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Photographs of Development Area
Here's the old causeway now, looking east from near the driveway to the Theater Arts Building behind Eliot Hall. The old causeway has provided access to the woods since at least the early 1700s, when references to it start appearing in deeds, according to Jan Buerger.
Click here for a medium
view or a larger one.
This would be replaced by a 300 x 30-foot, steel-grate & concrete bridge with 100-foot transition zones (i.e., grading a ramps) at each end. It would be large, expensive, and ugly.
Below is the cart path looking west down the hill toward the old causeway. This is in the middle of the project area. The undergrowth has been cleared (until a cease and desist order was issued by the town), and you can see the septic test pits (which the Concord Historical Commission wrote about disapprovingly, as the archaeological investigations at the Paul Adams site could be made more difficult thereby) and various stakes. I'd estimate this is about where the tennis courts are now planned. The Paul Adams farmstead is to the left. (Photos by Jan Buerger.)
CLICK HERE for a larger
version (40K) than the above.
Most folks don't realize how DEEP into the woods the soccer fields now are proposed to be. They would be aligned N-S (end to end) on the flattish land 30 yards to the EAST (uphill) of the Bateman's Pond cart road, after the cartroad/ cross-country trail turns to the south at the Paul Adams place.
Above profile shows the ugly "rice paddy" appearance of the project (current in February 2005). The bridge behind Eliot Hall is at the left, and the profile shows the stormwater detention pond, the lower and upper tennis courts, the soccer fields, and that the cuts that will cause 70,000 tons of earth moving.
Below photo was taken ten years ago by Jan Buerger, and we think it is along this stretch of Bateman's Pond cart road near the corn hills. This old road is in Development Zone B. The corn hills are on both sides of the road.
And click here for a larger 500
pixel version [16K].
(Caption: This wigwam was built by Middlesex students
in 1998(?) on one of the promontories overlooking Bateman's Pond. For a larger
version, [ click here ]. Though this
spot would be in a conservation restriction zone, the soccer fields would be a
hundred yards further east into the Woods (i.e., behind the photographer).
For general pictures of the Estabrook Woods, including the shoreline of Bateman's Pond, see the Estabrook Woods gallery.
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