WOMPATUCK SP

WOMPATUCK STATE PARK
Union Street
Hingham
781-749-7160

RATINGS:

Novice:
Intermediate:
Advanced:

Located just a 35-minute drive from downtown Boston, Wompatuck State Park offers 262 wooded campsites (140 of them with electricity), 12 miles of paved bicycle trails, and many miles of wooded bridle paths and hiking trails. The park is very popular with trailer campers. Fishing is allowed in the Cohasset Reservoir. A boat ramp is provided for car-top boats, but boat trailers are not allowed.

Wompatuck State Park offers an extremely varied riding experience to area mountain bikers.

Wompautuck is bisected by Union Street. In the past most of the off-road bicycling was done on the right side of Union Street where the majority of the park’s unbroken woodland exists. But, in the last few years, the park’s staff, aided by area mountain bikers, has been hard at work creating an entirely new network of singletrack trails on the left side of the park in some areas recently reacquired by the State.

“Wompy” as the locals refer to it, is a great place to ride. It contains the greatest number and variety of singletracks in the south of Boston area.

Some of the singletracks, especially the newer ones, are fast and swoopy while some of the others remind one of long distance trials sections. The latter are constantly busy as you never seem to go in a straight line for more than 50 feet or so, and never seem to stop hopping logs, dodging trees or riding over rocks.

Prospect Hill is the largest hill in the forest. It has 4 routes to the top, three of which are singletracks. And one of these has the longest section of switchbacked singletrack in the state.

Wompy has a large campground with 450 sites. There’s a 10 mile paved bicycle trail that is also a favorite of area rollerbladers. And many miles of additional, flat, automobile-free paved roads that attract familes with young children.

Every Monday night, in season, there is a mountain bike time trails. Two Turkey Runs are also held in the forest each year.

Wompatuck is one of the sites in the NEMBA/MERLIN Trail Maintenance Series. In addition to building bridges and erosion control projects, like the state’s, “longest switchback trail,” TMS volunteers are actively involved in creating the extensive system of new singletrack.

Wompatuck State Park abuts Cohasset’s Whitney Thayer woods, a Trustees of Reservations property that allows mountain biking on a network of well maintained gravel paths. One of Wompy’s trails leads right into Whitney Thayer, and covering both areas on the same day would make for a very lengthy ride.

Wompy’s trails can be wet in early spring. (For a better riding experience, it’s best to head further south during mud season, for example, to the Myles Standish State Forest in Plymouth/Carver Mass.)

No matter what the season, Wompy’s trails are used by many diverse trail users. So expect to meet a lot of non-bikers out on the trails.

Wompatuck State Park was originally created to house a World War II munitions depot. Farm and forest lands in the towns of Hingham and Cohasset were bought up by the Government and the existing residents were displaced.

Maps are available at forest headquarters which is on your right about 1,000 yards in from the gate.

TRAIL MAP
Click here to view trail map

DIRECTIONS
Wompatuck State Park is located near Hingham on Boston’s South Shore.

From the south and Cape Cod: Rte 3 North to Exit 14 and the intersection with Rte. 228. Follow Rte. 228 North approximately 5 miles to Free Street on the right. Turn right onto Free Street one mile to the park entrance on the right. The camping area is 1.5 miles into the park on the right.

From the North: Follow Rte 3 South to exit 14 and the intersection with Rte. 228. Follow Rte. 228 North approximately 5 miles to the intersection with Free Street on the right. Turn right onto Free St. and follow it one mile to the Park entrance on the right.