Trails at Wellfleet Bay

Explore five miles of trails that wind through different habitats including shaded pine, oak, and hickory woodlands; salt marsh; and freshwater ponds.

Trail Descriptions

Bayview Trail

The Bay View Trail is the longest trail on the sanctuary. It is a great trail for experiencing pine/oak woodlands. It also winds along the edge of a salt marsh, leads you to Fresh Brook in the northeast corner of the Sanctuary, and takes you by a sandplain grassland.

Boardwalk Trail

Follow the Boardwalk Trail across the salt marsh to a sandy beach and the tidal flats of Cape Cod Bay. Listen for fiddler crabs rustling among the grasses and look for shorebirds feeding on marine invertebrates in the sand.

Goose Pond Trail

This popular trail leads you through pine/oak woodlands, by two ponds and a coastal heathland, and along the edges of a salt marsh. Goose Pond itself is a brackish water pond, known for its concentrations of shorebirds and wading birds during the summer and fall.

Silver Spring Trail

The northern section of this trail is dominated by oaks and sassafras. The southern section takes you high onto a ridge where pitch pines and black oaks loom above you, casting shadows over the pond below. At its easternmost point the trail crosses over a small wooden bridge where sweet pepperbush, sweet gale, and speckled alder are the most visible plants.

Try Island Trail

Some of the nicest views on the sanctuary can be seen from Try Island. Try Island supports an oak/hickory woodland, a habitat found nowhere else on the property and in very few places on Cape Cod. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, during the days of whaling, there may have been a tryworks located on the island, hence the name. A tryworks consisted of a cast-iron cauldron, placed over a fire, in which whale blubber was boiled down into oil.

All Persons Trail

The All Persons Trail overlays the Robert R. Read-All Persons Pathway and Goose Pond Trail is a self-guided, fully accessible nature trail so everyone could experience the very special nature of Wellfleet Bay. Get the details including an audio guide