Indian Hill Farm
A climb up the hill leads visitors along exceptional dry-stacked stone walls and wide cart paths that meander through the woods and along the edge of the Indian Hill Reservoir.
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Location, Directions & Parking
- Indian Hill Street, West Newbury (Opens in Google Maps)
Park in the small lot at the entrance to the property on Indian Hill Street. Parking is limited to four cars.
Step foot on this property and you will find a beautiful and varied landscape. Look for white-tail deer and wild turkey as you walk the trails along the shore of the reservoir.
The home on Indian Hill is privately-owned.
As its name suggests, Indian Hill is an Indigenous site. It was the site of an Algonquian agricultural village where The People grew corn, squash, beans, pumpkins, and sunflowers, which are native to New England and have edible tubers. They used juniper berries in fermentation, poultices, and medicines, and they flavored and colored their corn mashes with goldenrod flowers.
Considered to be one of the most important and historic estates in New England, it reached its modern heyday under the ownership of famed newspaper editor Major Ben Perley Poore, who was also a gentleman farmer and avid horticulturist.
Across Indian Hill Street, the Atherton Reservation is a critical link in creating West Newbury’s own 333-acre “emerald necklace” of protected lands and public trails that provide opportunities for walking and riding. As you pass through the grassland habitat with its open meadows of spring wildflowers, look for owl pellets, coyote scat and signs of beaver at its wetlands.
The trail leads to Pike’s Bridge Road, an ancient way that has changed little since colonial times. It is a legendary birding location known as “Warbler Alley.” At dusk, its woods can echo with a symphonic chorus of spring peepers and wood frogs.
In 2014, citizens of West Newbury supported Greenbelt’s acquisition of an area known as the “Atherton Trail Connector” by contributing Community Preservation Act funds. The trail provides hikers and equestrians an important connection from Indian Hill Farm Reservation to Pike’s Bridge Road.
Observe mature hardwood stands with towering oak, ash and maples, and open fields full of wildflowers at Indian Hill Farm. Two-hundred-year-old red oak and white ash trees are among the oldest in the region.
Find bufflehead and mallard ducks among other water-fowl along the reservoir, and warblers and other migrants along Pike’s Bridge Road. In spring, listen for the chirps of the woodcock making its courtship flight. White-tailed deer and wild turkey are often spotted.
Indian Hill Farm is part of West Newbury’s own emerald necklace – a 315-acre ribbon of protected open space and public trails that showcases the region’s natural beauty and rich cultural history. A network of protected properties provides an expansive and varied landscape that allows visitors to walk for hours on interconnected trails.
Indian Hill Farm reached its heyday under the ownership of Major Ben Perley Poore, a famed editor and newspaperman.
Poore also was a gentleman farmer and avid horticulturist who planted many trees and designed extensive terraces, formal gardens and intricate cart paths throughout the property. Poore’s eclectic home, with a collection of Americana that included the rug Lincoln stood on for his second inaugural address, was a magnet for friends and European royalty.
A fire destroyed much of the original mansion in 1959, but portions of the original house remain standing, and Poore’s descendants live on the property today.
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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…
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