Huckleberry Lane…to the Becket Otis Town Line Friday Flash Hike Five miler part 1 cont. hiking the Becket Section of the Huckleberry Trolley Line. Hiking the 5 mile section, there was much history to be found. This section took us by Ward Pond. The old Lee Westfield Road, 8th Massachusetts Turnpike…comes in here parallel to the trolley, amazingly we found the old road bed!

….Leaving Worden’s Corners, the whole scene changes to wilderness, deep cuts, mountain lakes and swamps and an occasional long view which shows only an unbroken forest. The first lake is Ward Pond, on the left, wild, bushy and lonely… On the opposite side of the track is Thomas Pond, small and hid by a fierce tangle of underbrush. The other lakes, on the left, are Creek Pond and White Lily Pond, the former being nearly five miles long and quite narrow and completely surrounded by woods.

Construction of the East Lee-Huntington route, popularly known as the “Huckleberry Line” because of the abundance of that wild berry in the area, cost some $3 million and represented a triumph of engineering skill. Thousands of tons of earth had to be excavated by steam shovel or by hand and hauled away in dump cars pulled by a steam locomotive. And then the gravel for the roadbed and later for ballast had to be brought in. There were numerous deep cuts and long fills, some of the latter being constructed on a stone base, and a large number of bridges and culverts. Entering Becket, the tracks ran along the south shore of Green Water Pond to another state highway crossing and then the line cut across country to Worden’s Corners, 8 miles from East Lee- Berkshire Railway #becketma

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