Lake Williams Boardwalk & The Grove Conservation Land

After visiting the Major Taylor Museum on my birthday trip, I took a pair of walks in nearby Marlborough, MA. Lake Williams Boardwalk completed a recreational trail with a floating walkway, while The Grove Conservation Land was a forested area beside Fort Meadow Reservoir, which borders both Marlborough and Hudson. This was a relaxing way to spend a warm and sunny day.

Lake Williams Boardwalk opened recently with its ribbon cutting in December 2023 and first walks in May 2024. For some fun statistics, the late is 113 acres (0.46 sq km) in size, while the trail is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long, including the boardwalk and woodsy trail. Building the boardwalk took about $1.7 million (USD 2023) and used money from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021, a fund from the federal government created during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve public infrastructure and health. Visible from most parts of the trail was the Marlborough District Courthouse, which overlooked the parking lot at the trailhead.

Like all good trailheads, this one came with signage and a historical plaque. The sign listed rules pertaining to the trail, while the plaque marked the George Washington Memorial Highway at Marlborough, 1732 – 1932 for the bicentennial of Washington’s birthday. This was a reminder that presidential birthdays were a much bigger deal a century ago, while today they many feature mattress sales. Quick research revealed that this highway was commemorated as cars became more popular in the United States, giving people a chance to drive across Massachusetts on a similar route to what the American Revolutionary War hero had taken when he visited the state during his presidency. Some of this 18^th century adventure was covered in Travels with George by Nathaniel Philbrick, who revisited Uxbridge, MA to give a talk back in 2023. Unfortunately, the original version of this bill is not yet available online, as bills have been digitized only through 1986, while laws have been digitized in a not very accessible way.

Not far away was The Grove Conservation Land, containing 16.2 acres (0.066 sq km) of open space and about 1.2 miles (1.9 km) of trail, although this is poorly attested. As for the neighboring body of water, Fort Meadow Reservoir is 260 acres (1.05 sq km) in size, much smaller than the Quabbin Reservoir that I had visited a few days before. According to a 2015 article, with no sources cited and an apparent hatred of commas, Fort Meadow was given its name during the first generation of the American colonial period. Local members of Nipmuc Nation, who very much still live in the area despite implications in the article, legendarily lived at the center of the field so assailants could not sneak up on them.

Like larger Quabbin, Fort Meadow as once a stream, but its damming began much earlier. Calvin Maynard is attested as the miller who dammed the man to grind grains into flour. No grist mill remains on the site, although I have seen plenty of extant mills, including the mill at Nye Museum and its friend Dexter Mill, both located in Sandwich, MA. Calvin’s mill went to his relative, Isaac Maynard, who later passed it to his son, Amory Maynard. The town of Maynard was renamed after Amory for his work during the First Industrial Revolution turning little Assabet Village into a manufacturing town. While the property changed hands a few times since then, it has been owned by the city of Marlborough since 1953.

As mentioned at top, both sites quiet and relaxing places to have a walk on a day with nice weather, and they are open from dawn to dusk. Lake Williams Boardwalk and its connected trails are clearly marked and have plenty of parking in a paved and lined lot. The Grove is more difficult to navigate even with a map being available on the park’s website, while the lot was unpaved and unlined. Additionally, the trash receptacle had not been emptied for some time. If you are in the Marlborough area and have an hour, these two spots are worth a try.