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Chatham Conservation Foundation: Preserves & Trails

The Chatham Conservation Foundation is a nonprofit land trust that protects open space across the town of Chatham, Massachusetts, and keeps a network of public trails open for anyone to walk. It owns or holds conservation restrictions on land ranging from pine and oak woodland to salt marsh and pond frontage, and it maintains marked trails on several of those properties for public use.

Visitors can walk these trails without paying a fee or booking a reservation. The organization also opens its historic headquarters for seasonal docent-led tours, hosts volunteer stewardship days, and depends on membership dues and donations to keep buying and protecting land before it can be developed.

What Is the Chatham Conservation Foundation?

The Chatham Conservation Foundation, known locally as CCF, is a donor-supported community land trust chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1962. By its own account, that makes it the first private land trust on Cape Cod, predating most of the regional conservation groups that now protect land in neighboring towns.

  • The Foundation describes itself as "a nonprofit, donor-supported, community land trust that preserves open space in perpetuity for the benefit of the people, plants, animals, and ecosystems of Chatham, through acquisition, stewardship, education and advocacy."
  • CCF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt since 1963, which means it operates independently of Chatham's town government. The town has its own Conservation Commission and its own separate set of municipal conservation areas, including Sylvan Gardens and Forest Beach Conservation Area. CCF and the town work as partners on habitat protection and trail access, but they are two distinct organizations with separate landholdings.
  • A small staff, led by an executive director and including a land stewardship director and a land stewardship technician, runs day-to-day operations, with a volunteer board of trustees setting policy. The Foundation reports membership currently around 700, a base that funds most of its acquisition and stewardship work.
  • Education is part of that mission alongside acquisition. In 1968 CCF published "A Beachcomber's Botany," a 158-page illustrated guide to the plant life found in Chatham's marshes, shorelines, and uplands, written by Loren C. Petry, Cornell professor of botany emeritus, with illustrations by Marcia Gaylord Norman. The Foundation had already published Norman's companion volume, "Treasures of the Shore: A Beachcomber's Botany," earlier that decade.

The Foundation's History, From Charter to Today

CCF's founding traces back to Robert McNeece, a Chatham Selectman who wanted a way for residents to donate land for conservation without giving it to a government body. He worked with John Manson and retired Army General Lucius Clay to charter the organization in 1962.

Seventeen life members signed on at the start, alongside initial pledges of ten acres of land, and Dorothy W. Smith donated the first parcel, a piece of Fox Hill Island in Pleasant Bay.

Several milestones since then have shaped the Foundation into its current form:

  • In 1967, CCF began using conservation restrictions, a legal tool that lets a landowner keep title to their property while permanently limiting how it can be developed. The Foundation reports holding deeded restrictions on 45 parcels of beach and wetlands totaling 211 acres.
  • In 1976, Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank gifted the Josiah Mayo House to CCF after buying the property two years earlier. The house became the Foundation's headquarters.
  • In 2014, CCF ran a capital campaign to buy the Twine Field, a rare native sandplain grassland, and held the property until Chatham's town meeting authorized the town's purchase of it. The 7.5-acre meadow is now a Town conservation area, with the Town holding care and custody and CCF holding the conservation restriction that protects it.
  • In 2022, the Foundation marked its 60th anniversary with a significant expansion of its guided trail-walk programming and the creation of the Mill Pond Overlook Trail, which the Cape Cod Chronicle reported was open to the public in July 2024.
  • In 2023, CCF spearheaded the reintroduction of town-wide Earth Day events, coordinating a roadway cleanup, nature walks, children's programming, a film screening, and seedling giveaways with other local groups.

Across that history, the Foundation has grown from a handful of donated acres to an inventory of 224 parcels of upland, beach, pond, and marsh. CCF's own pages put the protected total at roughly 800 to 820 acres.

