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Schmid Land Preserve
Schmid Preserve: Walking Through Edgecomb’s Woodland History
Discover
Schmid Preserve in Edgecomb offers a walk through a forest that still carries the outline of an earlier community. Old roads, field openings, foundations, and quarry traces give the landscape a particular density of stories. The paths invite recreation, but the most interesting visit may be one that treats the woods as a record of how people once lived and worked here.
The town manages the preserve with an advisory committee, and its current guide describes more than seven miles of trails. Begin with the town's map and choose a circuit from a designated public entrance. Middle Road and Old County Road offer different ways into the network. For a history-focused outing, the separately published self-guided tour provides a useful companion to the walking map.
The preserve began with Charles and Constance Schmid's gift to Edgecomb in 1979, followed by additional parcels. That conservation history matters because it retained more than trees. It kept a landscape in which earlier settlement patterns can still be understood through surviving physical evidence. A wall or cellar hole can become the beginning of a question about the surrounding ground.
The town's history tour describes the Haggett field as one of the longest-inhabited places in the preserve. Orchard remnants and substantial house and barn foundations recall the agricultural holding that occupied the opening. Nearby roads connect this site with other former homes. Rather than trying to visit every numbered stop, choose a few and give each enough time to relate the remains to the land around them.
The same guide explains that the Mount Hunger area once supported a school, store, and dance hall. Those institutions make the forest easier to imagine as a community rather than a scattering of isolated farms. A path through today's trees follows ground that once connected households and everyday activities. The change from inhabited neighborhood to conserved woodland is part of what gives Schmid its distinctive atmosphere.
A different kind of work appears along the Mica Trail. Historical feldspar extraction supplied materials for ceramics and other uses, leaving quarry traces in the woods. Observe these features from the marked route and leave stone and artifacts where they lie. The setting is more informative when the evidence remains intact, and the uneven former workings deserve careful footing.
Rebecca Goldfine's original walking account appreciates the old roads, forest paths, and open meadows, noting that different entrances make different parts convenient to reach. Her account also places Schmid within the longer River-Link corridor. For this visit, the preserve's own circuit offers a complete subject; connecting destinations can remain orientation points rather than an obligation to extend the walk.
The town's annual stewardship report describes volunteer trail work and efforts to manage invasive plants around historic foundations. That work links natural care with the visibility of the site's human history. On a shared trail, slow down for other users and give equestrians space. Finish with a look back across a field or along an old road. Schmid's appeal lies in that overlap of purposes: recreation in the present, active care for the forest, and a community's past still readable beneath the trees.
Fun facts
- The preserve began with a Schmid family gift to Edgecomb in 1979.
Before you go
- Carry the town trail map alongside the separate self-guided history tour.
- Observe foundations and former mines from established routes.
- Slow down and ask before passing equestrians.
Visitor perspectives
- Rebecca Goldfine enjoys the old roads, meadow openings, and forest paths, and distinguishes the preserve’s own network from the longer River-Link route.
Capture
- Frame an old road with surrounding forest to suggest the former settlement pattern.
- Photograph a foundation from stable trail ground with nearby vegetation for context.
Social
Schmid Preserve holds the outline of an earlier community.
Choose a history-focused circuit from the town map.
Haggett field connects open ground with agricultural remains.
The Mount Hunger neighborhood once had community buildings.
Former mineral workings add another chapter.
Leave artifacts and stones in their setting.
Volunteer work helps keep paths and historical features legible.
An old road can be the most telling view in the woods.
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