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Woodward Forest
Location
Woodward Forest is located at the end of Gateway Lane, a small cul-de-sac off of Old Taunton Avenue. Park along the side the road without encroaching on any of our neighbor's yards.
Story
Proceed past the kiosk and you will find the Land Preservation Society's largest preservation of over 150 acres. A small meadow will greet you and signify the looping portion of the Francis Shirley trail (named after a passed. long-time member of the Land Preservation Society of Norton) and marked with red arrows. Further into the woods you will find an assortment of vernal ponds, small patches of hemlock trees in the lowlands or American beeches in the uplands. A the blue or "river" trail will lead you right to the Wading River which off the trail meets the Three Mile and Rumford Rivers at Lockety Neck, a location of a battle fought in King Philip's war. The white or "bunny ears" trail will weave you through more small patches of hemlock and vernal ponds, then guide you along the ridge that overlooks the wetlands buffering the Three Mile River.
Trail Qualities
The marked trails of Woodward Forest are approximately 3 miles total, nearly all of which is compact ground. During the wetter seasons, low-lying areas may be muddy or inundated. Segments that are prone to inundation have clear alternative paths that typically should help avoid turning you around. Most elevation changes are subtle or made less challenging via switch-back trails.
Brief History of Woodward Forest
Woodward Forest was named for Josiah Woodward (pronounced Wood’ard) and his descendants, who settled in this area in the 18 th and 19 th centuries and owned much of the land extending from present-day Mike’s Pizza on route 140, as far as the Taunton border. The first Josiah Woodward (that we know of) was born in 1711, the year Norton was incorporated as a town. Josiah III lived in the house located at the corner of present-day Taunton Avenue (Route 140) and Old Taunton Avenue. Descendants, many of them also named Josiah, all lived on Woodward family land, which they farmed for generations to follow. An old map shows that there were 6 Woodward houses on Old Taunton Avenue by 1895. This information comes from Marshall Martin, a founding member of LPS and Norton na<ve.
Another old family was the Willis family. The Woodwards and the Willises intermarried, and you can find them in the cemetery along Old Taunton Avenue. Our walk is on land that was first the Calvin Willis Farm, but eventually went to the Woodwards. This was also the time of the Industrial Revolution. Josiah Woodward III sold a piece of farmland to brothers from Taunton, the Crocker Brothers, who built a copper-iron smelter and rolling mill. They made sheets of copper used to plate ship bottoms. In the 19 th century, disks cut from the copper sheets were sent to the U.S. mint where they were stamped and made into pennies. The copper mill once occupied another LPS property, The L.A. Foster Wildlife Refuge, located on both sides of Taunton Avenue.
In the 1920s, the land on our walk went to Willis and Martha Peabody who had it forested and built a sawmill. We’ll come to a small field that was once much larger where their sawmill was located. You’ll notice that the path is wider in this area. It was once a cart road for hauling lumber, and this practice was continued by the next owner of the land into the 1960s.
Deeper in the woods we’ll come to a vernal pool. Vernal pools are ephemeral bodies of water. They have no inlet and dry up completely when the water table is very low. Vernal pools serve as seasonal breeding grounds for many invertebrate and amphibian species like frogs, toads, and salamanders. They are important natural habitats and vital to maintaining biodiversity.
Other trails in Woodard Forest reveal fascinating remnants from its past, and we hope you’ll take the opportunity to find them. Look for old stone walls that served as fences defining fields. You’ll also find twisted metal fences (a precursor of barbed wire). You’ll walk along the Wading River where Native Americans once fished. And you’ll discover an abundance of ferns, mosses, mushrooms, and bird species that you can hear even if you can’t always see them! Join us for future woods walks and see how the forest changes through the seasons!
Native American Land Use in southern New England prior to the arrival of the first colonists.
Native American Land Use in southern New England prior to the arrival of the first colonists.
After the retreat of the glacier 12,000 years ago, the climate of New England slowly warmed resultng in the subsequent arrival from the south of plants, animals, and then humans who lived off the land. There were a few tribes that called what is now Massachusetts, home. These included the Pocumtuc, the Nipmuck, the Massachusetts, the Nauset, and the Wampanoags. The town of Norton was Wampanoag territory. Native Americans in southern New England used and changed the land, taking advantage of the abundance it offered. They planted vegetables, hunted, fished, and gathered food.
They were a mobile society that took advantage of the seasonality of our temperate forests. The natives lived in extended-family units, or villages. They kept few possessions, so that mobility was not difficult. In the spring and summer, farming a piece of cleared land, they would grow corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. Often the summer villages would be close to the coast where shellfish, lobster and fish were abundant. Women and children tended to the gardens, while the men fished. When the nutrients of the land had been depleted, usually after about a decade, they would move to another area and let their previous fields go fallow. These abandoned fields were great successional habitats for berries such as strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry to grow.
The natives of this area also practiced controlled burns. Burning the understory allowed easy travel through the woods. It also selected for certain trees that were fire resistant, such as oaks, hickories, and chestnuts. These nut trees provided food for both the natives and animals that they hunted such as turkey, bear, and deer. In the fall and winter, the villages would get together in larger groups in more forested, protected inland valleys. The men would hunt, and the women would prepare the game, smoking the meat. Every part of an animal was used, the fur, bones, meat, and sinew. The women stayed in the village, cooking, making clothes and caring for the children while the men hunted.
By using species of plants and animals when they were most seasonally abundant, native communities did not overuse any given species. Their mobility resulted in a patchwork of ecological habitats, the coast with fish and shellfish, salt marshes with migratory birds, lowland thickets with deer and beaver, upland agricultural fields, and forests. The controlled burns and the mobility of the natives resulted in a diverse, mosaic landscape with an abundance of wildlife to support these villages.
Because the native people did not pratice animal husbandry or farming on a permanent plot of land, early colonists viewed them as not ‘owning’ the land. To own land, European thinking assumed that you had to ‘improve it’ by establishing permanent settlements, houses, and farms. The native tribes viewed themselves as using the land, but land ownership was not a concept that they understood. The first ‘agreements’ selling land to colonists was most likely a misunderstanding between two very different cultures, with natives thinking that they were agreeing to let colonists use the land along with them. Colonists thought that they now owned the land to use as they thought best, to the exclusion of the native groups. These cultural misunderstandings eventually lead to conflicts, including King Phillip’s War.
The Vernal Pond trail we often recommend is outlined in dark red. Of course, you are welcome to use the other trails shown on the map.
We have posted meditative quotations and descriptive signs to help our visitors be aware of and grateful for the wonderful services our forests provide. They will remain up weather permitting.