World’s End Can Be Scenic, if You’re Near Boston

Boston is bold enough to call itself “America’s Walking City.” It backs up its claim with the Freedom Trail, the best-known urban walking trail in America, as well as great walks along Back Bay, Boston Harbor and Beacon Hill. All of these walks deliver intriguing, intimate views of the city.

But the best view of Boston itself, a panorama to cherish, comes from a hike in a park just outside the city known as World’s End. Despite its apocalyptic-sounding name, World’s End is a magnificent seaside park for walking--in this millennium or the next.

Eco-friendly, green space-laden, planned residential communities are common these days, but when famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted laid out the suburb extraordinaire of World’s End in 1890 he was, quite literally, breaking new ground. As a neighborhood, World’s End never came to be, as its proposed 150 homes were never built. But Olmsted’s landscape design--with its looping, tree-lined carriage roads, wide meadows and expansive coastal views--was implemented and has continued to delight generations of visitors.

To walk World’s End is to see the world from the eyes of one of the 19th century’s leading landscapers, the designer of New York’s Central Park, Boston’s Fenway and Franklin parks, and many more parks across America. It’s a view of nature tamed but not overwhelmed, of natural beauty enhanced by human hands.

Massachusetts colonists had long ago cut down all the trees at World’s End, so Olmsted began his work on the peninsula with a clean slate, as it were. He chose a kind of British countryside estate theme and set about planting trees of distinction and stature, such as American elm, English oak and chestnut.

The ever-changing vistas enjoyed by passersby on the carriage paths are neither incidental nor accidental; Olmsted designed the landscape and the trails that crisscross it to provide grand vistas. Views from World’s End high points, particularly from Planter’s Hill, include Boston Harbor, the Harbor Islands and metropolitan Boston shimmering on the northwest horizon.

In the 1960s World’s End was threatened with a development considerably less attractive than the one designed by Olmsted back in 1890. Local conservationists aided the Trustees of Reservations to raise the necessary funds to purchase the property in 1967.

Geologists describe World’s End as a peninsula of two drumlins (oval-shaped hills formed from glacial drift). The upper and lower sections of the peninsula are connected by a narrow neck. The Weir River borders the north-protruding peninsula on the east, while the waters of Hingham Harbor lap against the peninsula’s western shores.

Not surprisingly, the peninsula’s figure-eight-shaped peninsula has a figure-eight-shaped trail system. Decide whether you’d like to keep the water (Hingham Harbor, Weir River) on your left or on your right; then follow the appropriate coastal foot trails and carriage paths. The walk is about four miles if you loop around both World’s End and Rocky Neck, but shorter walks are possible by cutting short some of the loops.

Access: From Route 3, take Exit 14 and follow Route 228 north for 6.5 miles. Turn left on Route 3A and travel one mile to Summer Street. Turn right on Summer Street; after a quarter mile you’ll come to a stoplight. Proceed across Rockland Street and follow Martin’s Lane 0.7 mile to the entrance of World’s End Reservation and its parking lot.

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World’s End Trail

WHERE: World’s End Reservation.

DISTANCE: 4-mile loop around Rocky Neck and World’s End peninsulas.

TERRAIN: Four glacial hills jutting into Boston Harbor.

HIGHLIGHTS: Jewel of the Greater Boston area, unsurpassed views of the Boston skyline.

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: Easy to moderate.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: World’s End Reservation, c/o The Trustees of Reservations, 572 Essex St., Beverly, MA 01915; tel. (508) 921-1944.