Beginning of the Ware piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail.
If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it by now?
-Bill Gates
There are many rail trails in the continental US. Some are complete, following an entire nineteenth century railroad bed, and many are intermittent works in progress. The longest one runs, with unfinished gaps, from Washington DC all the way to La Push, Washington State, on the Pacific Ocean. When finished, it will be some 3700 miles long, going through Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and on into Washington. It is now about 55% complete. Even though it is incomplete, there have been a few people who have biked the full 3700 miles by filling in the gaps with connecting streets and roads.
Waldo and I have walked down much of the Mass Central Rail Trail, but it, too, is only about 58% finished. It follows the Massachusetts Central Railroad bed that goes from Boston to Northampton (approximately 104 miles). There’s a small piece we haven’t been on, in Ware, MA, that is about 1.85 miles long. It’s been on my mind to walk it and Christine and I decided to go today. Waldo, of course, is eager to join us.
Ware is a 1 hour and 15 minute drive west from Marlborough, if we go by way of the Mass Pike (Interstate 90). It sits on the eastern shore of the Quabbin Reservoir and has a population of around 10,206 people. It was the birthplace of actor Geena Davis, but has been around for much longer – since 1775. When Samuel Colt was 15, he worked in his father’s textile plant in Ware. The name “Ware” derives from “weir” which is a kind of dam used to trap fish, which the Indians who lived there built on the Ware River. That river powered many mills that manufactured textiles, clothing and shoes in the 19th and 20th centuries. The depression hit the mills hard and the inhabitants of Ware banded together to buy the shares of the struggling companies. It was the first employee buy-out of a major manufacturer in the US. Today, all the mills are gone.
Christine, Waldo and I decide to meet in the parking lot of a Walmart Supercenter. The trail begins in its northeast corner and heads further northeast from there. The day is partly cloudy and cool, with a 14 mph breeze. At the start, the trail is surrounded by woods. The trees are mostly oaks and maples and many of their leaves carpet the ground in yellow and tan. Some of their branches are barren, but some are still green. It seems the trees aren’t sure what to do. That comes as no surprise to me – it has been 80℉ one day and in the 30s the next. The trail itself is unpaved, but hard packed with stone dust, and easy to walk on. Christine and I take the opportunity to get caught up and talk about this and that as we walk along behind Waldo. We pass a few people, and even some dogs, but not many.
At northeastern terminus of the trail, the land opens up into grassy fields and then city streets. The trip is short, but pleasant, and Waldo and I can now say we’ve walked all of the western part of the Mass Central Rail Trail that’s open. There is still a piece to the east that goes into Boston we have yet to trod.
Sometimes, on these trails, we can see the undeveloped railroad bed continue on past where the walking trail ends. Waldo and I, along with Christine and Phyllis on occasion, have bushwhacked our way down these “paths.” But that’s not possible here. On the one end, where we started, the railroad bed is obliterated by the Walmart parking lot and, on the other, by the town of Ware. Still, I suppose, one could follow the streets and roads that approximate where the railroad ran to connect one patch of rail trail to the next. It might be fun to link all the pieces together in that way, if for no other reason than to say that we’ve walked the entire route.
The next piece of Mass Central Rail Trail to the west that’s open is the bit that we trekked when we walked across Massachusetts from the New York border to the tip of Cape Cod. That piece is long enough to stretch from Northampton to past Amherst. It crosses the Connecticut River on an old railroad bridge redone for walking. The eastern part of the trail, that we haven’t yet been on, starts in Cambridge near the Alewife T station, and runs about 6 miles, or so, into Boston, ending not far from where the USS Constitution is birthed.
The connecting pieces, between the bits of open trail, are classified as unimproved, proposed, or under construction. The “unimproved” parts usually require some bushwhacking and this is the time of year that’s best for that because the weeds that overgrow the roadbed are in hibernation for the season. The rest, in the worst-case scenario, can be approximated by following streets and roads (although sometimes this means we would have to go a bit out of our way in order to find a bridge to cross a river). So, we still have plenty of trail to explore.
But that’s for another day.
Other end of the Ware piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail.