Here’s a 3-mile route at the Spencer Property in Foster, Rhode Island (the Spencer Property is about 6 miles north of Parker Woodland).
Click here for a ProvidenceJournal article about the Spencer Property; the article is by John Kostrzewa.
I parked on Old Danielson Pike, and hiked north on a wide, gravel trail. Soon you reach a bench and a view of Spencer Pond. According to Kostrzewa, the pond is a “man-made reservoir” with a “grassy 150-yard-long earthen dam.” There are some NativeAmerican stone structures in the area, and lots of erratic boulders.
In fact, there’s a manitou stone next to the bench (see below).
I marked the location of the manitou stone with a purple pin. Manitou stones can be called upward-pointing stones, or their shape can be compared to the head and shoulders of a person. Below is the same bench, and the same stone, from a different angle. Notice how the manitou stone has been propped:
Native Americans often concluded their stone rows with a flourish — often a manitou stone, vertical or horizontal. Here’s a vertical manitou stone concluding a stone row (picture from Spencer property):
Below is a horizontal manitou stone concluding a stone row (also from the Spencer property).
Sometimes several stones are arranged so as to create a point. Here’s a map of the Spencer trails.
Below is a dolmen, I marked its location with a green pin.
This dolmen is somewhat ragged compared to the dolmen in Foxboro, and the dolmen at Parker Woodland. I have no doubt that all three of these dolmens were made by Native Americans; they’re consistent with the NativeAmerican “building style,” and I see no reason why white farmers would have built them.
I put a red pin on a giant erratic, which has a cave/hollow underneath (picture below). It’s difficult to tell whether this boulder is propped up by chance or by Native Americans; there are lots of boulders jumbled together in this area.
I put a black pin on a large boulder with a cave/hollow underneath (picture below).
Could this be the so-called Troll Cave? As with the previous boulder, it’s difficult to tell whether this boulder was propped by chance or by Native Americans. After being propped, the boulder has a kind of manitou shape, suggesting that it was propped by Native Americans. If it were propped by chance, by a glacier, wouldn’t the hollow area underneath become filled in over time?
I put a blue pin on an old foundation (cellar hole).
I followed the Boulder Trail (orange blazes) until it connected with the Ponaganset River Trail (yellow blazes); I didn’t follow the trail that hugs the shore of Spencer Pond, and circles the pond. I skipped the Cardinal Trail (red blazes). According to Kostrzewa, the Cardinal Trail leads to “a complex of stone walls and a three-sided, 6-foot stone foundation that may have been for a barn.” I also skipped the Gravel Pit Trail, which Kostrzewa calls “an unmarked path” to an area where “town workers once dug gravel.”
If you want a short walk, you can circle Spencer Pond, then return to the parking lot. If you want a longer walk, you can pass the pond, and go north to the Ponaganset River. The river was flowing briskly when I was there in mid-March 2024; it flows southeast, eventually reaching the Scituate Reservoir.