One of the crown jewels of the Duxbury trail system is the Bay Farm Conservation Area, an 80-acre preserve on Kingston Bay that is located in both Duxbury and Kingston. Originally a dairy farm, at one point it was the site of the Duxbury Playhouse which was a summer stock theatre with a revolving stage. The property contains artifacts from an 8,000 year-old Native American site, and pilgrim settlers were farming the land as early as 1627.

  Trails here are highly popular with residents from both towns because of the granite ledge outlook called Cedar Rocks, and also due to the pleasure of walking through meadow fields which are rare compared to our more common forest trails. From Cedar Rocks and the beach on its shoreline you can see Miles Standish Monument, Rocky Nook, Clark’s Island, Gurnet Light, Saquish, and the Jones River. The Bay Circuit Trail is the straight path from the parking lot to the beach. The most popular walking loop is 1.7 miles and follows the far-left trail to Cedar Rocks, and then follows the yellow trail to do the orange loop, and back to the yellow trail to the parking lot. 

  Despite the town putting in some wooden boardwalks to help with muddy conditions, regular visitors know the best time to visit Bay Farm is at least 2-3 days after it rains! For that reason, and to make this beautiful and popular site accessible to all, Duxbury is using a grant from the state to build an ADA-compliant pathway to Cedar Rocks. The accompanying map shows its approximate planned route in purple. The new handicapped access trail will be 8 feet wide, made of permeable material, and will have a platform on the right side of Cedar Rocks. It will allow handicapped access year-round (assuming no snow) and is expected to be constructed this autumn.

 Look for the 42nd Parallel granite marker which is on the latitude that is used as the border of 6 states, and see if you can find the cleverly hidden geocache on the property!