Petticoat Hill offers 1.5 miles of trails on the 60-acre property with strenuous hiking in most parts.
A Petticoat Hill vista
WILLIAMSBURG—Legend has it that there once was a Williamsburg farmer with seven daughters, each with five petticoats washed on Mondays and hung on the clothesline at the top of their hill. People from miles around could see 35 petticoats drying in the fresh air, a sight that gave the place its name.
Petticoat Hill is one of a group of three hills that rises more than 1,000 feet above south Williamsburg. By the late 18th century, it was the most populated part of town, active with farming families who cleared the area for crops and pasture.
“The settlers tended to settle on the hills because bottom lands were typically swampy,” explains James M. Caffrey, superintendent for the Williamstown and Windsor Management Unit for the Trustees of Reservations.
The farmsteads have disappeared, reclaimed now by the forest, which obscures views that once extended to the Connecticut River, Mounts Tom and Holyoke.
Hemlock, white pine, red and black oak, yellow and black birch, shagbark hickory, and sugar and red maple trees now grow there, some more than 110 feet tall, among the tallest in the region.
The property lost many of its hemlocks to the hemlock woolly adelgid. “When the hemlocks died, the resurgent growth was incredible with a broad range of native shrubs and woodland wild flowers that exploded on the hillsides,” Caffrey said. Visitors to Petticoat Hill will see succession and forest growth “probably at its boldest as these plants re-find their way in the woods” where they haven’t been for more than a hundred years.
Now Trustees of Reservations land, Petticoat Hill offers 1.5 miles of trails on the 60-acre property with strenuous hiking in most parts; visitors are encouraged to allow a minimum of two hours for a hike. Snowshoers are welcome, too.
And, during the times of the year when there are no leaves on the trees, there is a bit of a view of the Holyoke Range and the community of Williamsburg.
But for Caffrey, the draw is the trees.
“This property has trees you would see in the valley areas and in the uplands,” he said. “They are rich woods you don’t see in a lot of areas.”
Original acreage at the reservation was a gift of Mrs. Edward W. Nash in 1906 in memory of her husband. Additional land was given in 1924.