Echo and Elizabeth How Reservations

This property features 1.1 miles of easy terrain with connecting trails.

Trails from each parking area link to an extensive network that extends into the adjacent Willowdale State Forest, offering adventurous hikers access to miles of additional trails.

Wide paths wind through a hardwood upland on relatively flat terrain, making for easy hiking and cross-country skiing.

A mixed hardwood forest populated with mature trees, wide trails, and a vast field of ferns awaits. A large beaver pond, wetlands, and old stone walls line trails connecting to adjacent conserved forest and fields.

Indigenous people in Essex County used the plants and animals of these Ipswich reservations and the adjacent Willowdale State Forest in Topsfield. Eastern Woodland Indians used oak trees for dugout canoes and oak bark for winter wigwam cladding.

Women collected hickory nuts to grind into nut flour for cakes and puddings, and shamans gathered hemlock needles for medicine that relaxes muscles and numbs pain, sometimes given to women to ease childbirth. During the early Contact Period, Indigenous people trapped beavers for the fur trade and planted crops in the rich lacustrine soil of drained beaver ponds. Extensive beaver marshes today often are legacies of ancient Indigenous land use.

Part of this property contained the 17th century homestead of Elizabeth How, who was executed after being found guilty of witchcraft during the Salem Witch hysteria.

Mature woodlands, a beaver pond and a large wetland characterize the landscape. In places the thick canopy creates perfect conditions for lush patches of ferns. The beaver-influenced wetland is notable for its open water and standing dead trees.

Woodland mammals such as white-tailed deer, fisher, coyote, mink and beaver inhabit the woods and wetlands with their extensive food supply. It is an excellent destination to bird watch for spring migrants, as well as winter owls and wild turkey.