A Grid-Shaped Meadow - Corner of Elm and Spring Streets

Walking further up the street, at the intersection of Elm and Spring we’re entering an area once known as Hubbard Meadow after its owners, the Hubbard family. On a map, you can see it’s the only neighborhood in town with a neatly laid out grid pattern, and that’s because it was an early housing development mapped out by the family in the early 1800s. I have more to say about Mr. Hubbard in tour #3 when we talk about the public library.

In 1899, John E. Hubbard bequeathed to the city a 125-acre parcel of land in the hills above the Meadow, to create a "preserve wilderness" as he phrased it, for future generations. This became Hubbard Park, and there is an access road to it at the end of Spring Street. The park is another of those destinations that is so easily missed by visitors, but so worth a visit. It’s a forested, 4-season recreation area with 7 miles of hiking and skiing trails, picnic shelters and Hubbard Park Tower, a stone observation tower that looks medieval but was built in 1915. The park is accessible from various points in the city. You can drive up to it via Spring Street, but if you’d like to get there with a fairly easy hike, there is a switchback trail behind the State House that leads directly up to Hubbard Park Tower.