If you leave our casa and take a right you will come to the Old Colony Railroad bed. There are no rails left, but occasionally I will find a railroad spike. The last time a train ran here was 1939. Founded in 1844, it ran from Provincetown to Boston. If they decided to relay the tracks, they would go right through my casita, behind the swimming pool.
Walk straight, all the way to the end of the roadway/railway, and you will hit Careswell Street. Careswell was the name of the house that was built in 1699 on the present Careswell Street by Isaac Winslow, the grandson first governor of Massachusetts. The house still stands.
Local legend says that this cottage on Careswell Street belonged to a train conductor. A local historian confirms this. H. Delano lived there in 1879. But was he the railroad conductor?
Philipe Delano (1603-1681) came to Plymouth aboard the Fortune in 1621, as a 16-year-old servant for someone on that wooden ship. Eventually he was given the land that the current Duxbury High School is on. He did well in his new country. His son married John and Priscilla Alden's daughter, Mary. The name Delano is of French origin.
At the end of the railroad bed/trail is Long Tom's Pond.
Did it get its name from a slave or freed man from the Winslow, Thomas or even Webster house? I don't know, and neither does Google.
The photo above shows Black Tom Pond on the right, and a cut-off, smaller pond on the left. It also shows how much they had to fill to make a railroad bed. This was way before bulldozers -- or as my grandson used to say, “Bull Sodas.” This little pond is where I see tons of turtles sunning themselves on old logs . . . and the only place where I saw a beautiful green heron . . . but only once.
Crossing the trail I walk is the Pilgrim Trail, signified by granite markers.
It ran from the Plimouth (not sic) Colony to Greens Harbour (not sic again), which was named for the First Mate of the ship Mayflower, William Greene. He fished here and ran a sea salt business.
The Pilgrim Trail goes over the hill and down through a neighborhood area named Wampanoag Woods -- which is indeed where the native tribes camped while fishing at Brant Rock during the summers. As the crow flies, it is only one mile to the beaches. Carbon tests from their ancient campfires confirm the fact that they camped there.
Above, Wampanoags from Cape Cod playing drums at a pow wow at the Marshfield Fairgrounds. The bare chested drummer told me his great grandfather taught him how to play and they are keeping the tradition going.
The French explorer Samuel de Champlain noted the natives fishing off the Gurnet in their dug-out canoes in 1605. The North River, close by, is where archeologists have found many such campsites. They were always situated on the south side of the river, to take advantage of the sun. Hundreds of years ago, the North River was a major travel route, just like Route 3 is now. This waterway still can take you all the way to Taunton.
I own some arrowheads and even a spearhead taken from swimming pool excavations nearby.
I started running on the railroad bed in 1977. It was the first running mile of a 10 to 30 mile training run. Now I walk. I hike the trails off the railroad bed. I find the pine needles way easier on my legs than the 54,00 miles of blacktop and concrete that I ran on for 23 years. I try to walk every day for an hour and a half. Freshly falling snow might be the best time to be out there.
On my walks I have encountered owls, hawks, turkeys, swans, ravens, a green heron, and a great blue heron.
Plus turtles (painted, box and snapping), geese, raccoons, bald truck tires, coyote, opossum, skunk, muskrats, fox and deer -- and even a human suicide. It is a full story on its own.
I haven't seen a fisher cat yet. But I know they are out there.
My trapper friend called the other night. He asked a simple question. Do I see any raccoons along the side of the road lately? “Gee I haven't.” That is because the fisher cats are killing them. In 2009 he trapped 20 fisher cats. In 2010 he trapped 40. Who knew?
Someone dammed up a stream for the deer to drink without being disturbed. It is working. One day I watched them drink for a long time. The wind was right and they never heard or smelled me. Almost always they do, and bound away.
Above, my favorite view from the trail. This waterway is actually the Green Harbor River, where it forms a pond adjacent to a cranberry bog. The river runs into Marshfield from Duxbury, then under Webster Street and finally into Green's Harbour and the Atlantic. It is here that I see the swans and the great blues, and the beautiful sunsets.
