Oak Hill Conservation Site

Oak Hill Conservation Site

Littleton Conservation Trust Littleton, Massachusetts 01460

Official Website
Oak Hill Conservation Site map

About this Location

Oak Hill is a place to stretch your legs and mind as you walk its trails. This parcel is comprised primarily of oak woodlands with many trails – some of which are old.

Look for the following features of interest:

Lookout Rock – 475 feet high, this rock provides a view towards the south and southeast. A joint LCT / LCC undertaking in 2011-2012, in which 28 tall trees were removed below the cliff, has reopened this scenic vista giving panoramic views. One can easily pick out the John Hancock and Prudential Tower buildings on the horizon on a clear day (26.5 miles away, compass heading 118° True).

Tophet Chasm – A temporary outlet carved out of the rock for an extensive glacial lake about 15,000 years ago. Oak Hill is the northern tip of a long ridge of hills called Shrewsbury Ridge by geologists. In glacial times, the ridge acted as the eastern shore of a vast glacial lake, Lake Nashua. Its northern shore was the face of the melting glacier. At one stage late in the history of the lake, the water found an eastern outlet through a low weak fault area on Oak Hill. Here the rushing stream fell to carve a deep chasm. The head of the chasm was an ancient waterfall 120 feet high, only 38 feet less than the mighty Niagara’s 158-foot drop. Today the falls are silent and the debris of the ages has filled part of the chasm floor so that the walls rise a somewhat lesser 80 feet – still enough to be impressive. The floor of the chasm contains a swampy area, known as Tophet Swamp. This quiet swamp, surrounded by steep bedrock cliffs, abounds in wildlife and vegetation. Dominant species include red maple, high-bush blueberry, hemlocks, black birch, ferns, and a sphagnum moss mat. (Tophet is an old term for “hell” or “place of fire.”)

Historic stagecoach roads – Two stagecoach lines crossed Oak Hill in the 1830s. The one from Acton entered Oak Hill at the present main entrance, skirted the hill just below the standpipe, and met the Lowell-Worcester route, which ran parallel to Harvard Road. They are now part of the hiking trails. You can note the grooves in boulders and ledges worn by the iron-bound wheels of the heavy coaches.

Oak Hill Electronics Laboratory – The US Government leased property here from 1958 to 1964. An Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory (AFCRL) receiving station used in radio propagation research was located inside the chain link fenced area off Fire Road 1. Nearby there are two sets of concrete piers that must have supported antenna towers.

Approximately seven miles of trails were last remarked in 2010. There are three principal trails marked red, yellow, and blue, 1.1 miles of orange marked link trails, and 0.8 miles of unmarked trails.

Notable Trails

The AllTrails website has a description and map of a hike at Oak Hill.

Content from Official Website