Ponds. Internal combustion engines of any kind and electric engines that exceed 10 horsepower are strictly prohibited on both ponds. There is also a small parking area/pull-off at the intersection of Drew Road and Long Pond Road, as well as four parking spaces dedicated as access to the Cooks Pond NHA at the back of the Armstrong Ice Arena parking lot near the gate on Cooks Pond Road that can be used to access the area. The Town otherwise prohibits roadside parking on Drew Road.
Training Green
65 Sandwich St.
This ornamental park was designated as “a perpetual common or training place” in 1711. The local militia trained here for many years. The design for the walks and perimeter curbing was done in 1889 by the well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed New York’s Central Park and Boston’s Emerald Necklace. The monument is dedicated to the soldiers and sailors of Plymouth who lost their lives in both the Civil War and the War of 1812.
