On September 19 and 20, Harwich held its 50th Cranberry Arts & Music Festival at the Community Center on Oak Street. About 150 artisan crafters were expected, Sandy Neck Cider Co. was set to pour cranberry cider, and a drone show took the place of fireworks.
That Saturday, volunteers across town in Harwich Port were counting species at a cranberry bog that hasn't grown a commercial crop in years. Harwich Conservation Trust's first BioBlitz at the Robert F. Smith Cold Brook Preserve logged more than 250 species, including a Cooper's hawk, a pickerel frog, a brown-lipped snail, and shining sumac. Harwich's two newest walking trails are former bogs, and they are at different stages of the same restoration process. Cold Brook is in its third growing season. Hinckleys Pond is in its first full fall. If you walk both this month, you see the same land change over three years.
Two Bogs, One Method
Both projects used the same recipe and many of the same partners. At Hinckleys, crews removed the layers of sand that decades of cranberry farming had spread over the bog. Then they roughened the ground, a step called microtopography, so it looks more like a natural wetland. That woke up a native seed bank that had been dormant for a long time. Inter-Fluve worked on the design and SumCo Eco-Contracting did the construction at both sites.
| Hinckleys Pond – Herring River Headwaters Preserve | Robert F. Smith Cold Brook Preserve | |
|---|---|---|
| Stage this fall | First full autumn since the October 22, 2025 reopening | Third-year vegetation survey reported August 2026 |
| Restored area | 30 acres of retired bog plus pond shoreline | 44 acres of wetland and a mile of stream |
| Accessible trail | 0.9-mile All Persons Trail with pond overlook | Half-mile wheelchair-accessible loop |
| Total trails | 0.9 mile | About two miles |
| Parking | Headwaters Drive, about 800 feet off Route 124, 26 spaces | Harbormaster's Workshop, 203 Bank Street |
| Connects to | Cape Cod Rail Trail | Saquatucket Harbor watershed |
Both trails are surfaced with stabilized stone dust. The surface stays flat and even enough for wheelchairs and strollers, and it is also easy on anyone recovering from an injury or walking with an older dog.
Hinckleys Pond, Year One
The $1.9 million Hinckleys project started in March 2025 and reopened with a ribbon-cutting on October 22, 2025. In true HCT style, the ribbon was surveyor tape and the cutting was done with loppers. The preserve sits at the headwaters of the Herring River estuary. The project restored two retired bogs at either end of 174-acre Hinckleys Pond, and streams connect the pond to river herring spawning habitat in Long Pond and Seymour Pond. One of the two bogs, across the pond, belongs to Jake Brown and his family, who joined the rewilding effort.
For now, the plants here are mostly first growth. HCT's September 2025 survey recorded Canada rush, toothed flatsedge, and false water-pepper smartweed coming up in ground that had been bare sand a few months before. About 1,000 more plants went in around the site, including Atlantic white cedars. The benches along the loop follow a design that longtime HCT trustee Colin Leonard adapted from a standard landscape architecture handbook.
The newest addition was reported in an HCT post dated September 24, 2026. Volunteers installed 22 nesting boxes for bluebirds and tree swallows. HCT plans to track whether birds use them and how many nests succeed, but those results are still to come. The herring data is early too. Volunteer counters watch the run from April to June, and an HCT write-up describes one ten-minute count in which five fish entered the pond.
A few rules matter for an afternoon visit:
- Bikes stay off the trail. Tires cut ruts into the stone dust. Bike racks are at the parking lot and along the Cape Cod Rail Trail.
- Dogs must be leashed. A mutt-mitt dispenser and trash can are at the trailhead.
- Stay on the path. Areas along the trail were recently seeded, and the new plants help hold the trail edges in place.
Cold Brook, Year Three
Cold Brook shows what that new growth at Hinckleys is working toward. Restoring the Cold Brook bogs created four ponds along with the 44 acres of wetland and the mile of stream. In an August 20, 2026 post, HCT described a Woodwell team's third-year plant survey, which will re-survey the same plots over ten years. Spartina, seaside goldenrod, and native saltmarsh fleabane are now growing near Hoyt Road.