I burn firewood in the winter to heat the house. You can take the boy out of Adams, but you can't totally take the Adams out of the boy. This year I didn't know where I would get my wood. I have never bought a cord 8x8x4 ever.
The trails are covered with rock-hard dead wood, both on the ground and standing. Initially I took my chain saw into the woods, only to clear the downed trees on the path. If it was 1600, and a tree was marked with the King of England's stamp, I could not cut it, for that tree was to be saved to build the King's ships. If, however, the wind knocked down that same tree, I could take it as " a windfall.”
Eventually I came up with an idea -- to walk the paths and cut the old oak trees into 6 foot lengths. On every walk, I carry one down to the side of the railroad bed and leave it there in a pile. Luckily, no one has seen me carrying a 6 foot log through the woods yet.
Today I drove my pickup truck to the pile 5 times, and here is the result.
There are about 130 logs in this pile, but I still need to go back for more loads -- but not today. I had help unloading them as you can see.
Abel loves to help me work, and he is a really hard worker. A different Abe said you get warm twice with the same wood -- once when you saw it, and again when you burn it. I would add another number to that, for my carrying the logs out.
Stop over sometime and we will have a drink of tea or maybe even a margarita in our living room . . . and don't bother to bring a sweater.
Who said I couldn't handle retirement?
Snow will soon put an end to my hiking with running shoes, but the winter also means snow shoeing the trail -- and I look forward to that.
Guided tours available -- late Saturdays and Sundays.
P. S.
The area has been surveyed. You can see the red and blue markers in the trees and on the bushes. I have been thinking that someone bought the land and will soon develop it.
Occasionally people will ask me, “Who owns the land?” At Marshfield Town Hall this morning, I discovered that this whole area (15 acres) is called Sweet's Hill, and that the town recently purchased it for $400,000, to protect the drinking water wells. No one can ever build here, forever. Hooray!
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Years ago Randy Adams and his wife Donna Jean and I ran thousands of miles together. Recently Randy and I have started walking. The Adamses live on Duck Hill Lane. The old railroad bed is a stone's throw to Duck Hill Lane. This week I noticed that the very first Cape Cod style house on that street has a date of 1695. The old Winslow House just down the street on Careswell has a 1699 date. Interesting! So I Googled it.
The name of the 1695 house is John Rouse Jr. John Rouse Sr. was a Pilgrim descendent and was a servant of Governor Prence. He married Anna Pabodie. That doesn't sound like a Pilgrim name, does it? Junior married Mary Rogers of Marshfield in 1656. He was born in 1643. His tombstone says that he died in 1717 but the historian who researched this believes that the birth date is an incorrect date unless he was married at 13. What did he do for a living? Did they have children? Where are they buried?
The house, recently renovated, sold for $325,000. The balance of the houses on that same street are probably $1,000,000.
So who was Governor Thomas Prence? Well he was the fourth (1634), eighth (1638) and twelfth (1657) governor of Massachusetts. He came to Plimoth Colony just after the very first Thanksgiving, aboard the sailing ship Fortune. He co-founded the Cape Cod town of Eastham. His first wife was a daughter of Elder Brewster of the ship Mayflower. And to top it off, he gave Massasoit's sons Wamsutta and Pometacom their English names, Alexander and Philip (of the very famous King Philip's War). Massasoit the Wampanoag Indian Chief is known to have visited the Winslow house on Careswell Street.
Oh do you want to know some of the Governor's descendants? Bing Crosby, Sarah Palin, the Wright brothers and Taylor Swift. WOW!
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The Old Colony Railroad was built in 1871. Eight trains a day ran through our back yard. Exactly where the casita sits.
The hurricane of 1937 took out the causeway over the North River. A year later the Old Colony shut down the section from Marshfield to Duxbury. It was deemed too expensive to build over the North River again. The railroad track path still runs along the west side of the CVS parking lot on Route 139 and stops at the North River looking out at Scituate. The main station in Marshfield Center was about where the Dairy Queen on Webster Street stands today.
