Shaloo Meadow Town Forest

The Shaloo Meadow Town Forest is a piece of town forest and conservation land on the west bank of the Shawsheen River in Pinehurst, off the north side of Boston Road just above the Boston Road Bridge over the Shawsheen River. It is mostly wet meadow and flood plain along the river, opposite Akeson Field and Shawsheen Woods on the east bank, and with Shawsheen Woods it makes up about thirty acres of conservation land that the town keeps for flood storage, wetlands and wildlife, open for walking, fishing and canoeing. It has no developed parking.

The land is probably the meadow that the surveyor and developer Edgar P. Sellew, chairman of the Park Commissioners and a member of the Town Forest Committee, gave the town in 1925. The committee, led by Warren H. Manning, had been set up in 1923 under the state's Town Forest Law to collect gifts of land "to be used as public domain", and the annual town meeting of 1925 voted unanimously to accept twenty-six numbered parcels as Billerica Town Forest Areas, "to be devoted to the culture of forest trees ... and for recreational uses only". Number 25 was "Edgar P. Sellew to Town of Billerica. Meadow land on Shawsheen River. The Southerly line is 200 feet from, and parallel to the Boston Road. The Easterly line is on the center of the Shawsheen River to Webb's Brook. The Northeasterly line is on the center of Webb's Brook. The Northwesterly line is 200 feet from Hillside Road and parallel to it. The Westerly line follows the Westerly side of Intervale Road". The committee reported that Sellew had deeded twenty acres on the Shawsheen, which with Nathaniel R. Jones's seventy-five acres downstream was to be "the beginning of a Riverside Reservation System". Sellew had bought and laid out much of the land on this side of the river from 1893 on, including the Riverdale house lots along Riverdale, Hillside and Sylvan Roads north of Webb Brook.

The 200-foot strip left out along Boston Road stayed with the Sellews. Edgar P. Sellew let several of his meadows go for taxes in 1936, and in 1945 the town meeting accepted from his wife, Lois K. Sellew, a gift of "a certain parcel of land bordering the Shawsheen River", which became Sellew Park; when a 1950 article proposed selling Sellew Park, a point of order was raised that it was "part of the Town Forest", so the two gifts may lie side by side.

The meadow was later known as the Shaloo Meadow Town Forest; the town reports do not say when or why it got the name. (Martin J. Shalloo of North Billerica was the town's park officer from 1922 to at least 1936.) In October 1997 the town meeting disbanded the Town Forest Committee and put the Conservation Commission in charge of the five town forests, "Jones Town Forest, Gage Town Forest, Rangeway Town Forest, Bignell Town Forest, Shaloo Meadow Town Forest". The town's 2025 brochure lists it with Akeson Park and Shawsheen Woods, and its open space plan counts "the Jones Town Forest and Shaloo Meadow, Shawsheen Woods, and Akeson Fields" among the three miles of protected Shawsheen riverbank.

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.

References

1. Annual Report 1925: town meeting accepts the Town Forest gifts, B.T.F. 25 from Edgar P. Sellew; committee report
2. Annual Report 1998: Town Forest Committee disbanded; Shaloo Meadow Town Forest put under the Conservation Commission
3. Town of Billerica: Akeson Park, Shaloo Meadow and Shawsheen Woods brochure (2025)
4. Town of Billerica Open Space and Recreation Plan (2025): Shaloo Meadow on the protected Shawsheen riverbank