Gloucester, Massachusetts
Ravenswood Park
Six hundred acres of Gloucester woods: giant fern-covered boulders, a boardwalk through a magnolia swamp, carriage paths, and an overlook to the harbor.
Written for ages 3–12.
Researched from this park's own sources. Nobody's walked it yet.
Read this bit out
A man called Samuel Sawyer spent his summers near here, and he bought up the land around him piece by piece: woodlots, old pastures, a swamp. More than twenty-six pieces in all. His will turned the whole lot into a park, laid out, it said, "handsomely with drive-ways and pleasant rural walks." It is called Ravenswood, after a castle in an old story. Look around as you walk: stone walls and cellar holes left by early settlers, and one trail that used to be part of a road called the Old Salem Road.
One of your three free places, or the Explorer Pass. What that costs
Before you go
- Time there
- Plan on about 2 hours at the park.
- Parking
- Free to everyone. Parking at 481 Western Avenue, which is Route 127. Open daily, sunrise to sunset.
- Underfoot
- Ten miles of crushed-stone carriage paths and trails. The Ledge Hill Trail is the child-friendly one, among fern-covered boulders; other paths reach a Gloucester Harbor overlook or cross the Great Magnolia Swamp on a boardwalk. Limited bow hunting October through December, Monday to Saturday; never on Sundays.
- Stroller
- A stroller works on some of it.
- Food
- Bring a picnic; there is plenty of room for one. No fires.
22 challenges written for this place
A game deals seven to fifteen of them, so no two visits are alike.
4 things to spot, 3 photographs to take and 3 things to work out.
Every game includes this one
The Fern-Covered Boulders
Find the enormous boulders with ferns growing all over them.
A few of the others
The Harbor Overlook
Walk up to the overlook and find Gloucester Harbor below you.
Beside The Boulder
One photo of everybody next to the biggest boulder you can find.
Down The Carriage Path
One photo looking straight down one of the old carriage paths.
Their Turn
Hand the phone to the youngest. They take one picture of whatever they want.
Twenty-Six Pieces Of Land
The man who made this park bought more than twenty-six separate bits of land and left them all to become a park. Work out why somebody would do that.
Built For Horses
These wide paths were made for horses and carriages, not cars. Find something about them that shows it.
The rest are a surprise — that's the whole point.
Also around Cape Ann
Halibut Point State Park
Rockport
A flooded granite quarry, a World War II watchtower, tide pools on the ledges below, and on a clear day a mountain in Maine 40 miles away.
Millbrook Meadow
Rockport
A four-acre park across from Rockport's Front Beach: a mill pond, a brook to follow toward the sea, a playground, and a three-ton granite whale to climb.
Play this at Ravenswood Park
Free. Works with no signal once you're there.