World's End
Map and Hiking Trails
Source: Trustees of the Reservation (3).
A 251 acre park located on a peninsula in Hingham, World's End offers ample hiking trails and views of the Boston Harbor. The park has four drumlins -- a geological feature left behind by glaciers -- as well as granite, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock (3). For anyone hoping to see diversity in rock types near Boston, World's End is a great place to go!
With the main trail at 3.8 miles, World's End is suited for hikers of all abilities. It has relatively flat and well-maintained paths, with maps at each fork to prevent you from getting lost. Should you want to explore some more, taking the side paths (also nicely maintained) will allow you to have a more than 5 mile walk. World's End is perfect for a full afternoon of exploring!
Geological History
15,000 years ago, during the Wisconsonian Epoch, a 1-mile thick ice sheet covered the Massachusetts Bay area. As the glacier slowly retreated to the North and North-West, it scraped sand, boulders, and rocks with it. Ultimately, this movement created tear-shaped mounds of land. These lands, comprised of glacial debris, have come to be known as drumlins. They typically face North to South or North-West to South-East, with the hill on the Northern side. (1)
The rock type underlying the Boston harbor is known as Cambridge Argillite (slate). A dark, layered, and metamorphosed mud-stone, it is visible along the edges of drumlins. On the surface, one also finds plenty of gravel, sand, and clay. With glaciers constantly moving in this area over tens of thousands of years, they left behind these sediments. This website provides fantastic information on the geology of the Boston Harbor.
Our Findings - May 13, 2021
We noticed that this peninsula at World's Ends has the characteristic shape of a drumlin (drawn in pink). In fact, World's End as a whole is made up of four drumlins, each aligned roughly north-east to south-west which is the direction of glacial retreat (3). The bedrock underlying the World's End consists of Cambridge Argillite, Dedham Granite, and Roxbury Conglomerate (4), but the drumlins themselves are made up of glacial till, unsorted rocks brought by here by glaciers (5).
These three images show some of the bedrock types at World's End. Much of the rock composing the drumlins is Cambridge Argillite, which is shown in the image on the left. We also notice sedimentary rock such as that in the images in the middle and on the right. This rock looks like a conglomerate, and the Cambridge Argillite is visible in large chunks.
Here's a nice shot of the Cambridge Argillite (slate) (2). You can see how the rock forms in layers.
We also noticed color differences between the layers. We attributed the darker color below to mud, dirt, and algae -- all brought by the tides -- and we attributed the lighter color above (compared to the green middle layer) to differences in mineral composition. Thanks to the relative age dating law of superposition, we know the layers of slate that are deeper must have formed earlier.
References