Projects

Trails Connect | Quarry Trail

As part of a volunteer initiative for the Friends of the Blue Hills association, we carried out an on-site trail survey and GPS-based digital trail publication to help bring an important green trail back into public visibility.

The Quarry Trail is a green trail that connects Cunningham Park in the Town of Milton, MA with the Blue Hills. It makes it possible to hike all the way from Milton’s Cunningham Elementary School neighborhood through Cunningham Park, Quarry Hills and the Quarries Foot Path to reach Sawcut Notch Path,  St. Moritz Ponds, Skyline Trail, and the rest of the 125 miles of hiking trails in the Blue Hills. 

Highlighting the connection to be established between existing green spaces with existing trail networks

Quarry Trail, the connecting piece, was established as part of beginning development of the area of Quincy’s Quarry Hills in the late 1990s but has only ever been poorly and partially cleared and marked (see here for more background information).

The potential for improving the findability, legibility, and walkability of this trail is significant as it creates a walking connection to the popular Blue Hills hiking destination for residents of an entire neighborhood of Milton as well as residents on Quarry Hills, located in the City of Quincy, MA. 

Together with a fellow Friends of the Blue Hills association member we carried out an extensive survey of the trail as well as surrounding woodlands which uncovered a number of relevant connecting trails. With the help of GPS equipment we traced the Quarry Trail as well as these connecting trails that were previously uncharted and that establish an even more interesting overall set of extensions for both the Cunningham Park trail network as well as the Blue Hills trail network.

GPS trace from survey walk of unmapped trails to form the Quarry Trail connection between Cunningham Park and the Quarries Reservation

Outcome | Recommendations for Trail Route, Clearing and Signage

Based on our survey and GPS tracing we developed a map that charts the trail and its connecting legs, highlighting those areas that need attention in terms of clearing shrubs or other obstacles to facilitate wider use of the trail for hikers of different abilities.

Proposed trails based on existing trails and exploratory survey that revealed effective connecting trails to bridge Cunningham Park with Quincy Quarries Reservation and DCR Blue Hills Reservation and their trail networks

Based on our observations during the survey we also put together a map containing recommendations for new wayfinding and map signage to help hikers find the trail and help with orientation. The documentation was shared with the Friends of the Blue Hills to help faciliate further action.

Trail sections that need clearing for walkability
Suggested locations of wayfinding signage elements to help with findability, orientation, and navigation along the trail

Outcome | Digital Trail on OpenStreetMap

Prior to our survey digital maps contained no hiking trail connection between Milton’s Cunningham Park with the Blue Hills trail network. Based on the GPS traces recorded during our on-site trail survey we generated a cleaned 1-mile long trace and submitted the Quarry Trail trace together with two connecting legs and a connector piece to the Blue Hills trail network. These hiking trails are now documented in the OpenStreetmap (OSM) open source geographic database, publicly viewable at www.openstreetmap.org and will show up in hiking trail apps using OSM maps as these apps routinely update their map content.

Importing the raw GPS trace into Open Street Map’s editor to generate the missing trail segments of the Quarry Trail to be visible in the OSM open source maps

Outcome | Digital Trail Connecting Historic Site

As part of the survey we also discovered an existing but overgrown and digitally uncharted trail that branches off Quarry Trail at the Quarry Hills Sports Complex parking lot and leads to the Quincy Quarries Reservation. This reservation is an impressive landscape of historic industrial history in nature with its quarries. It is also the site of the Granite Railway Incline. This historic site is a remnant of the United States first commercial railroad (1826), which used horse-drawn cars to carry the massive granite blocks from the Quincy Quarries for the construction of buildings such as the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston via water transport on the Neponset River.

Historic Granite Railway Incline in the Quincy Quarries Reservation, now connected via the Quarry Trail and its extension trail directly from Milton’s Cunningham Park

Digital Trails for Stepping into Nature and History

The survey work for clearing and marking the trail is paramount and we hope that these efforts will be completed. However, the charting of this connecting hiking trail on the digital OSM map used by dozens of hiking apps is arguable just as significant if not even more so. Today’s wide use of smartphone-based hiking apps creates a visibility and discoverability of trails with a reach that goes far beyond the accidental discovery by people already at the location.

Quarry Trail has now been picked up and republished by popular smartphone hiking apps such as OutdoorActive and AllTrails
Walking/Hiking Routing between Cunningham Park in Milton and the Blue Hills Reservation hiking trail network, in applications based on Open Street Maps, makes now use of the Quarry Trail

We hope that by surveying, charting, and publishing this trail many walkers of all ages will enjoy this new route that provides a fantastic connection for an entire urban neighborhood to a the hiking trails of the Blue Hills as well as the historic landscape of the Quincy Quarries Reservation.