While walking one of the three miles of trails at Cherry Hill Farm, Johanna Hanselman came across “a beautiful sculpture of a bear realistic enough to scare my dog.” This life-sized woodcarving is the latest addition to the Shaw Family Foundation’s recreational site on Lower Main Street (Route 25).

Purchased from ecomaine in 2016, the foundation’s 258 acres border remnants of the old Cumberland and Oxford Canal. According to Parker Brown, assistant controller for Shaw Brothers, land fronting on Lower Main Street was leased to Sebago Brewing Company which added to the Gorham tax base. Brewing there fulfilled the requirement for agricultural use.

The public recreational area, opened in 2019, includes a parking lot, seven groomed trails, an ice skating pond, and a children’s storybook trail. Tim Pickett from Elliot, Maine, carved the bear from a tall pine tree stump. It stands in a wooded area about two-and-a-half miles from the parking lot. Six rustic benches, also constructed by Pickett, are being placed on the longer trails. As Hanselman observed, “The trails appear to be intentionally designed to appeal to a wide range of people, abilities, and interests.”

“Taking a walk at Cherry Hill,” Hanselman said, “you will bump into people you know, families with kids making fairy forts in the woods, runners, bikers, and, in the winter, people snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, and always lots of dogs.” Elizabeth MacField walks her dogs Sophie and Nellie there several times a week and appreciates “the variety of routes and wide open spaces.”

Group activities at Cherry Hill Farm are organized under an agreement with the Town of Gorham. Groups wanting to hold outdoor events contact Cindy Hazelton, the town’s parks an recreation director, who determines if they are appropriate for the site. She also plans activities for the public. “This winter we are hoping to use open fields for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing,” she said. People will be able to borrow equipment and receive some basic instruction. If the weather cooperates, she also plans to offer ice skating in the pond-sized depression between the parking lot and Route 25. “This would require the ground to freeze sufficiently for ice to build up thick enough to hold a small tractor,” Hazelton explained. If this happens she will put out a call on social media for volunteers to help maintain a frozen oval for skating. In addition, trails will be open for snowmobiles, maintained by the Gorham Snowgoers under a contract with Shaw Brothers.

Heidi Whelan, youth services director for Baxter Library, had long wanted to “build a permanent Storywalk with durable signage in a beautiful location.” With a grant from the Maine Bicentennial Commission and “help from many sources,” Whelan said “Cherry Hill Farm Trails proved to be the perfect place to foster children’s interest in reading while also encouraging healthy activities.” Maine author Tonya Shevenell gave the library digital files of The Maine Birthday Book; Library Assistant Jeffery Knox did the graphics; Cindy Hazelton oversaw the Storywalk installation; and Shaw Brothers built the sign posts and plates. The result is an illustrated story on 23 plaques spaced along the Ecological Trail.

The increasing number of cars in the parking lot off route 25 suggest that many Gorham residents will be escaping COVID-19 confinement by socially distancing on the trails at Cherry Hill Farm this winter.