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Wills Hole Conservation Land
The Wills Hole Conservation Land and the contiguous Town Forest, located in North Acton near NARA Park, have been combined into one conservation area that comprises 90 acres. The 49 acres of the Town Forest was purchased in 1943 for $490 and was intended for the harvesting of timber and firewood by Acton residents. Covered with stands of red oak, white oak, red maple, and white pine, the Forest’s only unusual features are its outcrops of rock that seem to underlie much of the local region. Abutting properties contain former quarries. The remaining property includes 24 acres assembled from two land parcels purchased in 1969 and 1971 for conservation purposes. In 1999, the Captain Handley Road subdivision granted another 17 acres along its perimeter that provides a conservation corridor from Harris Road to the Wills Hole area. In addition to the Captain Handley Road entrance, there are two major entrances to this combined conservation area, one from Quarry Road, off Route 27, and the other from the Nagog Park Drive cul-de-sac, off Route 2A. All three entrances provide parking and kiosks where maps may be obtained. The 1.9-mile main loop (yellow-blazed) trail is easily accessible from this cul-de-sac and provides a direct and interesting route to Wills Hole and quaking bog, an area characterized by unusual landforms and flora. The approach trail to the bog traverses the top of a glacial esker, a sand and gravel ridge deposited by the meltwater stream that flowed beneath a melting Ice Age glacier. The trail along this narrow, raised landform might be mistaken for an abandoned roadway or railroad bed, but its curved path signifies its glacial origin. The esker is also a drainage divide—water on its northerly side flows eastward to Nonset Brook; water to its south flows southward to Wills Hole Brook. Both brooks empty eventually into Nashoba Brook. The esker terminates at a small hill covered with eastern white pine. Immediately to the west, is a 170-foot boardwalk, completed in the summer of 2000 by LSCom volunteers, that crosses the bog leading to the edge of the open water of Wills Hole. Wills Hole is a classic quaking bog. At its center, it is an open pond, but ringing the open water is a mat of floating sphagnum moss. The sphagnum mat is in turn ringed by a more upland zone of dense shrubs and trees. A quaking bog is an unusual environment that supports unique plant life. The bog waters typically are acidic and poor in the nutrients that plants need. The lack of nutrients fosters the growth of carnivorous plants that trap and digest insects and small animals to obtain the nutrients they require for growth. Plants of this type found at Wills Hole include the pitcher plant and the sundew. Other non-carnivorous plants on the sphagnum mat include American cranberry, leatherleaf, sheep laurel, and swamp loosestrife. Just a short distance upland from the sphagnum mat, shrubs and small trees, including black spruce, North American tamarack, and swamp azalea, are found. All these plants may be seen from the boardwalk.
 Drawing by Heather McElroyBeyond the white pine grove adjoining the bog’s boardwalk, the loop trail continues its circuit of the combined consareas, passing for a short distance along a paved trail at the perimeter of a new subdivision. Eventually, the trail passes close to Quarry Road, on the other side of which is NARA Park. At the Quarry Road entrance, a woods road with hardened surface transects the property directly to the Nagog Park Drive entrance, where overflow parking is available for large events at NARA Park. The loop trail does continue, however, on its roughly circular route beyond the woods road and eventually brings the hiker back to the Nagog Park Drive entrance. One or more secondary (blue-blazed) trails through the interior of the property are in process of being marked to make shorter walks through the area possible, and also to prevent walkers unfamiliar with the area from getting ‘lost’ in the tangle of small paths that developed during an earlier period of different use.
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