Conserving beautiful and vulnerable landscapes.
Westport Land Conservation Trust
P.O. Box 3975
1100D Main Road
Westport, Massachusetts 02790
info@westportlandtrust.org
Phone: (508) 636-9228
Fax: (508) 636-0587
Place to Walk in Westport, MA
Herb Hadfield Conservation Area
The Town of Westport and The Westport Land Conservation Trust officially opened the Herb Hadfield Conservation Area in 2004. The beautiful 50-acre woodland property along Angeline Brook was obtained in 2002 thanks to a generous donation from the former owners, William and Cynthia Krause, along with funds from the town’s Agricultural/Open Space Trust Fund, the Land Trust and The Trustees of Reservations. In addition, the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Wildlife acquired a conservation restriction on the 50-acre parcel. The conservation area is named after Herb Hadfield, a respected Westport artist renowned for his love of nature. The artist lived for many years in a cabin he built along Angeline Brook where he offered refuge to an assortment of wild, often wounded animals. Over the years, he built a series of trails throughout the property, which have been reopened for public use. Angeline Brook runs through the property and is crossed in several places by the newly cleared trails. The brook has been recognized as the least degraded of the few remaining cold water streams in Westport that support a native anadromous brook trout population. The presence of the sea-run trout species is an indicator that the Angeline Brook watershed is relatively healthy and undisturbed.
Among the things to keep an eye out for are swamp azaleas, club moss, ferns, sassafras bushes, summer sweet skunk cabbage, witch hazel and spice bushes. Look up to see beech trees, oak trees, red maple trees, sassafras trees (note the mitten leaves with three blunt fingers). The age and structural diversity of the upland forest on the Herb Hadfield Conservation Area shows little history of human use and may represent primary forest. The Westport Land Conservation Trust is trying to maintain the high quality of the healthy riparian ecosystem by preserving a conservation corridor from the protected headwaters of the brook to the conserved properties at this outlet.
In 2009, the Land Trust with a generous contribution from the Massachusetts Waterfowlers, obtained 50 acres that add to the already protected Herb Hadfield Conservation Area and extend the network of trails for miles along the Angeline Brook. In 2010, the Town of Westport’s purchased a Conservation Restriction using monies from the Community Preservation fund (CPA) on this newest section of the Herb Hadfield Conservation Area. Come take a walk through this 100 acres that stretches along the Angeline Brook from Adamsville Road to the former cabin site to the fields along Cornell Road.
