On a gray, rainy day in early August, a small group from the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration and the Town of Duxbury met at the Temple Street crossing to watch the dam come down. The project had been in planning for 14 years. Taking the concrete structure apart took less than 15 minutes.
No ribbon-cutting or public ceremony was reported, and the site sits across from a trail entrance that most of Duxbury never uses. Still, that quarter hour finished one end of a long restoration project on the South River. The other end was finished in Marshfield in 2025, and the herring have already shown up there. For anyone who walks Camp Wing, the open question for spring is about the stretch in between.
Boys and Girls Club Dam #2
The structure on the town page as the Temple Street Dam had a less formal name. NSRWA says it was also called Boys and Girls Club Dam #2, and that the town took over both the dam and its pond in the 1990s as part of the Camp Wing Conservation Area. NSRWA's account of the construction start says the dam was probably built to serve cranberry bogs that no longer operate. That fits the wider history of the land. The Consolidated Cape Cod Cranberry Company planted bogs in the wetlands near what is now Route 3 in the early 1900s, and they were worked until the highway went in during the 1960s.
The town's design report describes a concrete outlet structure about 15 feet long with earthen embankments, a structure that blocked fish and other aquatic life from moving through. The site is listed as 0 Keene Street, where the Myrtle and Temple Street bridge crosses the South River, right across from the Camp Wing trail entrance on Temple Street.
The effort began in 2012. In 2016, the Division of Ecological Restoration named the South River Restoration a Priority Project. After that came years of stakeholder meetings and several rounds of design, all aimed at removing the river's highest barrier without adding to flooding or harming roads and structures downstream. The funding came together close to the original estimate. A 2022 estimate put direct construction at about $510,000. In March 2026, NSRWA reported construction funding of $150,000 from the state agency, $250,000 from an anonymous grant made through the watershed association and $125,000 from the town.
The Herring Arrived Downstream First
The project that makes Temple Street matter started in Marshfield. In January 2025, crews took apart the industrial dam at Veterans Memorial Park and replaced it with a series of riffles and pools. The riffles are engineered to look and work like natural rapids, so fish can swim upstream while the lagoon keeps its water level. When the cofferdams came out in July 2025, NSRWA wrote that the South River was flowing freely for the first time in nearly 400 years.
The fish showed up almost right away. In the first week of May 2025, while construction was still going on, NSRWA watershed ecologist Alex Mansfield filmed hundreds of herring half a mile upstream of the park. They had come through the temporary bypass channel and gone as far upriver as they could.
Spring 2026 was the first real test of the finished channel, and for weeks nothing appeared. Volunteers watching from the Main Street bridge saw no fish through all of April. In May, one observer counted seven. Two days later, another counted 14. A few days after that, there were hundreds of herring in plain sight from the bridge, too many to count, and NSRWA staff found them in every section of the restored channel and farther upstream. These were volunteer sightings, not a formal count of the whole run. Still, they show herring using the restored channel in its first full spring.
What Stands Between Marshfield and Camp Wing
Temple Street is the top of the river's system of dams, and Veterans Memorial Park is the bottom. NSRWA lists Chandlers Pond Dam as the next barrier upstream of the park, about 9.5 miles from the ocean. It is on private property. Its main concrete spillway is controlled with flashboards, removable boards that set the water level, and a second outlet releases extra water during high flows. NSRWA describes the dam as in poor shape. A 2015 study paid for by the state looked at how different removal options would affect flow between Chandlers Pond and Veterans Memorial Park, and NSRWA says it has spent the past decade working with the state agency and landowners on a design that restores fish passage without adding to flooding downstream.
On the Duxbury side, NSRWA also tracks the flumes at the town-owned Feinberg and Garside Bogs. Beavers like to build on those flumes, and the berm next to the downstream flume at Feinberg Bog has already failed.
So the upper river is now open habitat, with the lower river partly reconnected below it. The first spring migration since Temple Street came down will be in 2027. Nobody has yet seen whether herring make it past the stretch in between.