Preserves in the Chatham Conservation Foundation's Portfolio

Not every CCF property is open to the public. Some parcels are too small, too fragile, or too isolated to support foot traffic, so the Foundation restricts access to protect the habitat. Others were built with public trails from the start. A sample of the portfolio shows the range:

  • Barclay's Pond, a 47-acre parcel near Queen Anne Road with a walking trail through pine and oak forest and views of the pond, is open to the public. The trailhead is off Old Queen Anne Road, which is a separate street, so check the trail map before you set out.
  • Fox Hill Island, a 2.5-acre island in the Bassing Harbor area of Pleasant Bay, reachable by boat or from the Strong Island Road town landing, open to the public.
  • Frost Fish Creek, an 84-acre corridor running from Route 28 southwest to Meadowbrook Road, with a trail that follows the creek into forested upland, open to the public.
  • Strong Island, an upland island property in Pleasant Bay with a large sheltered beach on its north side and trails with expansive ocean and Pleasant Bay views, open to the public except for a three-acre private reserve at the northwestern end.
  • Goose Pond, a 23-acre parcel bordering the pond on its south and east sides, with no public access.
  • Muddy Creek, an estuary on the Harwich border where CCF holds both owned land and a conservation restriction, with no public access.
  • The Nickerson Restoration Site, a 1.4-acre parcel where CCF is removing invasive vegetation and replanting natives on the site of an archaeological dig at the roughly 1664 homestead of William and Anne Busby Nickerson. The Foundation plans to open a short public walking trail once meadow restoration is complete.
  • Herring Run, a fenced parcel of just under an acre that CCF describes as the site of Chatham's only active herring run, with access limited to within the fenced area.
  • Ridgevale Beach Hills, a 19-acre former cranberry bog off Cranberry Lane in South Chatham, with no public access.

This mix of open and closed parcels reflects how land trusts typically operate. Protecting ecologically sensitive ground matters more than making every acre walkable.

Public Trails You Can Walk Right Now

CCF maintains marked trails and posts trail maps for five properties. Each has its own terrain and distance, so visitors can pick a walk that matches their time and interest:

  1. Strong Island: 1.7 miles over soil surface and beach sand with modest hills, covering 75 acres of pine and oak woods, beach, and salt marsh.
  2. Frost Fish Creek: 1 mile over soil tread with some hilly sections, covering 50 acres of pine and oak woods, salt marsh, shrub swamp, and wooded swamp.
  3. Barclay's Pond: 1.5 miles over hilly soil tread, covering 30 acres of pine and oak woods around coastal plain ponds.
  4. Mill Pond Overlook: 0.5 miles round trip over a woodchip and soil surface with mild hills, covering 9 acres of salt marsh, coastal bank, and pine and oak woods.
  5. Morris Island Trail (Monomoy): 1.5 miles over soil, beach sand, and road, covering 35 acres of beach, dune, salt marsh, and pine and oak woods.

Parking is limited at each site and marked on the individual trail maps. CCF's trail rules keep the land in good condition for both wildlife and future visitors: keep to designated paths, keep dogs on leashes no longer than six feet, pack out all trash, leave plants and wildlife undisturbed, respect neighboring property, and skip the motorized vehicles, bikes, fires, weapons, hunting, dumping, and camping that damage sensitive habitat.

Chatham Conservation Foundation Trails Versus Town Conservation Areas

Visitors researching Chatham conservation areas often encounter a mix of Foundation-owned and town-owned land, and the two are easy to confuse. CCF properties such as Strong Island and Frost Fish Creek belong to the Foundation itself.

Sylvan Gardens and Forest Beach Conservation Area, by contrast, belong to the Town of Chatham. CCF's own guide to Chatham town trails points visitors toward Sylvan Gardens among the town-owned properties worth a walk, though it does not cover Forest Beach.

The Sylvan Gardens Conservation Area sits on Old Main Street in West Chatham on a compact 9.5-acre site with pond overlooks and spring blooms left over from Rolf Sylvan's former Lower Cape Nursery. The town bought the property in 2004 and manages it in partnership with the nonprofit Friends of Sylvan Gardens, whose compressed-stone path to the pond meets Americans with Disabilities Act standards and is the only such facility in any Chatham conservation area. 

