The Health Board recommends that all people not from the same household should maintain six feet of distancing and when closer, masks should be worn, even outside and regardless of vaccination status. Normally the walk has involved over 75 people. Drew is a regular Eagle contributor.After much consideration in regards to the latest Wellfleet Board of Health Covid requirements and recommended guidelines, the Wellfleet Conservation Trust has decided to cancel our annual guided walk scheduled for 11 September. The area has a rich smell, a chill temperature, a wonderful aura.īernard A. Trees 200 and more years old straddle glacial boulders. Others led excursions to the old-growth forest on a remote hillside. I interpreted 18th century industrial sites for the group. The property was such an outstanding acquisition, the National Land Conservation Conference in 2010 brought attendees on a special trip to Spectacle Pond Farm. Lower Spectacle Farm includes a 15-acre stand of old-growth eastern hemlock. 'They sold soda and hamburgers and hot dogs and rented rowboats in the summer.' They had a snack shack near the pond's outlet. The Rowleys built rental cottages on the pond and hunting camps in the woods, Loring said. In spring, they tapped a sugar bush near the pond using wooden buckets and spiles. In winter, the family cut ice on the pond.

'Toward the end, they broke down and bought a used hay bailer,' Loring said. In the barn, the hay was lifted with a fork connected to a rope and pulley and the wagon driven out, the hay then dumped in the appropriate mow. In summer, hay was raked into windrows then horses drew a tall loader to tumble the loose hay onto a wagon. Nancy Loring said her father William Rowley and her Uncle Marvin Rowley farmed until the mid-1980s. The developer got $3.5 million, Audubon $1.7 million. To avoid a Land Court struggle to divide the land, DCR negotiated a settlement. The other heirs, Margaret Hawley, Eugene and Robert Rowley and Evelyn Sellig, sold their half share to the developer, Spectacle Pond LLC, for $1.95 million. Massachusetts Audubon in 2006 exercised an option and for $1.513 million purchased a half undivided interest in the property from heirs Nancy Rowley Loring, Thelma Kennedy, Frank H. Developer Jeffrey Polidoro of Egremont wanted the entire parcel. Seven heirs of the last two farming brothers of the Rowley/Hawley family disagreed on the property's disposition.

The purchase came after skirmishing with a developer. The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) in July 2007 acquired 907.3-acre Spectacle Pond Farm, folding it into 3,799-acre Otis State Forest for management purposes. The proposed new line will have 36-inch pipes. The 24-inch line ruptured during blasting for a second line in 1981 and forced an evacuation. Northeast Gas Transmission obtained a 30-foot right-of-way from the Rowley family in 1951 and installed a high-pressure pipeline. In the modern era, Civilian Conservation Corps Company 109 encamped at Upper Spectacle Pond in 1933-35 and built the dam and made other recreational improvements.

This is the most historic road in Berkshire County, and it crosses Otis State Forest, and the pipeline. Knox and the teamsters stopped at Henry Spring Jr.'s tavern, the foundation of which is at the north end of Spectacle Pond Farm. Henry Knox in January 1776 used the route to sled mortars, cohorns and cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Dorchester Heights to assist George Washington's effort to menace the British out of Boston. James Clephane (the equivalent of today's Army Corps of Engineers) hacked and shoveled, straightened and flattened the old track across Berkshire to accommodate four regiments marching to New York on their way north to attack Quebec City.Īmerican Col. Jeffery Amherst's 200 Pioneers under the command of Maj. It became a war road in October 1758 when British Gen. In the same family (which came to include Rowleys) for generations, that farm tells a forgotten but common story of New England's agricultural growth and decline.īut even more, between the Spectacle Ponds is an old Indian path that became a fur trade trail. 'Nine farms surrounding the lower Spectacle pond had in the days of my grandfather 72 inhabitants,' he said, 'where now there are only six living to till them. Hawley in The Berkshire Gleaner in 1909 described how he had amassed the property he called Mill Brook Farms.