Pembroke's Birch Street Playground and Marcus Ford Park features a large, fenced-in playground with play structures for both younger and older children, plus swings, slides, and a climbing web. A 0.08-mile paved trail loops inside the fenced play area for stroller and wheelchair access, and a separate half-mile trail heads out into the woods beyond the parking lot and baseball field.
Canoe Club Preserve is a quick half mile loop trail located right off Rt 139 in Pembroke. The trail is a perfect addition to a weekend or weekday as it is probably right near all your errands or commute. The trail entrance is perhaps a bit concealed. The trail entrance is located behind Pembroke Pointe (home to Orta ) and you'll see a sign designating parking and a trail entrance on the side of the parking lot.
Pembroke's Furnace Pond Beach features a large pond in a neighborhood setting, ideal for fishing, paddling, and seasonal ice skating. Furnace Pond was once known as Herring Pond and takes its current name from one of Plymouth Colony's earliest blast furnaces, built nearby in the 1700s -- it later became a seasonal destination with a children's summer camp, bathing beaches, and even a Finnish bath house before the shoreline was developed with year-round homes.
Herring Run Park in Pembroke is a large, grassy, town-owned park straddling both sides of Herring Brook off Barker Street. A well-placed bench sits right beside the brook close to the parking lot, and there is also a picnic area with three tables across in the open field. April and early May is the best time to visit, when herring are running upstream and you can actually watch them in the stream -- though any sunny day works well for a picnic here.
The Indian Head River Fish Ladder sits at Ludden's Ford Park, straddling the Pembroke and Hanover line. This large concrete structure helps migratory fish like herring and shad scale an obsolete mill dam on their way upstream to spawn each spring, though unfortunately it is not a very effective one -- large numbers of fish are still regularly seen stuck downstream, unable to make it over. The impoundment behind the dam is popular for catch-and-release fishing and non-motorized boating.
Shepherd's Forest Trails is a 139 acre parcel of land in Pembroke. The nested trail network is sandwiched between Great Sandy Bottom Pond and Indian Head Pond.
Little Sandy Bottom Pond is a small pond in a neighborhood setting in Pembroke, ideal for swimming, skating, and paddling for residents and non-residents alike. Fishing is permitted here too, in a quieter, more low-key setting than some of the town's bigger ponds.
The Pembroke side of Ludden's Ford Park is 34 acres of open meadow and forested upland on West Elm Street, right on the banks of the Indian Head River. It is hard to imagine now, but only about 150 years ago this was a booming industrial site -- the Clapp Rubber Works, founded in 1873, was once the largest of its kind in the country and stood on both sides of the river. Look for remnants of the old factory in the woods just south of the walking trail.
Misty Meadows is a 153 acre parcel of land in Pembroke. The trail network abuts the Willowbrook Preserve maintained by the Wildlands Trust. The trail network is definitely not the most travelled in the area and can be a bit concealed.
Brick Kiln Yard was once a busy shipyard on the North River in Pembroke, active from 1730 to 1848, with two separate yards often building three or four vessels side by side. The Boston Tea Party ship Beaver was built here, along with the Maria, which appears on the Pembroke town seal, and the largest vessel constructed at the site, the 375-ton Laura Ann. There is no public access on land; the historic marker here is best viewed from the water.
The Oldham Pond Town Landing provides public access to the 189-acre Oldham Pond for swimming, paddling, and small motorboats, open to both residents and non-residents. This town-owned facility includes a seasonal staffed swimming beach, a concrete boat ramp, fishing piers, picnic tables, and a playground, with about 20 free (no-sticker-required) parking spaces, though trailer parking is not permitted. Oldham Pond feeds Furnace Pond downstream, and both are part of the Herring Brook watershed that alewife herring travel through each spring to spawn.
The wide, well-maintained trails at Pembroke High School and Hobomock Elementary extend for 3 miles through woods and wetlands, including a section of the Bay Circuit Trail and the cross-country running route for Pembroke High. Look for old stone walls and a historic cart path along the way. The property is named for Hobomock, a Pokanoket Wampanoag warrior who lived alongside the Plimoth Colony settlers in the 1620s.
Stetson Pond Beach in Pembroke features a small pond in a quiet setting, ideal for swimming, paddling, and seasonal ice skating for residents and non-residents alike. Fishing is permitted, but not in the designated beach area. The pond was likely named for a family that settled nearby on Plymouth Street, and its shoreline has transitioned over the years from summer cottages to year-round homes.
Tubbs Meadow is a 106 acre conservation property located in Pembroke. The 2.7 mile trail network is surrounded by historic cranberry bogs. Similar to other restored cranberry bogs like Crowell Conservation in Duxbury, Tubbs Meadow offers a wonderful way to see wildlife from a different perspective.
Pembroke's Tucker Preserve is a 78.6-acre Wildlands Trust property with a looping network of trails through the woods, crossing two streams and offering several captivating views of the Indian Head River. At the western boundary there is a large grove of hemlock -- be sure to peer down from the top of the ridge into the river gorge, an enchanting spot that has drawn comparisons to Western Massachusetts or New Hampshire more than the typical South Shore landscape.
The 88-acre Veterans Commemorative Town Forest in Pembroke features about 3 miles of woodland trails on a hillside overlooking Silver Lake, with a section of the Bay Circuit Trail running through the property. The views of the lake -- one of Massachusetts' official Great Ponds and the 12th largest natural lake in the state -- are the real draw here.
Willow Brook Farm is a Wildlands Trust property located in Pembroke off Route 14. The property consists of 127 acres of unique landscape and just under 3 miles of trails. One of the best features of the property is the Tower located on the edge of a freshwater tidal marsh. The view from the top enables visitors to birdwatch and get a brand new perspective of the landscape. The area is extremely productive for wildlife and conserves an unusual freshwater tidal marsh, a habitat type of both state and global significance. Tidal fluctuations can be observed here, some 11 miles upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. Within the valley lies a wilderness of more than 2,000 acres, which is a headwater area of the North River, and critical to water quality downstream. This unspoiled area, in which no development can be seen, is surprising given that the valley is surrounded by suburban towns and is only 30 miles from Boston. The diversity and interesting topography encourages visitors to return often to sample the changing seasons.