WWII saw an upswing of business at the Hingham and Cohasset Ammunition Dumps. Sandy's father was stationed at Hingham for a while in the 1940s. I maintained the lights on the water towers in Hingham and Cohasset from 1966-1968 from the Naval Air Station South Weymouth.
The finishing of the Southeast Expressway in 1959 cut deeply into train ridership. Later Route 3 to the Cape did even more damage.
I have been kicking up old railroad spikes for years. Today on my walk I kicked up another piece of coal. The Old Colony trains ran on it until diesel came along. So that piece of coal is at least seventy years old and maybe even one hundred and thirty three.
In the 2010s you can once again take the train into Boston. Ridership is on the upswing.
p.s.
On December 2nd 2015 I came across a 1879 map of Marshfield. Of course at that time there were no houses in the Blackmount area where we built our house in 1972.
Seth Peterson’s land was marked. It eventually turned into a curvy street called Peterson Path. He was Webster’s handy man and hunting partner. On Webster street it showed Daniel Webster’s house and the opera singer Adelaide Phillip's and of course the Winslow house of 1699. Somehow I knew that the house pictured above (way, way above) was the Old Colony Railroad’s conductors house.
What I didn’t know was where this railroad bed hits Careswell Street, to the right heading south towards Duxbury, there was a railroad station and it was called, according to this map, Webster Place Depot. I said to Sandy, “Why would they call it Webster Place? The Winslow house is closer." She said, "But the railroad ran through Webster’s land," . . . which it does. I wonder if any photos exist
of this building . . .
I called the real estate agent who is selling the house at the bottom of Duck Hill Lane. She knew nothing of the history of the house, including that maybe it was the train conductor's house. Who told me that it was?
There are two photos above. Both have horse-and-buggies in them. The building sat at the corner of Careswell Street and the railroad bed heading north. A very small house sits there now, but not exactly in the same spot. The railroad bed looks the same today except it has no rails or railroad ties.
I now own a map of Marshfield circa 1879. It shows that that railroad house was called Webster Place Station. It was the most southern of the five train stations in Marshfield. The largest station sat at the current skate park near Dairy Queen on Webster Street (no cigar if you guessed it was where the DQ stands). It closed down in 1939. (The Old Colony Railroad was built here six years after the Civil War.) If you drive up South Point Lane in Marshfield, to the right of that house, you can clearly see where the Old Colony train tracks ran. (South Point Lane is the newer street straight across from where the Webster Place Depot stood.)
The next station south of Marshfield was near the present-day FarFar's Danish Ice Cream Store. The train through Duxbury came out on the left side of the FarFar's building, if you're looking at it from St. George Street. Today there is a sign that reads PRIVATE. Right across the street is Railroad Avenue. The town historian said that the train went right by John and Priscilla Alden "speak for yourself" house. A little Myles Standish history.
The train traveled from Rockland, through Abington, Hanson, Plympton, and Kingston, then to Duxbury. People used it to get to all the Green Harbor hotels on the Atlantic, to day-trip or vacation. The Fairview Inn & Restaurant, which just closed, was the last of the grand hotels.
But how did travelers get to Green Harbor? To go from the Webster Place Depot to Green Harbor years ago you would have had to pass through the marsh of Duxbury Bay. Daniel Webster paid to have Careswell Street filled in, to be used as a road, which is probably why the depot is named after him. The land was filled in way before the depot was built. When winter starts, you can see into the woods where the workers got the landfill.
So many people traveled to Green’s Harbour then that most folks referred to the station as Green Harbor Station. Green of course being for William Green first mate on a ship called Mayflower.
The train ran right behind where my swimming pool currently sits. When I am sitting on my boat dock, if the wind is from the west, I can hear the trains whistle from the new Kingston Station as they pull out. It is an electric train, not like the old one run by coal and steam. I still kick up railroad spikes and sometimes I find pieces of coal when I walk the line. Isn’t this history all fascinating ?
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