Why this ride
Reservoir overlooks and low-traffic forest roads in central Massachusetts. The road: MA-9, MA-202 and local roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Quabbin Reservoir Rim
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 93 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 1 h 39
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Belchertown
Belchertown is a small town of green commons and white clapboard houses, and its unusual claim is that it sits beside a lake that was made by erasing four towns. The Quabbin Reservoir, to the north and east, was created in the 1930s to supply drinking water to Boston, a hundred kilometres away. To build it, the state cleared the Swift River valley of its people. The towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott were disincorporated, roughly twenty-five hundred people were relocated, houses were moved or demolished, and cemeteries were dug up and reburied elsewhere. The valley was filled over several years, and the reservoir became one of the biggest man-made water supplies in the United States.
2. New Salem
New Salem is a hill town in the old sense: a scatter of farms and old houses strung along a ridge in the north-central part of Massachusetts, with no real centre and not much commerce. It sits just above the western shore of the Quabbin Reservoir, which is the thing that explains the landscape. In the 1930s the state flooded the Swift River valley to give Boston its water, and four towns, Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott, were disincorporated and cleared out. The reservoir that resulted is huge, roughly eighteen miles long, and the forest that surrounds it has been left to grow back with very little interference.
3. Petersham
4. Ware
Ware sits on the Ware River in the middle of Massachusetts, a brick mill town that never quite became a tourist stop and is better company for it. The river powered the factories that built the place, and you can still read that history in the long mill blocks and the tidy grid of streets running down toward the water. For a rider it is the logical doorway to the Quabbin country, the big reservoir that lies a short hop to the west.
5. Back to Belchertown
Return visit. Read the place description above.
More motorcycle rides nearby
- Quabbin Reservoir Road · 60 km
- Pioneer Valley and Hilltowns · 616 km
- Connecticut Valley Hill Towns · 54 km
- Mohawk Trail and Deerfield Valley · 91 km