Pardon Gray Preserve

This is a hidden gem! Miles of trails, untouched wilderness, rock outcroppings, and a stone wall-​protected cemetery, housing the original family who worked the land over 250 years ago.
Took a nice hike out there today, didn’t see a soul. It was blustery and cold out in the fields, but warmer and protected once we went into the woods.
Can’t wait to go back to explore the rest!

These trails are pretty nice but there wasn’t anything really fantastic about them. I went in the Weetamoo Woods entrance off Lafayette and honestly the trails are worth it just for the pretty drive in since I’m not from around here. The trials were luckily long and interconnected so that you could keep going for a long time. I ended up walking in a loop from the cemetery trail up to the yellow than the green then the blue then the yellow, you get the idea. I just kept taking different trails and I ended up walking for almost 2 hrs. I liked that it wasn’t all flat. I liked that there were interesting trees and fungi and things like that.
Overall it was a nice hike but there was nothing about it that would get me to come back. If I lived close I might prefer this place but since I don’t it was a fun one-​time thing. I went about 4 and a half miles over all.

Stunning walk through the woods with lots of historical things to see. Pardon Gray was a lovely place to take a stroll on a chilly January afternoon. Alas, there was no snow on the ground or else it would have made for an awesome place to snow-​shoe as well. I made my way around the preserve’s trails (which intersects with Weeamoo Woods’ trails which are color coded) pretty easily with the help of my handy trail map I picked up at the park entrance kiosk. The trails are well marked with white blazes and arrows which makes it easy to stay on the right path if you are paying attention.
There are plenty of options of trail lengths if you take some of the Weeamoo colored coded trails as well. I probably did between five and seven miles total as I hopped on several different trails in order to get the most distance out of my walk. There are a few really interesting historical sites to see on the way including one of RI’s many historical cemeteries, the remains of an old mill and stone bridge, and the remains of a couple of old cellars (basically a pit with a bunch of stones in it but it’s historical therefor cool). All of these historical artifacts are coded by numbers on the map so they are relatively easy to find.
The preserve is also great because during hunting season you don’t have to work about wearing orange, or more importantly getting shot, because there is no hunting allowed. There is a list of the preserve’s rules and regulations at the entrance. The only thing I would warn you about is that the address listed on Unilocal is very vague and therefor doesn’t make a good reference to finding the place. Make sure to look up good directions before you set off to Tiverton if you don’t know the area very well. Yes, it is on RT. 77 but the directions dropped me off very far from where the actual park is. Other than that it was a lovely place and I will be definitely be back to enjoy this gem of a park for years to come.

This entrance to Weetamoo Woods is great if you want to check out the neat little graveyard near the entrance. I also find that this entrance is more likely to be stocked with trail maps than other entrances.
But in terms of hiking, I prefer the other entrances to Weetamoo woods simply because I don’t have to walk half a mile just to get into the woods (on a windy day it gets chilly!). The white trail through Pardon Gray is also a little confusing because people have made so many trails of their own. As a tip, at the fork go left for the main trail, go right up the rocks for a rockier climb and then go left at the top down the hill to find the yellow trails again.
So definitely don’t miss using this entrance once or twice but at some point you’ll probably end up opting to just hitting the main trails more quickly.