Scenic Resources and Unique Environments

The following list presents a brief description of a few of the additional unique landscape features that have not been described elsewhere in this chapter. For a presentation of where these features are in Town, please see MAP 8.

Battle Green

The Lexington Battle Green is the center point of the Town’s historical interpretation efforts. Tourists come by the busload to visit this important historic location, and the nearby Visitors’ Center averages approximately 100,000 visitors each year. Town-sponsored guides give talks on the Battle Green year-round. Guided tours are conducted from April through October by Lexington Historical Society guides at the nearby Buckman Tavern, Hancock-Clarke House (on Hancock Street, about one-third mile away), and at Munroe Tavern (on Massachusetts Avenue, about one mile to the east).

Belfry Hill

Belfry Hill is an approximately 3 acre site located across the street from Cary Memorial Library, near the Battle Green. During the warmer months, the site provides a venue for the Town Librarian’s story hour, informal exploration, and a wonderful opportunity for employees who work in the Town Center to take a pleasant lunch outside. In winter, it is a popular sledding location and a destination for contemplative strolls. Tourists also ascend the hill throughout the year to see the historic belfry atop.

Tower Park

This Town-owned area is an open, landscaped park along Massachusetts Avenue just outside of the center of town and accessible from the Minuteman Bikeway. Tower Park offers benches, picnic tables, and a pathway for leisure walks, as well as shade trees, rolling lawn, and ornamental shrubs. On fair weather days, dozens of cars are often parked along Massachusetts Avenue along the park with their passengers lounging on the grass, picnicking, or playing informal games. In the winter, children sled from Massachusetts Avenue to the Minuteman Bikeway.

Minuteman National Historic Park

The Minuteman National Historic Park is owned by the United States and administered by the National Park Service. Most of this linear park, stretching along Route 2A from Lexington (west of Route 95/128) to Concord, lies in Lincoln and Concord, but a small portion of the western end of the park lies in Lexington. The Lexington portion of the park contains the Bloody Bluff, the Minute Man Visitor Center, and Fiske Hill. Visitors to this park usually also stop at the Lexington Battle Green and historic houses in Lexington to view the early American Revolutionary Scenes.

Paint Mine Conservation Area

In addition to the unique hemlock ravine described in the earlier section on Vegetation and a registered NHESP vernal pool (certification #7259), the Paint Mine area also contains a wetland that was previously flooded to create muskrat breeding habitat and is now slowly reverting back to bog. An open power line easement, pine-oak woods, and adjacent Hennessey field add to the ecological diversity of this area.

Great Meadow

Though owned by Arlington, the Great Meadow is located entirely within the bounds of Lexington. Consisting of dry upland areas, extensive wet meadows, and two registered NHESP vernal ponds (certifications #184 and #8220), this 184-acre property makes up one of the largest contiguous open spaces in Lexington. During the late 1800’s, Arlington’s Great Meadow was visited by noted naturalists such as Frank Boles and William Brewster. In his 1893 journal, Brewster described a visit to Great Meadow during which he studied the pied-billed grebes that were common there. Almost 100 years later, pied-billed grebes were spotted at the nearby Arlington Reservoir (which is partly in Lexington). As far back as 1967, the Great Meadow was considered an important link in a greenbelt that connects it with the Mystic Lakes in Arlington. At the conference celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Metropolitan Park System, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council recommended that “trails could be developed from this center [Mystic Lakes area], around the lakes and along the greenbelt connections to the east of the Middlesex Fells and to the west to Great Meadow in Lexington.”

Lower Vine Brook Conservation Area

The Lower Vine Brook property, which contains a former sand pit, displays a dramatic landscape with greatly varied topography. The area includes two registered vernal ponds (certifications #7092 and 8263) where eastern newts, spotted salamanders, northern leopard frogs and fairy shrimp have been known to breed. Vine Brook, which runs along the western side of this property, provides a significant forested wildlife corridors stretching from the Burlington line at Butterfield Pond through the Lower Vine Brook Conservation Area. Lower Vine Brook is also one of the closest conservation areas to the center of Lexington.

Hayden Woods Conservation Area

The 78.9 acre Hayden Woods Conservation Area features an old Lexington road that was laid out in 1660 and which was, according to local historians, a part of the so called Virginia Path, which led Native Americans to the Shawsheen River where they traded goods with northern tribes.

Cotton Farm

Most of Cotton Farm/Upper Vine Brook is wetland, but the eastern side of the area is accessible by a trail running from Highland Avenue to a driveway that exits onto Marrett Road. The site has scenic frontage on Marrett Road and hosts a Town-owned apple orchard. There is a small picnic area near the pond at the Marrett Road entrance to Cotton Farm/Upper Vine Brook.

Wright Farm

The 12.6 acres Wright Farm, with its sweeping historic farm fields and rich forested wetlands, adds significant value to the Town’s scenic landscape as well as a key wildlife and recreation connection with the Burlington Landlocked Forest.

Community Gardens

The community gardens at Idylwilde, which are owned and managed by the Conservation Commission, are considered important resources to the Town; they are extremely popular and highly valued by residents.

Busa Farm

The Town acquisition of Busa Farm in 2009 allowed for the preservation of an important agricultural resource in Lexington. Currently the site of Lexington Community Farm, this is one of two Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs in Lexington (Wilson Farm also offers a CSA).

Unusual Geologic Features Bloody Bluff Fault

The Bloody Bluff, which is located at the historic Fiske Hill site at the corner of Old Massachusetts Avenue and Marrett Road, is considered an unusual geological feature in Town. As described earlier in the landscape characters, it reveals a section of granite bedrock exposed by the Bloody Bluff fault running through Lexington as it travels approximately 80 miles from Newbury, MA to northern Connecticut.10 First discovered in the early 1960’s, the Bloody Bluff fault was seen by geologists as an opportunity to examine the theory of plate tectonics, as hypothetically the Bloody Bluff area was an area of contact between two major continental plates.

Whipple Hill

The rounded summit rock and high exposed cliffs of Whipple Hill are also considered unusual geological features. As the highest point in Lexington at 374 feet, the top of Whipple Hill is home to plants not otherwise found widely in Lexington. Owned by the Town as a conservation area, Whipple Hill also hosts a variety of wildlife habitats and a diverse plant species.