Wildlife is the other measure. In an HCT post dated January 16, 2026, the trust's board president said about 162 bird species had been recorded since bird counts began at the end of construction. In February 2026, a photographer caught an otter eating a fish there, and the camera on the preserve's artificial otter den has recorded both an otter and a Cooper's hawk.
The bigger result is downstream. Nitrogen flowing through Cold Brook ends up in Saquatucket Harbor, where it can cause harmful algae blooms. Town Meeting approved $2 million for the restoration in 2017, and the Town of Harwich Comprehensive Wastewater Management Plan estimates the partnership could save taxpayers up to $6 million by reducing the need for sewers. UMass Dartmouth researchers compared new samples with a baseline taken around 2008.
"Now, we're seeing more nitrogen attenuation here. So that means that less nitrogen is going out into the harbor, so this is working."
Oliveira, who sampled the Cold Brook ponds for UMass Dartmouth's Coastal Systems Program
The update didn't publish a number for that reduction, so for now it is a direction, not a figure. It also connects to the rest of town. Harwich is in the middle of Phase 3A sewer work around the Great Sand Lakes and parts of Queen Anne Road, which the Cape Cod Chronicle reported in July could take two to two and a half years and bring detours, lane closures, and one-lane traffic. Cold Brook is part of the plan to clean up the harbor too, and that part involves no torn-up roads.
Where the Berries Still Float
Retiring bogs hasn't ended cranberry farming in Harwich. It still has working bogs, and some can be seen from the same Rail Trail that leads to Hinckleys. Hall's Cape Cod Cranberries runs a working farm at 489 Depot Street in North Harwich and offers visits by appointment. Local harvest guides list the Depot Street bog as visible from the Cape Cod Rail Trail.
Ray Thacher farms bogs near Great Western Road, including one HCT owns at Sand Pond and leases to him. Those bogs can also be seen from the Rail Trail. Roadside parking there is very limited and not safe, so it is better to arrive by bike or on foot from a trailhead lot. Call the growers before planning a visit around a flooded bog.
On Factory Road, Leo and Andrea Cakounes still offer seasonal tours of their 17-acre organic farm. They have posted a notice that they are rebuilding fields starting with the 2026 season after losing many plants to weeds, so visitors will see construction but no floating berries at harvest this year.
On a single bike ride along the Rail Trail, you can pass active cropland, stop at the Hinckleys pond overlook, and then drive to Bank Street to see what three years of regrowth looks like. All three are part of the same cranberry history that the festival marked in September.
October on the Old Bogs
HCT's October calendar spreads several free or low-cost programs across both preserves:
- October 4, 9 to 10:30 a.m. Intro to Nature Journaling with artist Bernadette Waystack at Cold Brook, $10.
- October 10 and October 24, 9 to 10:30 a.m. Free Eco-Restoration Tours led by HCT Board President Tom Evans, at either Hinckleys or Cold Brook, covering the new All Persons Trails.
- October 15 and October 22, 4 to 5 p.m. Poetry Safari at Cold Brook, writing haiku and diamanté poems along the trail. Free.
- October 21, 9 to 10:30 a.m. Birdability Week birding walk on the half-mile accessible loop at Cold Brook, for birders of all levels and abilities. Free.
- October 24, 9 to 11 a.m. COASTSWEEP beach cleanup. Volunteers meet at Saquatucket Harbor, 715 Main Street in Harwich Port, and the morning includes a costume contest. Saquatucket is the same harbor that Cold Brook's ponds help protect.
The October 24 Eco-Restoration Tour and the COASTSWEEP cleanup overlap for 90 minutes, both starting at 9 a.m., so choose one.
Thinking about what a bog-side property looks like as a year-round home or a seasonal place to come back to? Amy at Cape & Island Home knows Harwich from Depot Street to Bank Street and is glad to talk through what's nearby. Let's Connect.
