by Shelly Barclay

Created on: October 02, 2009   Last Updated: April 18, 2011

Borderland State Park is one of the best places to visit on the South Shore in Massachusetts for a little outdoor fun. Not only does Borderland contain trails, a historical mansion, abundant wildlife, fishing ponds and picnic areas, but the land itself is rich in Massachusetts history. When walking on the trails or in the woods of the park, you are walking in the same woods that the Native American tribes of Massachusetts walked and walking on the very same trails and roads that the first white settlers in the area walked. It is truly an amazing place to visit.

Borderland State Park is located in what are now the towns of Sharon and Easton; the border of the two towns runs through the land. This is not the first time that Borderland has been the home of a property or territory border. The land was once occupied by the Wampanoag and Massachusetts Native American tribes, who had neighboring territories on the land. White settlers didn't arrive in the area until around 1690 and they began settling the area around 1700.

As the land was developed, several homes and businesses were built there. The land was mainly used for farming, but there were also industrialists on the property as well. Some of the changes that these first settlers made to the land still exist in the state park. After nearly two-hundred years, the farming community began to fail and people began selling their land. It was at this time that Blanche and Oakes Ames began buying up the property as residents were forced to sell. The couple owned the land completely by 1906 and named it Borderland.

Oakes Ames was a botanist and Blanche Ames was an artist; together they turned Borderland into a beautiful estate. The Ames' decided that they wanted to farm the land and turn the rest into a wildlife sanctuary. New dams were constructed and a lot of the swampy areas of Borderland were transformed into ponds. Construction on a three-story, twenty-room stone mansion on the property began in 1910. Today the mansion is largely covered in ivy and sits behind a sprawling lush, green lawn and hedges.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased Borderland and the Ames mansion in 1971, after the death of Blanche Ames, and turned it into the state park that it is today. The park sits on 1,773 acres and contains more than twenty miles of hiking trails. There are many different wildlife species that can be seen running free in the park. There are deer, reptiles, rabbits, migratory birds and much more. Trail maps can

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