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Natti Woodland

Glacial Erratics, Wetlands & Successional Forest

Natti Woodland is a gently rolling, wooded parcel sprinkled with glacial erratic boulders, dropping down into an extensive wetland system along its southern border. 


Highlights

  • 20 acres
  • Conserved 2012

Highlights

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      Location, Directions & Parking

      Parking is available September through May, it is closed June through August. A small, marked parking area is can be found on the left as you enter the property. Follow the trail markers around private property to the Natti Woodland trailhead.



      The trails connect to Dogtown Common.


      While the property was previously used as pastureland and for small-scale granite quarrying, its recent natural history has been as a successional hard and softwood forest.

      Natti Woodland is part of Dogtown, Cape Ann’s watershed, which began as a treeless glacial heath strewn with boulders known as “glacial erratics.” The boulder known as “Dragon Rock” likely was modified by ancient Indigenous people to resemble a snake’s head, a common motif in Algonquian effigy stones.

      Modified glacial erratics representing spirit world entities survive in undeveloped landscapes throughout New England. English colonists harvested the trees in Dogtown and turned the land into pasturage, which then became overgrazed and returned to its original treeless state. The trees in the Dogtown woodlands today have been growing here for less than a hundred years, but the rocks have been where they are for more than 10,000 years when the last Ice Age ended.


      Greenbelt and the New England Forestry Foundation share stewardship responsibilities; with Greenbelt managing public access and NEFF overseeing the forest management plan for the property.


      The property has significant natural resources, and is identified by the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species program as Core Habitat and Critical Natural Landscape.


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      Land Acknowledgment

      The properties that Greenbelt conserves are on the ancestral lands of the Pennacook and the Pawtucket, bands of Abenaki-speaking people. Join us in honoring the elders who lived here before, the Indigenous descendants today and the generations to come. Learn more…

      Conservation Partners