Name: Rome Village Trail
Rating: 5.0

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Plan in onX Backcountry

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Features Birding · Fall Colors · River/Creek · Spring · Views · Wildflowers · Wildlife

Family Friendly This easy path leads visitors to water, birds, blueberries, flowers, woodland plants, and views, all making for a great family outing.

Open dawn to dusk. No gates. Please take any trash with you. This is an active farm so during Cranberry Season watch out for big farming equipment grading paths and harvesting berries (be sure to keep a safe distance, no need to get run over trying to take a picture!).

Description

Take the main sandy road through the village, under the trees, and past Suningive House (home of Elizabeth Coleman White, The Blueberry Queen). Hikers will continue past her gardens and a blueberry field (Note, you can duck behind the gardens to the wooded trails that short cut to the cranberry bogs when work is not in progress for the farm), before heading out to the vista over the reservoir (great for bird watching).

Turn right across the wooden bridge along the road between the cranberry bogs and the water. When you head back into the wooded area, keep your eyes peeled for stones, steps, brick and foundations in the groudcover, the only remains of Rome Village. This area housed seasonal cranberry farm workers in the 1900's, but the foundations are all that remain today. The trail winds back and back through post oak, scrub oak, cedars, ferns and along the side of Little Tank reservoir, edged by blueberry bushes. This is a great place to put in a kayak and explore (it connects on the left through a channel with Big Tank, which also has a larger beach on the far side). FYI, kayakers are required to wear lifejackets and water activities are at your own risk. We suggest you bring a friend for more fun!

These are multi-use trails, so you might see horse-back riders, mountain bikes, trail runners, and family walks, in addition to some motor vehicles associated with the bog maintenance.

Feel free to share pictures with us with #whitesbog, and check in at: Whitesbog Preservation Trust.

Flora & Fauna

Scrub oak, post oak, Ferns, Atlantic White Cedar, Sweet Gum trees, holly, moss, arrow arum, sedges, orchids, rare and endangered species, lichen, cranberries and Turkeys, chickadees, barn swallows, woodpeckers, hawks, deer, chipmunks, squirrels, turkey vultures, snakes, frogs (Spring Peepers, Carpenter Frogs, Wood Frogs, Cricket Frogs, Gray Tree Frog, South Leopard Frog, Pine Barrens Tree Frog) and dragonflies, damselflies, moths and butterflies.