AMC Recommended Trips – McLennan Reservation (Easy hiking – Berkshires)
Source: Discover the Berkshires of Massachusetts
What you’ll see: Crumbling foundations and miles of stone walls combine with wild forests and very picturesque waterfalls to make McLennan Reservation one of the best-kept secrets in the Berkshires.
What you’ll experience:
- Difficulty: Easy
- Distance: 2.4-mile loop
- Elevation Gain: 450 feet
- Estimated Time: 3 hours
- Location: Tyringham and Otis
- Maps: USGS Otis Quadrangle
- Hale Meadow was once a beaver pond called Hale Pond. The pond drained when the dam was breached and the beavers left. What remained was a large swampy wetland that covered the basin of the pond. Sometimes beavers return to the site of an old pond, rebuild the dam, and impound the brook. That hasn’t happened at Hale Pond, and now the old beaver pond is a wet meadow.
What’s in the area:
- Stone walls
- Four marble columns, which is all that remains of The Marble Palace built by Robb de Peyster Tytus and his wife, Grace Henop, who later married John McLennan
- Hale Meadow, filled with wildlife including deer, black bears, coyotes, and bobcats
- 1,500-acre estate-farm that was especially noted for its superior maple syrup. Even today the numerous taps and lines that link the scores of roadside sugar maples attest to both the enduring tradition of sugaring and the value of sugar maples to the area.
Getting There
- From Lee: From the Mass Pike (Exit 2) in Lee, take MA 20 south, then quickly bear right onto MA 102 west. Take an immediate left onto Tyringham Road (Main Road) and follow this to Tyringham Center.
- From Tyringham Center, follow Main Road south for 2.0 miles to Fenn Road (unpaved). Park on the side of Fenn Road. Avoid parking on the lawn. The reservation entrance is reached by walking 0.25 mile up Fenn Road.
