Jug Island to the Fordway Bar

 

Started my trip downriver to the Fordway Bar in Billerica, MA at daybreak...not for a drink, mind you, but just to look around.  It was an especially quiet Sunday morning perhaps due to a forecast of rain. It was also the last Sunday of the summer.  Launched near Jug Island and headed downriver (above photo).

This great blue heron contemplates a discarded plastic soda bottle?...

A flock of turkeys fattening up...

Fordway Bridge (Pollard Street) stands at the head of the Fordway Bar...

According to Rev. Henry A. Hazen's History of Billerica the town's first bridge was built at the Fordway, possibly as early as 1657.

Entering the rock-lined passageway...

Passing through...

Past the narrowest part and looking downriver towards the Talbot Mill dam...

Ron McAdow in his guidebook The Concord, Sudbury, and Assabet Rivers describes Fordway Bar: "The resistant rock of this formation of granodiorite has slowed the fall of the Concord for untold ages. In 1711, the first dam was built for a mill where the river tumbled off the northern end of the formation.  The eleven-foot drop is the first substantial fall below Saxonville (northeast Framingham) on the Sudbury, or below West Concord on the Assabet."

Heading back upriver...

Approaching the Fordway Bridge another kayaker was encountered. He pulled a traffic cone from the river and relocated it to the riverbank.

Stopped briefly at the landing near Contribution Park and the Route 3A bridge...

Trash gathered up along the way...