Holden Nature Trails
Holden Nature Trails is a peaceful and heavily wooded trail system great for hiking with dogs, located near the Red Barn campground and adjacent to a school. The trails are well marked with color-coded paint and offer a shaded, outdoor experience with kiosks about local flora and fauna. There are several benches for seating along the paths, but no trash bins, so visitors should be prepared to carry out their trash and dog waste. While the area is accessible with a parking lot, hikers should note some downed trees on trails and the lack of handicap accessible paths. The trail area is family-friendly with picnic grounds and a playground at the entrance, but visitors should be aware that access may be restricted during school sessions.
Reviews
Nice Trail, been there twice, trail head is behind the school, after I finished my hike I was met with two police cars, I’m told I can’t be there when school is in session and was ask to leave, caption was very nice but I still had to leave, should there be a notice that you can’t be on this trail when school is in session? Jerry
Families, there are picnic grounds with a playground at the entrance. It looks like hardly anyone uses them on the weekends – why not you?
Walked these trails for over a decade. Used to be my favorite local place to walk my dog, but then the town “harvested the land” and destroyed the forest. It’s nothing but a tree cemetery now full of slash. Heartbreaking to see.
To get away from the crowds, there are many short trails you can walk, or take your dog for a walk, at Holden Nature Park. For the most part, the trails are clear and easy to read with their markings, but currently there are a few down trees, which you can step over or go around. These trails also merge with the Red Barn Campground trails, and there are many seating areas, as well as a couple picnic areas on Red Barn trails. Note: Not handicapped accessible
1st time visitor – My wife and I were looking for a place to take our two large dogs (Labs) for a walk and stumbled across the Holden Nature Trails. Google Maps gave us great directions but I drove by the entrance the first time by. It is adjacent to the Red Barn campground and the school – in fact you sort of drive through the school grounds to get to the parking area. We were there on Labor Day 2020 and we were the only ones there.
Heavily wooded, shady walk through well-marked trails. Lots of the interlaced trails intersect with snowmobile trails. The trails are marked by various paint markings on the trees – red, blue, green, purple, etc. – as long as you remember what color your trail is you’ll be guided through the woods. There are signs as well but we didn’t see any maps to orient yourself to the signs.
Several wooden benches located throughout but no trash cans! If your dog needs to go, you’ll have to carry it back out.
In some spots there were downed trees across the trail so we back-tracked here and there but it wasn’t bad.
Several kiosks located along the trail gave interesting info about Maine’s flora and fauna but they were getting faded…they will need new graphics soon. It would have been helpful to have a few “You are here” type maps so you could figure out where you were in relation to the entire trail system – we often felt like we were walking in circles.
Overall though, very nice, outdoorsy, peaceful hike in the woods. The dogs loved it – plenty of good woods smells to keep them busy.