Heritage Park

Heritage Park is really two parks of very different character, one on Coakley Island and one on Falls Island, connected by a historic footbridge spanning a channel of the Grasse River.

There is parking for both (including bus parking) at the entrance to Coakley Island between the Main Street bridges. This section of the park features picnic tables (one sheltered by a pavilion roof), sidewalks, and nighttime lighting. Benches overlook Ruston Falls in the east channel and Cascade Falls in the west channel. (Rushton Falls is named for J. Henry Rushton, a legendary boat maker in Canton who is memorialized in a chainsaw carving on Coakley Island.) There are extensive landscape plantings—flowers, shrubs, and trees—as well as open lawn space. A kiosk explains the history, layout, and development of the islands and of Heritage Park. Workers in downtown Canton often stroll to this section of the park to enjoy their lunches together, and business and social groups of all sorts seek out informal outdoor meeting space here.

Falls Island offers a much different prospect. Far less groomed than Coakley Island, this section of the park largely preserves the site as we found it, while providing access and educational signage. It is thickly wooded, but within the woods are to be found vestiges of the industrial activity that once thrived there. A sluiceway still cuts through the center of the island from south to north. A concrete sawdust bunker still stands from the days when the river powered a saw mill. A foot trail circles the periphery of the island, some of it covered in stone dust, some in wood chips, and some consisting of wooden boardwalks and stairways or native bedrock. Most, though not all, of this trail is wheelchair accessible. Along the way are a dozen interpretive signs describing in detail the history of the site as well as its ecology and geology. This section of the park draws photographers and artists, teachers and students from the local schools and colleges, fishing enthusiasts, and people just looking for a tranquil, sheltered getaway at the edge of the busy life of the village.