Forest Beach Conservation Area, on the other hand, sits on Nantucket Sound in South Chatham and is one of the Town's conservation areas. Its salt marsh and barrier beach setting make it a strong stop for shorebird and osprey watching. The Town says it owns approximately 1,000 acres of conservation land across all of its holdings.

CCF, the Town's Conservation Commission, and the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, which lists CCF among its member land trusts, use different funding models but share the same broad goal of keeping Chatham's open space intact.

Volunteering With the Chatham Conservation Foundation

CCF runs several volunteer tracks, and none require prior conservation experience:

  • Stewardship Volunteer Days happen once or twice a week each spring, summer, and fall, typically on Thursday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Tasks include planting native species, removing invasive plants, trimming trails, and garden work.
  • Property Monitoring volunteers inspect an assigned property twice a year, noting and reporting stewardship concerns and wildlife observations.
  • Mayo House Docents lead visitors through CCF's historic headquarters in two-hour shifts running from May through December. Training is provided, so no background in local history is required.
  • Event Support volunteers help staff fundraisers, environmental fairs, farmers market tables, and community events such as Earth Week, Oktoberfest, and the Christmas Stroll.
  • Wildlife and Plant Monitoring suits self-directed volunteers with a background in ecology or birding. Projects include bird inventorying and wildlife camera surveying.

Anyone interested can fill out CCF's online volunteer form, and staff follows up to schedule an orientation.

Membership, Donations, and Planned Giving

CCF depends almost entirely on member dues and donor gifts to fund land purchases, trail maintenance, and staff salaries. The Foundation offers several ways to contribute:

  • Membership is available through an online form or by mail, with dues supporting the Foundation's general operating budget.
  • Annual donations can be made through CCF's website or mailed as a check to its 540 Main Street office.
  • Memorial and tribute gifts let donors honor someone's memory or celebrate an occasion with a contribution to conservation.
  • Land donations and conservation restrictions may qualify the donor for income, estate, or gift tax savings, and CCF encourages anyone considering this route to consult an attorney, tax advisor, or other professional familiar with these arrangements first.
  • Planned giving, including bequests, gifts of IRAs, and gifts of life insurance, supports the Foundation's long-term work and its Land Stewards for Tomorrow fund, which expands its land stewardship and restoration work.
  • Business sponsorships support CCF's Annual Meeting and its printed newsletter, The Bulletin.

Donors who want to direct a gift to a specific fund can note the purpose in the comments box on the donation form.

Planning a Visit to Chatham Conservation Foundation Preserves

A little planning makes any of CCF's public trails easier to enjoy:

  • Check the individual trail map before heading out, since parking areas are small and specific to each property.
  • Wear closed-toe shoes on the hillier trails, such as Barclay's Pond and Strong Island, where soil tread can get uneven after rain.
  • Bring insect protection in the warmer months, since coastal scrub and marsh edges support active tick populations.
  • Keep dogs leashed at six feet or shorter and carry out any waste, as CCF's trail rules require.
  • If you want to add the Foundation's headquarters to the trip, the Josiah Mayo House at 540 Main Street opens for docent-led tours seasonally beginning in May. Check the current schedule before visiting.
  • Pair a CCF trail with a nearby stop. Visitors interested in Chatham's osprey population will find good viewing near several of the Foundation's marsh-front properties, and anyone planning a longer outing can check the broader Cape Cod hiking trail guide for routes beyond Chatham.

The Chatham Conservation Foundation's Place in the Bigger Picture

More than sixty years after its charter, the Chatham Conservation Foundation still runs on the same basic model: acquire land, protect it permanently, and let residents and visitors walk it.

Its portfolio now sits alongside the Town of Chatham's own conservation areas and the wider network covered on the Chamber's conservation and preservation page, giving anyone who wants to explore Chatham's natural side several starting points depending on how far they want to walk and how much history they want with the view.

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