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For more information about the Bay Circuit Trail, including free map downloads and directions for the entire route, visit baycircuit.org. Several segments of the trail are detailed in AMC's Best Day Hikes near Boston, 2nd edition. Download a map of the Bay Circuit Trail here (PDF, 6.7MB). For a timeline of Bay Circuit milestones, visit outdoors.org/bcttimeline.

The hum of traffic always fades. Even when it's still there, beyond the trees—Interstate 495, Route 2, the Mass. Pike—my mind filters out the buzz and focuses on the soundtrack of the Bay Circuit Trail. In Sharon and Concord and Hamilton it's the same: Songbirds sing and woodpeckers peck. Occasionally a turtle or fox stops in the path, listening to the crunch of my approaching feet. Only the periodic rumble of a train reminds me of Boston's presence.

From Plum Island in the north to Framingham in the west to Duxbury in the south, the Bay Circuit Trail and Greenway cuts an arc through Boston's suburbs. Ten thousand white plastic rectangles blaze the path. They steer hikers, runners, bikers, and skiers through woods and across farmland, over and around cranberry bogs and vernal pools. Boston’s skyscrapers pierce the horizon in the distance. A more traditional New England skyline emerges in the foreground: church steeples glowing white against brilliant foliage.

Shades of green and brown, accented by crumbling stone walls, define property lines. It reminds me of the patchwork appearance of the landscape from a plane. Trees and grass and furrowed fields create the varied textures that would be visible from above. The trail changes abruptly, too. A rocky scramble up a hill gives way to a pleasant, meandering single-track. A wide gravel path leads to a winding boardwalk over a swamp.

The Bay Circuit was a product of a particular time. It was conceived when there was still land around Boston to protect, outlived economic depressions and wars, and was realized before urban sprawl fragmented the region. Over almost nine decades it's been many things to many people: a recreation corridor, an open way, a greenbelt, a scenic motorway, a dam against sprawl. Now it's finally a reality.

"Oh Gee, what a day to go somewhere!"

It is the voice of little Larrie Jones as he spies the blue sky upward out of the window of a Columbus Avenue apartment on a sunny Sunday morning in late August.

"Say Dad, what's the matter with goin' out in the country for a good long hike?"

"Nothing, God knows, would suit me better," cries the tired head of the household.... "But where in the hell can we find this Eden on nine gallons of gasoline?"

Crisis in the Jones family. But little Larrie comes to the rescue. "See here, Dad, here's a book that tells all about it.... That's what this scheme's for—this Bay Circuit scheme—to get a string of places all around Boston so folks can always have a happy Sunday."

—Benton MacKaye, in a "Bay Circuit" draft, 1937

Benton MacKaye grew up in Shirley, Mass., 30 miles west of Boston. A childhood of local explorations inspired a life in forestry and regional planning. MacKaye understood that automobiles would reshape the landscape. He predicted urban sprawl and realized the need to protect special open spaces as a resource for the public. His multifaceted theories also involved using conservation land to contain sprawl, protecting the immediate parcels and everything that lay beyond.

MacKaye ensured his legacy by proposing the creation of the Appalachian Trail in 1921 and helping to get that monumental monumental project under way. "Here is marked the main open way across the metropolitan deluge issuing from the ports of the Atlantic seaboard," he later wrote. But another project captivated him for much of his career: the Bay Circuit, which he hoped would halt that deluge before it reached Shirley.

By 1925, MacKaye was focusing on Massachusetts. He may have conceived of the Bay Circuit then. That same year, a "Committee on the Needs and Uses of Open Spaces" set out to create a comprehensive plan for the state. Two committee members—Charles Eliot II and Henry Channing, both of The Trustees of Public Reservations (which later dropped the "Public" from its name)—have also received credit for the idea. Regardless, following an uncertain genesis, the parties worked closely on the project.

The committee employed MacKaye in 1927 to conduct a statewide study of open spaces. The Bay Circuit emerged as the top priority in his final report, but the Depression prevented immediate action. MacKaye was hired again in 1937. This time he wrote "The Bay Circuit," a slick report to inspire The Trustees' members.

The proposed circuit, a 120-mile semicircle, consisted of "places of little economic value." Protecting it from development would be easy, the report suggested. Yet even while MacKaye wrote, work was commencing on Route 128; Interstate 495 followed by mid-century. The highways hastened the process he hoped to halt. Boston sprawled north and west and south—and real estate prices climbed. Before any cheap land was protected, World War II pushed the Bay Circuit to the background.

Occasionally a new advocate repurposed the idea. "The joint schemes of enlarging the Parks District and developing the Bay Circuit would be united under a forceful title that...can be sold to the public," a state official wrote in 1944. "Such a title might be...War for World Freedom Memorial Bay Circuit." But even a patriotic repackaging didn't attract funding.

MacKaye maintained an interest long after his employment on the project ended. "I'm specially taken with our old friend, the Bay Circuit. How it takes me back to grand adventures," he wrote to The Trustees in 1954. "I'm glad the project is still going + look to see it one of your crowning projects."

Two years later, Charles Eliot II—the Bay Circuit's primary advocate for much of his 93-year life—won a small victory. Governor Christian Herter signed a bill implementing the Bay Circuit, though the legislation provided no funding. Nearly three decades passed before an unlikely figure found a solution to that problem.

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