Welcome to South Shore Hiking Trails!!

This site is for the explorer at heart!!

After years of hiking trails and backpacking, heading to places that sometimes took hours just to get to, the realization came, (partly due to this economy) that exploring your own backyard has many benefits. Those benefits can be very rewarding and lack the expense of those far away trips.

Never met one of these before hiking trails right here on the south shore!

We hope that this will be the residents' as well as the visitors' be all guide to the hiking opportunities of the south shore as well as some expanded recreational opportunities in the surrounding areas.


What this website hopes to bring to you is what makes each trail covered special, the history behind the area, and how it came to be a trail or protected area.


Other features that will be covered and are important to hiking these trails are.....

the seasons and what they offer

tips and safeguards about the trails

Hiking trails of any area offer a visitor the true "feel" of that land visited and go off the beaten trail to those special places that usually only the locals know about.


So, come explore this site, get your hiking boots on, your water bottle filled and let's take a hike on one of the south shore hiking trails.

Using this website

As you will notice on the map below the trails are divided into sectors.

These sectors were created to help organize the trail information and help the viewer to find what they need in an area quicker.

They are not official Massachusetts boundaries.


The south shore like many places in New England, is a place of undefined borders. It can be defined in many ways but truthfully the south shore of Massachusetts is an area. There is no official documentation of which towns are considered to be of the south shore.


Many of the towns that do consider themselves of the south shore, do so as the town will actually border the ocean. Others do so as some of the management agencies of the area include them in their plans of management or development. 

There are other towns that consider themselves on the south shore as they lie inside or east of route 95 & the lower portion of route 495 and of course, all are south of Boston.


The towns listed below are what this website will be covering along with some additional selected areas.

Quite possibly a later expansion to some of those "other" towns that consider themselves of the south shore.

The North West Sector contains the towns Randolph, Braintree, Weymouth, Holbrook shaded in pink.

The North East Sector contains the coastal towns of Hull, Hingham, Cohasset, Scituate shaded in lime green.

The Middle Eastern Sector contains the towns of Norwell, Hanover, Marshfield, Duxbury,Pembroke shaded in blue.

The Middle Western Sector contains the towns of Abington, Rockland, Whitman, Hanson, Halifax shaded in peach.

The Southern Sector contains the towns of Plympton, Kingston, Carver, Plymouth shaded in purple.

getting to the hiking trails on the south shore

On the map below, route 3 is in a light gray and marked

This is the main expressway through the eastern part of the south shore.

If visiting the south shore from Boston, route 93 south connects to route 3.

Continuing on Route 93 South allows to you connect with routes 28 and 24.

These allow you to access the western side of the south shore and the Blue Hills Reservation,

Most of the towns of the south shore are accessed by route 3.

Most of the directions in the trail quick fact section use route 3 as a starting point for finding the trail head on the page you are viewing.

Other important routes on the south shore:

Route 3A  in mustard to the right along the coast

Route 123  in fuchsia from Brockton to Scituate

Route 28  in Aqua next to Route 28

Route 18  in Red from Weymouth to Bridewater (and beyond)

Route 58  in lime green runs off Route 18 in Weymouth runs through most of the   towns of the western sector ending in Wareham

Route 106  also in Red running from West Bridgewater to Kingston

Route 27   in royal blue running from Brockton to Kingston