Westport’s Mill Pond Conservation Area a Nice Place to Chill

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and sometimes you want solitude, the kind of solitude only Mother Nature can provide.

I've got a recommendation.

Westport's Mill Pond Conservation Area is only 88 acres in size, with 0.25 miles of trails. You won't build leg muscle by hiking or climbing or worry about getting lost in the woods, but you will find a few minutes of solitude; a brain break.

The Westport Land Conservation Trust website says, "Mill Pond Conservation Area provides a unique experience among our destination properties."

The Trust says, "An orchard adjacent to the parking lot was established by volunteers in 2015." The trees in the orchard provide "holistically grown apples, peaches, and pears for visitors."

The site says, "A trail winds through the orchard, providing a beautiful outdoor experience that includes ample open space for gathering."

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The Westport Land Conservation Trust says, "An additional trail climbs a small ridge behind the meadow and drops down to the bank of the Westport River."

You can hear the river before you see it as it rushes over rocks left from an old mill dam from years gone by. Part of the mill foundation remains on the shoreline, which straddles the Westport-Fall River border.

Once you reach the river bank, the outside world seems miles away.

When the two-mile-thick Wisconsin Glacier receded from the area we now know as Westport and Dartmouth, it left behind moraines and ridges formed by the retreating ice. You can see examples of the moraines and ridges at Dartmouth's Destruction Brook Woods and the Mill Pond Conservation Area.

The Mill Pond Conservation Area is at 62 Reed Road in Westport.