Route 140 near the beginning of Carpenter Road. Carpenter Road, now just a path, starts at about the middle-left of this picture.
The newspaper article gives Upton Road as the address, but the foundation is actually several hundred yards away from there. The 1939 Hopedale street listing book records Fred Merrill (62) and Delia Merrill (35) as living at Carpenter Road. At the bottom of this page you’ll find an article on Carpenter Road and the Madden farm written by Gordon Hopper.
The bridge crosses a stream that flows into the Mill River about a hundred yards to the left. The next five pictures show the foundation of the Madden/Merrill house. The foundation is all that remains of the home that once stood near the eastern end of Carpenter Road.
The foundation of the Madden house (more about that in the Hopper article below) in the pictures above is just a few hundred yards west of the Hopedale/Milford town line marker on Route 140 at the point where the Mill River goes under the road.
Much of Carpenter Road looks like what you see in this photo – a narrow trail lined with small white pines. Much of its length also has, as shown in the two pictures below, stone walls on both sides
Carpenter Road crosses the G&U tracks in the middle of this picture. This area contains part of Upton State Forest. When I was in Scouts in the fifties, the troop would often come here for day hikes on Saturdays. Along with our scoutmaster, Lymie Draper, we’d come up through the Parklands and onto the tracks. When we reached Carpenter Road (I didn’t know it had a name back then) we’d go off to the right a bit and into the woods, where we’d build fires to cook our lunch and then participate in other Scout activities.
A few hundred yards west of the tracks, the road crosses the pipeline. At that point, as shown by this picture, it becomes much more overgrown.
A short distance after Carpenter Road crosses the pipeline, there are several stone foundations and a well on the right (west) side. Possibly the McTague and Mead place mentioned in the Hopper article below. I’ll see if I can find the map mentioned and figure it out. The pipe DJ is holding was in thewell, sitting on the bottom and extended to the top.
Google Earth view of the area. Carpenter Road is in yellow. My son, DJ, with his GPS, came along with me and put the trail mark and the waypoints on here. The Madden foundation is at 008, Carpenter Road crosses the pipeline near the 009 point., near the well and the other foundation, and the three-town boundary stone is at 010. Hopedale Pond is at the lower right. The G&U tracks can be seen coming up from the lower right, curving through the middle and going off to the left. The white lines are town boundaries, mainly between Hopedale and Upton, with a little of Mendon at the bottom.
Google Earth profile of Carpenter Road. The low point, a little after entering at Route 140, was 272 feet above sea level. The high point, near the end of our walk was 539 feet.
The main part of Upton State Forest is off of Westboro Road, but there are also two other parcels near Hopedale and Mendon, that are shown on this1953 USGS map. Part of Carpenter Road passes along the edge of the state forest, then along the Hopedale-Upton boundary, the Upton- Mendon line, and finally through a bit of Mendon to Saltbox Road..You can also see in this map that a little of the state forest extends into Hopedale.
The Hopedale section of the state forest amounts to about five acres. (Thanks to Carol Whyte at the Hopedale Assessor’s Office for that information.)
The map shows Carpenter Road running generally south from the Route 140 to its end at Saltbox Road, a little to the right of center near the bottom. The Hopper article below says Carpenter Road goes close to Powers Road in Mendon and on to North Avenue. We saw a fork of the road leading toward Powers Road, but the map only shows the part that ends at Saltbox Road. Saltbox can be seen starting to the left of the H in HOPE and ending near Trask Road (name not on this part of the map) near Muddy Brook.
Google Earth view from 2024 showing G&U Railroad property where trees had been cut. Click picture to read about it.