What the August Removal Opened
NSRWA's August project page says the removal reconnects four more miles of stream and three miles of tributaries, and gives fish access to 6.5 acres of open-water wetland. Earlier documents gave smaller figures. The 2022 design report estimated about 2.5 miles of added habitat, and NSRWA's March 2026 construction update put the wetland area at about six acres. The August numbers describe the finished project.
The main targets are alewife and blueback herring, the two species grouped as river herring. The design also expects American eel and other fish that swim from the sea up rivers to spawn to benefit. One tributary in the reopened area, Phillips Brook, has been documented as brook trout habitat by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Phillips Brook also runs through Camp Wing, and two marked spur trails off the John Sherman Path lead down to it.
The town's July update described the in-river work. Large sandbags held back the pond, bypass pipes carried the river around the work area, and crews set rocks into the riverbed to build riffles and pools, modeled on the habitat work at Veterans Memorial Park. State ecological restoration director Beth Lambert summed up the purpose when the dam came down:
"Together we are reconnecting important habitat for fish and wildlife, restoring natural river and wetland systems, eliminating a long-term maintenance burden for the town, and making the South River more resilient to climate change."
Walking Camp Wing This Fall
The town's last posted notice, dated July 2026, closed the Temple Street site, the trails next to it and the pond for the length of the project. It said site restoration would happen in late summer and early fall. No reopening notice has been posted since then. That affects the John Rubin Path most directly. It's a one-mile loop with views of the South River and its wetlands, and walkers usually park near Keene's Sawmill or at the pull-off a little farther down Temple Street. Duxbury Conservation can confirm whether it's open at 781-934-1100 x5471 or [email protected].
The larger trail network starts at the Franklin Street parking area at 654 Franklin Street, on the other side of the property's 450 acres. It includes:
- West Loop, orange, 0.2 miles of forest at the southern corner.
- Blue/green loop, 0.6 miles through upland and red maple swamp.
- East Loop, red, 0.2 miles, with a spur to an observation deck over fen and marsh along the South River.
- The rope "trolley," a swing seat a few hundred yards past the deck that crosses the river.
- John Sherman Path, yellow, 1.3 miles, with benches and bog boards. NSRWA notes that parts of it are wet and overgrown.
Fall here overlaps with hunting season. NSRWA says licensed hunters may hunt deer by archery and hunt waterfowl on parts of Camp Wing, that hunting is not allowed on Sundays, and that non-hunters should wear bright orange during the season. Town rules allow deer hunting on designated conservation land by archery only and ban hunting within 150 feet of marked trails. Conservation land is open from sunrise to sunset, and cars belong in the marked lots.
| 2026 season | Statewide dates | What it means at Camp Wing |
|---|---|---|
| Archery deer | Oct. 5 – Nov. 28 | Starts today. Allowed on designated parts, never on Sundays |
| Shotgun deer | Nov. 30 – Dec. 12 | Town rules don't permit shotgun deer hunting on conservation land |
| Primitive firearms deer | Dec. 14 – 31 | Town deer hunting is still limited to archery |
Massachusetts requires deer hunters to wear 500 square inches of blaze orange during shotgun season. NSRWA's orange advice for walkers on Camp Wing applies throughout the hunting season. A hat or vest from now through November costs little and lines up with what the property's own guide recommends.
The Spring Count to Watch
The herring run on the South River runs through April and May, based on the two springs NSRWA volunteers have watched from the Main Street bridge in Marshfield. Spring 2027 will be the first run with Temple Street gone. Any herring that get past Chandlers Pond and swim into the water across from the Camp Wing trail entrance will be the first river herring documented above the old dam site. NSRWA's herring reports are the best place to follow the volunteer sightings as they come in.
If your Duxbury home backs onto conservation land or the South River, how that setting appears in photos and in your listing story will shape what buyers think it's worth. Regan Peterman can walk the property with you and talk through how to present it. Schedule a private consultation to discuss your Duxbury home's market potential.
