At Woodland Acres, remnants of the Massachusetts sheep industry abandoned in the 1800s can be observed in the numerous stonewalls running through the woods. Vernal Pools, pitch pine regeneration, and geological formations are just a few of the natural features to experience. Hikers can explore trail connections to conserved land.

Before English colonization, Pigeon Cove in Rockport was home to the Pawtucket and earlier Indigenous people, first as seasonal migrants to the on-shore and offshore fisheries and rookeries, and later as horticultural villagers. They also quarried blue quartz here and conducted communal game drives in Cape Ann’s woodland interior.

Pigeon Hill and Pool Hill were ceremonial gathering places for expressions of Algonquian spirituality. Local newspaper accounts describe how Indigenous groups continued visiting their ancestral sites in Pigeon Cove throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The agricultural practice of sheep grazing by English settlers left Pigeon Cove mostly deforested, and because the abandonment of the sheep industry came before the time of non-native invasive species that we know today, revegetation came back in the form of pitch pines and native shrubs, making this an unusual example of native regeneration.

There are parking and trail entrances on both Hillside Road and Woodland Road.