Round Pond Conservation Area
Introduction
Round Pond, once called Cole's Pond, has been a favorite recreation spot for Duxbury residents since the 1890s with the first land purchase of the Rural Society (now the Duxbury Rural & Historical Society). The society began acquiring land around this lovely fresh water pond as a destination for carriage rides and picnics. Today you are likely to see neighbors walking or cross-country skiing the looping paths around Round Pond, the Loring Cranberry Bogs and extensive woodland trails which weave through the 50 acre property and continue south through 130 acres of Conservation Land, past Pine Lake and Island Creek Pond. A scenic part of the Bay Circuit Trail traverses a north to south route through this central greenbelt.
A Gift From the Ice Age
Round Pond is actually a large kettle hole left by a melting glacier about 10,000 BC ice continued to play a part in the pond's history as late as the 1940s.
When it was known as Cole's Pond, in the late 1880s, Round Pond was the site of the Merry Family's Icehouse, and an abundant source of ice for summer residents. Through the winter Merry crews, using long saws, cut the pond ice into large blocks, laboriously pulled the blocks onto sledges and hauled the heavily loaded sledges across the ice to wooden storage buildings. Once inside, the ice blocks were covered with sawdust, piled high and covered with more sawdust. The sawdust insulated the ice blocks sufficiently to allow delivery of ice straight through the following summer to area homes and summer cottages.
By the 1940's, however, most home and cottage owners had installed refrigerators, causing the ice business to melt away much as the glaciers that had made it possible.
The Duxbury Rural and Historical Society
The Rural Society (as it was first noted) in Duxbury was founded in 1883 by a group of civic-minded citizens who thought that Duxbury would benefit from the kind of village improvement society that was beginning to exist in other towns at the time. The Rural Society was first set up to place streetlights (gas) along Washington St. and to plant trees along the main streets. At that time there were few trees along the village roads. It wasn't long before the Society was further beautifying and improving the town through the acquisition of open space. The Society began to buy plots bordering Round Pond and later, the pond itself. The officers of the Rural Society were interested in preserving a country setting that would offer a pleasant
destination for carriage rides and a lovely, rural picnic spot. The acquisition of land around Round Pond took place over a number of years starting in the early 1890s. The Rural Society's initial purchases in the Round Pond area grew until they totaled about 50 acres.
The Rural Society became the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society in 1916 but continued its interest and involvement in the rural aspects of its work .In the 1980s, the Reverend Canon Robert E. Merry, as head of the Society's Lands Committee, worked with the town and Massachusetts Audubon officials to develop and complete a working trail system on the conservation land at both Round Pond and North Hill Marsh. Two Round Pond trails were opened in January of 1986. Canon Merry also gathered a group of historical society volunteers, "the Round Pond Walkers", to patrol the society's Round Pond trails. They also instituted the Fall Foliage Fiesta, which implemented foliage walks to introduce residents to the walking paths on both sides of
the roads. The Fiesta, which is held on an October Sunday close to the peak of the autumn foliage display, celebrates this beautiful season.
Later, as conservation lands were added to the town's inventory, the trails were expanded, maps printed, and Round Pond became one of the features along the Bay Circuit Trail. Bay Circuit maps are available at Town Hall in the Conservation Office.
The Bay Circuit Trail and Bay Circuit Alliance
The Bay Circuit Trail is the grand vision of a single urban planner in the late 1920's. Charles Elliot II devised a concept of a "greenbelt" ringing around Boston from the north shore to the south shore. The 200-mile long trail lies roughly between Route 95 (128) and 495, in a semi-circle around metropolitan Boston. The Bay Circuit trail forms a chain linking 79 areas of green spaces in an Emerald Necklace from Plum Island in Newburyport to Bay Farm in Duxbury. The Bay Circuit Alliance (BCA), founded in 1990, served as the catalyst in seeing the Bay Circuit Trail dream become a reality. The Alliance is a partnership of public and private organizations and individuals working to help local communities establish, improve and maintain
their portions of the Trail. The BCA also maintains contact with state and federal representatives and agencies to promote the Bay Circuit concept and consult on trail related issues.
The Duxbury portion of the trail (7 miles) begins at the westerly edge of Duxbury, west of Route 53 on Valley Street and ending at the southern-most point of the town, past the open field of Bay Farm at the edge of Kingston Bay. For a free color map/guide of the Duxbury portion of the Bay Circuit Trail visit the Conservation Commission Office in Town Hall (second floor).
Natural History
Round pond is one of the more diverse of the conservation land in Duxbury. This area ranges from forest cover to open cranberry bog. The tree cover along the upland portions of the trail is dominated mostly by a white pine-red oak mixture adapted to these soils. The understory is low bush, and dry land blueberries, ferns, sweetferns (in sandy openings), teaberry and ladyslippers. Where the trail dips into wetlands and along the reservoirs, the vegetation changes to red maple with alder, sagebush, highbush blueberry, summersweet and native azalea.
These climax forests attract a good deal of northern temperate forest wildlife ranging from waterfowl to larger critters like raccoons, opossums, fox and white-tailed deer. It also makes great habitat for our feathered friends such as osprey, red-tailed hawks, bluebirds, egrets, great blue heron, and many types of interior forest birds such as chicadees and tufted titmice as well as cardinals and cedar waxwings. Keep your eye out for these guys. The quieter you are, the more likely you will be to see them. Happy trails.
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