Few birding sites have experienced as meteoric a rise as Hadley’s hottest hotspot—the Fort River Division at the Conte National Wildlife Refuge. The site was used for tobacco farming in the early 1900s. As recently as 2010, it was an abandoned horse farm and stable, not open to the public. Birders knew the place for its hayfields, host to nesting Bobolinks and Eastern Meadowlarks, observed from gravel-paved Moody Bridge Road on which it was located. Most nonbirders knew it as a shortcut they could speed through, kicking up gravel and dust.

When the land was acquired by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, it was added to the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge and designated as the Fort River Division. The Conte Refuge, which was established in 1997, is devoted to protecting the entire Connecticut River watershed and includes at least 22 tracts of land—10 divisions and 12 units— spread across four states. The Fort River, which originates from headwaters in Pelham and Shutesbury, is the longest free-flowing tributary of the Connecticut River within Massachusetts, making its protection a priority for the refuge. Its inhabitants include, or have included, sea lamprey, American eel, wood turtle, and 9 of New England’s 12 species of freshwater mussels.

Word spread, at first slowly and mainly among birders, that the land had become public property and was open to visitors. In 2013, the Service began construction of a fully accessible nature trail: a 1.25-mile loop complete with benches, sections of boardwalk raised above the floodplain and other often-wet areas, observation decks overlooking sections of the river, an area of wet shrubby habitat, an expanse of grassland, and a small pond in the woods packed with frogs and turtles. Visitation has skyrocketed since then, with birders now a minority among dog-walkers, exercisers, parents and children, and many other visitors. The area became even more appealing a few years later when Moody Bridge Road was closed at its east end, turning the gravel road from a dusty stretch menaced by speeding vehicles into a safe and scenic walking route through the largest patch of grassland habitat.

Map of the Fort River Division of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge.