About Nickerson State Park

Nickerson State Park is a 1,900-acre state park in Brewster on Cape Cod, run by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). It was created in 1934, when Addie Nickerson and her daughter Helen gave the state more than 1,700 acres of their family's estate in memory of Roland C. Nickerson Jr. Today it's known for its pine and oak woods, 8 kettle ponds, paved bike paths and its campground of more than 400 sites.

Before the Park

The park's 1998 brochure, published by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management (the agency that became DCR), says pottery shards and stone tools found in the soil show the Saugautucket people were the first inhabitants of what is now Brewster. English colonists settled Harwich in the mid-1600s, farmed the land and built a mill to grind corn. In 1803 Harwich's prosperous North Parish broke away to become the town of Brewster.

Brewster wasn't a seaport, but Cape Cod Bay shaped its life. Sea captains built houses along what is now Route 6A, saltworks peaked in the mid-1800s, fish weirs lined the bay, and by the early 1900s the town had almost 500 acres of cranberry bogs.

The Nickerson Estate

Until 1934, the woods where the campgrounds now sit were part of the estate of Roland C. Nickerson and his wife, Addie. Roland was the son of Samuel Nickerson, who made his fortune in Chicago. He bought several hundred acres in East Brewster to add to the land he inherited, and the family became the largest private owner of forest land on Cape Cod in the early 20th century.

The Nickersons entertained on a grand scale. Their estate on Cape Cod Bay had a long private beach, guest houses, a barn for cattle, horses and carriages, and its own electric plant powered by horses. The brochure says the mansion was described as "the most costly and imposing dwelling on Cape Cod." Guests were invited to the family's hunting lodge on Cliff Pond to hunt, trap and fish.

Fire destroyed the mansion on May 24, 1906, two weeks before Roland Nickerson died. Two years later Addie oversaw an even grander mansion on the same site, across Route 6A a few miles west of today's park. That building is now the Ocean Edge Resort.

The Gift of 1934

In 1934, Addie Nickerson and her daughter Helen gave the Commonwealth more than 1,700 acres in memory of their son and brother, Roland C. Nickerson Jr., who died in the 1918 flu epidemic. That gift became Nickerson State Park.

In 1935 the Civilian Conservation Corps built the park's first roads, campsites, parking and picnic areas near Flax Pond. CCC crews also planted 88,000 white pine, hemlock and spruce trees.

Since then the park has grown to 1,900 acres. The 1998 brochure says the state had added about 90 acres between Route 6A and Cape Cod Bay since 1984, bringing salt marsh, coastal dunes and tidal flats into a park that is otherwise all woods and ponds.

The Land: Glaciers and Kettle Ponds

Nickerson's landscape is a leftover of the last ice age. As the glaciers melted back from the Cape more than 10,000 years ago, buried blocks of ice melted too and left deep hollows that filled with groundwater. Those are the kettle ponds. No stream feeds them, so their levels move with the water table. More on the ponds page.

DCR's description of the upper campgrounds captures it: you might think you'd been carried off to the Berkshires or the piney woods of the Carolinas, because there isn't a dune or salt marsh in sight.

Who Runs the Park Today

The park is run by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). DCR sets fees, camping rules and seasons, and its Nickerson page is the source of record for everything on this site. Volunteers help too: the 1998 brochure describes camping hosts, Adopt-a-Trail volunteers on the bike and hiking trails, and the nonprofit Friends of Nickerson State Park.

Plan Your Visit

Start with hours, parking and fees, and camping, or see plan your visit.