Abby Epplett, Historian

Last Sunday, I took a day trip to see places of history and culture in southeastern Massachusetts. My third stop was D.W. Field Park , located across the street from Fuller Craft Museum. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2000 , the park currently encompasses 800 acres with seven miles of paved roads, multiple ponds, a sixty-five foot tall Central Memorial Tower, and an eighteen hole municipal golf course. The park has been described as the “Jewel of Brockton”.

Yesterday, — on Sunday, June 2 — I went on an adventure to southeastern Massachusetts and visited a few historical places. The first stop was Borderland State Park in Easton and Sharon, MA, which included a stone mansion once owned by the Ames family and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places , walking trails, and Smith Farm.

During my trip to the Berkshires in July 2023, I took a hike at Questing , a seventeen-acre property owned by The Trustees of Reservations. I visited several other properties owned by the Trustees during this trip, including Ashintully Gardens , Tyringham Cobble , and Mission House . Like these other properties, this park had its own unique history. The trails of Questing go up and around Leffingwell Hill , named after brothers William and Jerome Leffingwell who built a farm on the property and brought their families to live with them. Both brothers died in horrific farming accidents. In 1873 at age fifty-two, William was kicked to death by a horse, leaving his wife with eleven children. In 1879 at age forty-eight, Jerome was crushed by a thirty-foot long timber at a barn construction site and died several days later. After these accidents, surviving family members abandoned the seemingly cursed property and moved West. Hikers can see the ruins of this farm while

During a full day of hiking, where I also visited Ashintully Gardens and Tyringham Cobble , I arrived at Laurel Hill Association in Stockbridge, MA. The official website gives this organization a special distinction as “the oldest village improvement society in the United States”, as Stockbridge resident Mary Gross Hopkins Goodrich founded the society in 1853. The book Women of the Century , edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore , and published in 1893, described Goodrich as “not only the mother of every village improvement society in the United States, but the unwearying helper of every one…” Today, the property is over 460 acres in size and includes multiple hiking trails plus a park. The site belongs to the Old Growth Forest Network to protect ancient trees. Additionally, the parking lot is connected to the three trails by a pedestrian suspension bridge, joining a list of special little bridges that includes the Androscoggin Swinging Bridge i

During my trip to the Dominican Republic in June 2023, I visited several quick history stops around the city of Santiago de los Caballeros. A cathedral, public park, monuments, and government buildings are all in the same area as Fortaleza San Luis , about a 600m (0.4 mile) or 6 minute walk from the popular tourist attraction.

Fully called Jardín Botánico de Santiago Profesor Eugenio de Jesús Marcano Fondeur , the botanical gardens in Santiago, DR take advantage of the Carribean weather to grow plants and create ecosystems from around the world. Professor Marcano was a botanist (plants), entomologist (bugs), herpetologist (reptiles), and speleologist (caves) who greatly contributed to the understanding of natural sciences in the Dominican, especially the Cibao Valley. He died in 2003 at age seventy-nine, just one year before the beginning of the botanical garden project named in his honor. According the official website of the garden, the area became part of Sistema Nacional de Áreas Protegidas or SiNAP (National System of Protected Areas) under the name Monumento Natural Saltos de la Tinaja (Rocky Pool Waterfalls Natural Monument) . The garden itself was named in 2015. When I visited, the park was free and open to the public while quietly undergoing further construction. One of my favor