Fairyland Pond

The path to Fairyland Pond

Hello everyone!

Recently, I took a little field trip to Concord to see Fairyland Pond. It is across the street from Concord-Carlisle High School, about 500 feet into the woods.

Looking across the pond. You can sort of tell how steep the surrounding land is.

Fairyland Pond is about 450 feet long and on average around 190 feet wide. It is very shallow; the maximum depth is only 4 feet. