Erving State Forest, located just north of the Millers River in the towns of Erving, Warwick, and Orange, Massachusetts, covers a central area roughly 2½ by 2½ miles wide in central Massachusetts north of the Quabbin Reservoir, but also includes several nearby satellite property fragments.
The state forest is open to hiking, swimming, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, fishing, and hunting (in season). Laurel Lake, located in the center of the property, has a beach and a seasonal public campground, it is approximately 1/4 mile wide (N-S) by 1 mile long (E-W). It is so named because of the abundance of Mountain Laurel flowers that border the lake. The lake is home to large mouth bass, rainbow trout, brook trout, yellow perch, pickerel, eel, and blue gill snapping and painted turtles, Heron, beaver, Eastern Newt, bull frog, leopard frog. The State Forest itself is home to many animals including black bear, white tail deer, porcupine, coyote, fox, raccoon, and ground squirrel. There are approximately 35 houses on the lake, the majority of which lie on the northern shore.
The property is largely wooded and hilly with an extensive network of park roads and hiking trails, the majority of which were created by Franklin Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps. These trails are often used for snowmobiling and four wheeling. One of these (hiking) trails, Laurel Trail, located behind the Ranger's Station at Laurel Lake beach offers a view of Mount Monadnock. The 110-mile Metacomet-Monadnock Trail passes through a western parcel of the state forest.
Aside from the Mountain Laurel, other common flowers in Erving State forest include: Pitcher Plants, Day Lily var. Hemerocallis fulva, and Painted trillium.
Famous quotes containing the words state and/or forest:
“I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for our solacement? The sparrow seems always chipper, never infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about. Yet there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their lives. They must perish miserably; not one of them is translated. True, “not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Heavenly Father’s knowledge,” but they do fall, nevertheless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)