Dan's Tackle Box

World's End, Hingham, MA

Native Americans hunted here, and fished the bordering Weir River 8,000 years ago.

Colonists dammed the salt marsh connecting the island in Boston Harbor to the mainland transforming it into a peninsula. They then cleared and farmed it.

In the 19th century well to do Bostonian John Brewer purchased the land for estate farming. Some years later he contracted Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Boston's Public Garden and New York's Central Park, to fashion the landscape from open farmland into tree lined residential subdivision totaling over 150 house lots. The homes were never built but Olmstead's landscape design perpetuates today, preserved by The Trustees of Reservations.

In the 1940s the United Nations was interested in headquartering here but wound up in New York City.

In the 1960s it was proposed as a nuclear power plant site until the community and The Trustees committed to conserving and aquiring this valuable natural resource.

Ice Pond on the property is a natural depression surrounded by granite bedrock, possibly spring fed. In the first part of the 20th century the Brewers dredged the small freshwater pond and erected an earth dam to provide ice for their estate.

251 acres of woods, carriage trails, rolling meadows, ocean shorelines, unobstructed and expansive views of downtown Boston come together all in one place. I have to assume this is what one fancies the World's End.

The parking lot on Martins Lane opens at 8am, closes at sunset, and costs a few bucks. A season pass or daily parking can be purchased from The Trustees, the proceeds of which go to preserving this wild place.

Use a 3/4 ounce jighead with trailer, swimbait, spoon, crankbait, popper, or striper rig with real bait like mackerel, eel, squid, or clam.

The rocks along Rocky Neck will hold stripers, and the mouth of and along the Weir River are good spots.

Trail map