A History of the Weir River Woods  Volcanic rocks. The rock outcroppings in the Weir River Woods are part of volcanoes which erupted over the South Pole about 600 million years ago.  As the earth’s crust moved, the rocks were eventually connected to what is now northwest Africa.  When Pangaea broke up about 200 million years ago, they moved here.  Glaciers wore down and smoothed the rocks.    Drowned forest. After the last glacier melted about 10,000 years ago, a kettle bog was left in the area that is now salt marsh along George Washington Boulevard.  As the bog gradually filled in, a forest grew.  As more glaciers melted, the sea rose, eventually forming the Weir River Estuary and drowning the forest over the bog.  Over this area at the edge of the Estuary a salt marsh grew, laying down peat year by year.  A core sample taken from the marsh along the Boulevard shows this history in its layers.   Native plants. The blueberries in the Woods are remnants of the tundra plants that once thrived here.  Most of the plants in the Woods—oak, sassafras, and even the cat briar—are native to New England, the same kinds of plants that were here when Native Americans spent their summers along the coast and their winters in the lee of Massachusetts, meaning “Great Blue Hills.”   Farming, hunting, and fishing.  When colonists arrived from the 1620s on, they cleared the forests for timber and to create farm land.  The stone walls at the edge of the Woods date from that time.  This area was called Jones Island, connected to the rest of Hull by the salt marsh.  During Hull’s grand hotel era, sportsmen came to the area to hunt and fish.   Conservation.  During the 1930s, George Washington Boulevard was built through the salt marsh to provide access to Paragon Park.  The area now became known as Rockaway Annex because it was next to the Rockaway section of Hull.  Older Assessors maps show narrow lots laid out for campsites in the Weir River Woods.  In the 1960s, a proposal to sell the Town-owned Woods to become an animal farm, or zoo, was defeated at Town Meeting and the Woods placed under the Conservation Commission.    Weir River Woods.  In the 1970s, students in the Hull High Environmental Action League (HEAL) under teacher Bob Corcoran, carried out a series of clean ups in the Woods.  In 1975, as part of the preparations for the national Bicentennial, the Hull Conservation Commission received a grant for benches, a bridge over a vernal pool that was deepened, steps up a rock cliff to a new trail, made with wood chips spread by the Hull High Environmental Action League, and plantings assisted by the Hull Garden Club.   After the improvements were made, to prevent teens from drinking in the Woods, the neighbors sealed the trail on a paper street between two houses that was the entrance to the woods with root balls, requiring visitors to walk through the front yard of one of the houses.  Subsequently few people visited the woods.  The neighbors continued to keep the trails clipped.  In 2001, the Hull Conservation Commission had an access study prepared by Coler and Colantonio, which recommended a new entrance on town-owned land along Chatham Street.  Because this land is vauable habitat with trees and rock ledge, the Conservation Commission was reluctant to create a parking lot on Chatham Street.  More recently, the tri-town Weir River Estuary Park Committee, with assistance from the Commonwealth and UMass Urban Harbors Institute, developed an Estuary Land Protection Plan encompassing the Weir River Woods and other Estuary open space.   Hull Land Conservation Trust.  In 2007, with donations and loans, the land trust purchased the "Chatham Street property" to provide an entrance to the Woods.  This house lot, surrounded by woods, already had a grassy parking area created by the cottage across the street, making it the perfect entrance to the woods.  Purchase of the lot also protected the woods' habitat.  We would like to invite you to help pay for and permanently protect the Chatham Street property by becoming a donor-member.   Thank you for creating a network of people to care for Hull’s land,including envisioning the Weir River Estuary forever wild.