Chase Farm
the oldest house in Lincoln, and the wooden Moffett Mill, built in 1812 on the Moshassuck River as a machine shop that made and repaired tools and parts for farms and factories.
Near the start of the trail, there’s a short, flat gravel loop for dog walkers that I took to warm up. I walked along the circular path before heading north by climbing 45 steps made of railroad ties up a pretty steep ridge. At the top, the red-blazed trail wound through some thick brambles and trees.
At one point, two, full-sized deer jumped across the path about 30 yards ahead.
The trail led downhill between the backyards of two houses and followed a well-marked public easement across a paved road. It then continued down a gentle slope between several other houses to a small, wooden bridge over wetlands with a tiny pool to the left. A trail blazed with yellow diamonds that led to Chase Farm would have taken me to the left, but I decided to explore and went right on a side spur, which some maps call the Lonsdale Trail, as it followed a small stream before crossing a bridge.
To the right was a wooden corral and straight ahead was the backside of Randy Hien Field and Lonsdale Elementary School. I heard the shouts of some youngsters playing in the fields. I followed a paved path on the left for a few hundred yards and spotted two swans and about a dozen ducks swimming across a small pond.
From there, I retraced my steps, recrossed the bridge and picked up the yellow-blazed trail, which ran up and down small hills and under oak, maple and beech trees before reaching a long stone wall that lined the green, mowed meadows that make up Chase Farm.
How the Cow Pond was created
Taking a right, I followed the perimeter of the fields and saw several dog walkers a few hundred yards away in pastures divided by hedgerows and lines of box elder trees. When I reached some lowlands, a house and a road at the northern tip of the farm, I turned south and walked through the fields until I came to Cow Pond, which was dug as a source of water for the herd and in case of fire.
The reservoir was first dredged with horse-drawn plows and later expanded with a steam shovel and a bulldozer. At the southern tip of the pond, there’s a square cement drain that empties into underground pipes that once carried water to a barn at the bottom of the hill.
In the summer, the pond is a gathering place for dog walkers, and I’ve seen dogs splashing and cooling off in the water. But the Lincoln Conservation Commission,
which manages the preserve, cautions that the farm is not a dog park, and dogs must be leashed at all times. Any waste must be picked up and disposed of.
After studying the pond and the drainage system, I walked east along a ridge and through a tunnel of trees that had shed their leaves. I then turned south and reached a grassy overlook with a sweeping view downhill of the 90-acre farmland. I could see Lincoln Woods State Park far to the south.
Beneath the branches of a sapling, there’s a memorial to Brandon, nicknamed “Buddy,” inscribed with a quote from Helen Keller:
“What we have once enjoyed
We can never lose.
All that we love deeply
Becomes a part of us.”
There’s also a picnic bench there, and I took a rest while thinking about the area’s history I had read before I started out.
Home to four generations of dairy farmers
The surrounding land, once inhabited by the Narragansetts, was acquired by Thomas Arnold in 1661 and passed through several owners before Benjamin Ellery Chase bought the property in 1867. Four generations of the Chase family farmed the land and expanded their herd of Holsteins to about 100 cows.
When their barn was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, they bought the adjacent Butterfly Farm and became a producer, processor and retailer of dairy products, including home delivery of bottled milk. The Chase family sold the farmland to the Town of Lincoln in 1979 with the stipulation that it be preserved as greenspace.
After my rest, I walked downhill to a fence line that marked the western edge of the property and the border of a working farm. On my right, I saw cows and horses grazing on a far hillside, several sheep nibbling at the grass and a burro that stared and brayed at me.
The fence ran all the way to Great Road, which opened in 1863 and is one of the state’s earliest roads. Built along the Moshassuck River, the road was used in the 1800s by farmers who grazed dairy cows on the hillsides and the mill owners and manufacturers who powered their factories with the river’s rushing water. A short section of the road by the farm has been designated the Moshassuck River District.
I turned east along the road, walked through a large parking lot and passed the historic Hannaway Blacksmith Shop, which opened in the 1870s. Just ahead was the Pullen’s Corner School, a one-room schoolhouse that was built in 1850.
To the north, I entered open fields where the replica village for the second “Hocus Pocus” movie was built. But I found no evidence that it had ever been there.
I walked north through the fields on an old farm road and past a towering, majestic sycamore tree before turning right into an overgrown butterfly garden
2024 Rhode Island Land and & Water Conservation Summit at the University of Rhode Island. Registration required. rilandtrusts.org/summit.
Monday, March 11:
Cumberland Public Library at The Monastery. 6:30 p.m.
Monday, March 18:
Weaver Library in East Providence. 6:30 p.m. with walls, a fountain, benches and steps, all made of stone. I followed a path lined with small, rounded rocks through the garden and up a ridge, where I spooked a white-tailed deer that scampered into the brush. The path led uphill and back to the fields and up and down several knolls. I followed the edge of a pasture north until I reached the trail I had walked in on. I took it back to where I’d started.
In all, I walked about 2.5 miles in two hours. During my hike, I passed about a dozen dog walkers, several families and a couple of trail runners. Every time I’ve been to Chase Farm, no matter the season, there’s always been plenty of people attracted to the open fields, cart paths and Cow Pond, all of which are rich in history.
The Walking Rhode Island column runs every other week in the Providence Sunday Journal. John Kostrzewa, a former assistant managing editor/business at The Journal, welcomes email at johnekostrzewa@gmail.com.