Chase Farm Park

Chase Farm Park is an 85-acre, town-owned park on Great Road in Lincoln, Rhode Island, set in the meadows and hills of a former dairy farm that ran from 1867 to 1965. The Friends of Hearthside call it Lincoln's last operating dairy farm and one of the most beautifully preserved rural landscapes in the state. Today it is open for walks, picnics, winter sledding and summer concerts, with a pond, a butterfly garden and a visitor center with restrooms, and it sits next to Hearthside House a short drive from Lincoln Woods State Park.

What You Can Do

The Friends of Hearthside list the park's everyday uses: walking, picnics, photography, summer concerts and winter sledding, plus the study of nature in its pond and butterfly garden. Its open meadows are a contrast to the boulder-strewn woods of Lincoln Woods nearby.

The Visitor Center

A visitors' center built round the remains of the Chase Farm dairy building offers a picnic pavilion, a meeting room and restrooms for park visitors.

Parking

The Friends of Hearthside direct overflow parking for Hearthside events to Chase Farm Park and the Hannaway Blacksmith Shop, two driveways past Hearthside on Great Road.

A Farm Since 1867

Chase Farm was a dairy from 1867 to 1965, the last working dairy farm in Lincoln. The two-storey Chase Farm House, built around 1890, was home to three generations of the Chase family until the Town of Lincoln bought it in 1987. It was restored in 2015 under an arrangement with Preserve Rhode Island and is again a private home, not open to the public.

The Great Road Heritage Campus

Chase Farm is the backdrop for four historic buildings the Friends of Hearthside interpret together:

• Hearthside House (c.1810), the stone mansion museum next door; see Hearthside House.
• Hannaway Blacksmith Shop (1880), at the park's gateway, donated by the Hannaway family and moved here in 1989; open Sunday mornings year round for hand-forging classes.
• Pullen's Corner Schoolhouse (c.1850), a one-room school nicknamed the "Hot Potato School", moved here in 2016 and reopened in 2018.
• Moffett Mill (1812), built by George Olney and later a machine shop under Arnold Moffett Jr.; reached only by shuttle van on Hearthside tour days.

The buildings open only on dates listed on the Friends of Hearthside calendar.

Reenactments and Events

The meadows host historical events. The Friends of Hearthside describe Civil War and Revolutionary War reenactments held every other year, typically drawing about 300 reenactors and more than 3,000 spectators, alongside other living-history days. Check their calendar for the current year.

Great Road

Great Road, built in 1683 as the main road on the west side of the Blackstone River, runs past the farm. Its quarter-mile Moshassuck River Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the same road leads to the main entrance of Lincoln Woods State Park on Route 123.

Pair It With Lincoln Woods

Picnic at Chase Farm, then swim or fish at Olney Pond, or hike Lincoln Woods in the morning and finish with a walk in the meadows. See parking for Lincoln Woods.