Weston Woods Preserve
Location and Description:
Location: East Winthrop, Maine
Property Description: Weston Woods includes 1,315 feet of undeveloped shoreline; forested, scrub-shrub, and emergent wetlands; 1,500 feet of perennial streams; and land designated as Inland Waterfowl and Wading Bird Habitat.Two rare plants have been identified on the property: Columbian water-meal (Wolffia columbiana) and pointed water-meal (Wolffia brasilensis).Weston Woods Preserve and Oatway Preserve together create the Little Cobbossee Preserve.
Directions: From Manchester: From the intersection of Route 202 and Route 17, drive 1.8 miles west on Route 202 to Old Village Rd. Turn right, then turn right again onto Case Rd. Drive 0.7 miles up the hill to the Preserve; parking will be on your right. From Winthrop: From the junction with Main St., take Route 202 east for 2.8 miles, then turn left onto Old Village Rd. After 0.4 miles, turn left onto Case Rd and drive 0.7 miles up the hill to the Preserve; parking will be on your right.
Usage
Allowable Uses: Hiking, nature observation, snowshoeing, biking, hunting. No motorized vehicles except snowmobiles are permitted seasonally on designated trails only. Dogs are allowed on a leash or under voice command. Please clean up after your pets.
Trails: Hiking trails at Weston Woods include Bedrock Spur, which leads to a rock ledge 0.1 miles from the parking area; Little Cobbossee Trail, which runs 0.4 miles from the top of the hill to the water; Deer Path, which winds along a brook for 0.2 miles after the snowmobile bridge; and North Shore Loop, a 0.3-mile loop trail.
The snowmobile trail, managed by the Hillandalers Club, leads down to the shore of Little Cobbossee.
Weston Woods Preserve. Norm Rodrigue
Weston Woods shoreline in winter. Norm Rodrigue.
History
The land around Little Cobbossee Lake has been valued by people for thousands of years. Cobbossee Lake was part of the Abenaki passageway between the Kennebec and Androscoggin rivers, and archeological artifacts suggest that people fished and hunted in the region as early as 7,500 years ago. The wild rice (Zizania palustris) in Little Cobbossee’s wetlands could have been a valuable food source for Native peoples, and may have been planted by Abenakis.
The first dams were constructed on Cobbossee Stream in the 1700s. The Cobbossee Outlet Dam was raised by eight feet in 1880, altering lake levels to present-day depths. These dams have also had an impact on fish passageways on Cobbossee Lake and Little Cobbossee Lake.
In Winthrop and most of southern Maine, more than half of the landscape was cleared for agriculture by the mid-1800s. The stone walls and scattered pasture trees found in the preserve are remnants of agricultural land uses that defined the region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Weston Woods is part of a larger parcel purchased in 1956 by Bob and Jim's parents, Lowell and Hope Weston. After Hope's death in 2019 at the age of 103, the brothers sold the remaining property at a discounted price to KLT.