Last fall, I took my friends Tina Palmer and Dorothy Greene for a walk at Bay Farm. After the walk, I proposed the idea of hiking the southern loop of the Bay Circuit Trail. The full Bay Circuit trail is a 242+ mile walking trail stretching from Kingston and Duxbury around Boston up to Plum Island in Newburyport. The southern portion of the BCT has a 26+ mile loop that travels through Duxbury, Kingston, and Pembroke. With conflicting schedules and unforeseen circumstances, we only were able to complete the Kingston portion of the Bay Circuit Trail over 7 short walks before winter struck.
The BCT in Kingston is a treasure trove of natural beauty and historical landmarks. The notable feature that weaves through this whole section of BCT is the Jones River. The southern terminus of the trail is in Kingston at Bay Farm along Kingston Bay which is to where the Jones River flows. Walking slightly further along the trail will take you down to the Town Landing on River St. near the mouth of the river where Kingston residents can launch boats.
Continuing to the other end of River St. brings you to beautiful Mulliken’s Landing which was named after Robert Mulliken who was a long time Kingston resident active on both the Conservation Committee and Open Space Committee. Carry-top boats are able to launch from a dock after walking a few hundred feet along a boardwalk through a marsh.
Turning left onto Landing Rd., a short way, the BCT continues on a bridge over Stoney Brook, a tributary of the Jones River. A feasibility study was completed in 2025 to explore the possibility of removing a dam here so that American eel could utilize the brook, reduce flood risk, and potentially reduce mosquitoes in upstream swamp areas.
Shortly after crossing the bridge on the left is the Jones River Landing, home base for the Jones River Watershed Association. If you stop in here as you walk by, you might meet Pine DuBois who has been a tenacious environmental advocate for the river and its history for decades. At the Jones River Landing Boatshop, a group of volunteers are building a Kingston Lobster Boat, a boat first built about 150 years ago.
The next mile or so of the BCT goes by many historical sites in Kingston, The Major John Bradford Homestead, the Reed Community Building, the Faunce School, Evergreen Cemetery, and The First Parish Church before again reaching the Jones River at Elm St. where the Queen Anne style waterworks building built in 1888 is located.
A dam, located here for nearly a century, was removed in 2019. Immediately over the bridge to the left is the Jones River Trading Post which is currently an event venue but at one time held the E.P. Hurd Tack Factory. Not too long ago, Coughlin and Coughlin inhabited this building, where customers could wander through and purchase exotic items like ostrich eggs and beautiful ceramic stoves or they could pop a nickel in a player piano.
The BCT continues directly across the street through narrow root-laden trails at the Sampson Park and Faunce Memorial Forest. In the fall, the trails were dry. This time of year, they can be hard to navigate if water levels are high. At one point along these trails, we crossed an extremely rickety crooked wooden bridge that spans Furnace Brook, a tributary of the Jones River. The end of this section takes you out beside the northern side of a Kingston Water Department building located along South St.
The next mile or so of the BCT is along both South St. and then heading west along Route 106 -both of these streets are very busy. The beautiful part of hiking this section in the fall was witnessing the fall harvest of cranberries. The Jones River flows along the northern side of the bogs on the north side of Route 106.
After walking just past the cranberry bogs, the trail enters Hathaway Preserve. The BCT trail crosses Jones River in the Preserve. Other trails in this conservation area offer further exploration of the Jones River because more than a mile of the river flows through it.
The exit for the BCT trail from Hathaway Preserve north of the Jones River can be found along a section of power lines at Foxworth Ln. which then leads to Grove St. Here the hike continues east along Grove St. After a short way, the road goes over Pine Brook and then the MBTA track. The trail continues on Grove St. about another mile before entering the Cranberry Watershed Preserve on your right. Walking a couple hundred feet further along Grove St. instead of going immediately into this preserve, a large old culvert can be found on the left with the Jones River flowing through it. Last fall was the dry season so little water was flowing through it.
The Cranberry Watershed Preserve is 307 acres. The BCT has almost a mile of trail through it but the preserve has several more miles of other trails. A glimpse of the Jones River can be found at the edge of one of the old bogs. The trail in this area also goes through the woods by the playing fields at Silver Lake Regional High School. The culmination of the section is a long boardwalk in need of some repairs and a metal bridge over the Jones River. Exiting the preserve leads to a parking area on Lake St.
Crossing Lake St. here will take you to where the Jones River begins at the Forge Pond Dam. Walking up the hill towards Silver Lake Regional High School, the BCT takes a left onto Route 27 and then after ⅓ mile take a left onto Sheridan Dr. Walking a little further, look closely for BCT signage to cut between two houses on the right to enter Silver Lake Sanctuary.
Silver Lake Sanctuary contains 104 acres with trails that lead down to Silver Lake. The waters of Silver Lake naturally flow through to Forge Pond if not diverted to Brockton. The BCT continues through this beautiful property and then onto Bearses Lane, a dirt road leading back out to Route 27.
Just a few feet west on Route 27 is the Kingston/Pembroke town line which concludes the Kingston portion of the BCT. This whole Kingston section of the BCT, if going straight through is less than 10 miles, but it is great to wander in some of the preserves on additional trails to see the full beauty of these natural wonderlands, and with more time it would have been nice to linger in some of the historical buildings to learn more about the history of Kingston.
In April and May, the Jones River Watershed Association is looking for fish counters at the Forge Pond Dam. If interested, go to their website jonesriver.org. Kingston is celebrating its 300th anniversary. Check out the kingston300.com for more details and/or try to get a copy of “Tales of Jones River Village: Kingston’s 300 Years.”
Lastly, if interested in hiking the BCT, go to baycircuit.org and find both maps and map guides. The map guide is essential and even with the guide finding the trail, can at times, seem like a scavenger hunt when looking for the next trail marker.
I am hoping that Tina, Dorothy and I can complete the southern loop in 2026.