• Dogs must be leashed in parking area. Please dispose of their waste responsibly by using the waste barrel.
  
  
• Mountain biking permitted only on designated trails. All trails are closed to mountain biking March 1 to April 30, during muddy season.

The Trustees reserves the right to photograph or video visitors and program participants for promotional use, and usage of our properties implies consent. Find the full policy here.

Ravenswood contains many relics of Cape Ann history, from Native American hunting mounds and artifacts, to rock walls and cellar holes built by early settlers, to the part Old Salem Road that is now a park trail. Samuel E. Sawyer, a wealthy merchant who summered here, preserved this land. In 1889, Sawyer’s will created Ravenswood Park as a property “laid out handsomely with drive-ways and pleasant rural walks.” (He named the park after the castle in Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor.) After 104 years of dedicated management, they transferred the property to The Trustees of Reservations in 1993.

Mason A. Walton also shaped this place. He built a cabin here in 1884 and studied the area’s flora and fauna. He wrote several books, including “A Hermit’s Wild Friends,” and visitors came to hear him talk about nature. Look for the plaque that marks the spot in the woods where Walton built his cabin.

Property Acquisition History
Gift, with endowment, of The Trustees of Ravenswood Park in 1993. Additional endowment given through bequest of Edward Hyde Cox in 1998, and gifts of Dorothy Addams Brown.

Archival Collections
Archival material related to Ravenswood Park is available to researchers at the Archives & Research Center in Sharon, Massachusetts.

Forces of nature formed Ravenswood’s landscape. Thousands of years ago, ice chunks from melting glaciers created kettle ponds, bogs, and swamps. Glaciers also deposited rocks and soils over the Cape Ann granite, leaving boulders at irregular intervals and forming a long, low hill. Contemporary natural disasters have made their mark, including the 1938 hurricane, a 1947 forest fire, and the 1976 hemlock looper (a gypsy moth relative) infestation. Today, The Trustees are working to protect the park’s hemlock trees from the wooly adelgid, an invasive insect. Ravenswood is the northernmost home of the sweetbay magnolia tree, which is endangered in Massachusetts. Signs of wildlife abound in the woodlands and wetlands here, from pine vole tracks in the snow to the graceful circles of a red-tailed hawk overhead.

Vernal Ponds
These ephemeral pools appear when depressions fill with rising groundwater, rain, and snow melt. Because vernal ponds typically dry out for part of the year, fish do not inhabit them. During the spring, these ponds provide crucial breeding habitat for a variety of amphibians, such as wood frogs, spring peepers, and spotted salamanders, as well as fairy shrimp.