About the Groton Trails Committee

What we do

The Groton Trails Committee is responsible for developing new trails and maintaining the existing trails network in Groton. We evaluate trail routes, consider safety issues, address parking and access, mark new trails, and revise the trail map to reflect additions and changes. We also organize hikes and work parties and are always encouraging stewardship of the Groton Trails.

We promote the trails by setting up and staffing booths during GrotonFest (Spring and Fall) and the Greenway Committee’s Nashua River Festival in June, organizing hikes, and supporting the annual Groton Town Forest Trail Races in October.

History of the trails

Groton has long held a strong vision for sustaining its natural resources, as evidenced by creating the Groton Town Forest by a vote of the Town Meeting in 1922, which made it the second town forest in the Commonwealth. However, through the mid-20th century, the need to protect public land in Groton, for conservation or recreation, except for a few small parks and fields, was minimal. Equestrian travel was very popular and there were few restrictions on where people could travel by horse.

It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that Groton began to preserve some of the parcels that provide the beautiful landscape we enjoy today. In the late 1980s and 1990s, conservation land purchases rapidly escalated. It was during this 20-year period that Groton doubled in population, subdivisions were developed, and many house lots were sold off from larger parcels to capitalize on the rising demand for homes in town. Many of the trails that had been used for decades, and in some cases centuries beforehand, were interrupted by these newly introduced boundaries. Fortunately, this trend was recognized.

Through the collective efforts of the Groton Conservation Trust (GCT), the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF), the Town of Groton Conservation Commission, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), and the Massachusetts Department of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) the town added (purchased or received as a gift) a total of nearly 3,276 acres, including over 47 miles of trails from 1980-2000.

Since 2000, conservation land purchases have slowed a bit and have become more strategic as land prices continued to rise. Many of the parcels were received from developers in exchange for them being able to develop subdivisions under Groton’s Flexible Development bylaw. Altogether, the same organizations listed above, plus a newcomer, Mass Audubon (2006), acquired more than 2,063 acres, including over 16 miles of trails that are now available for public use.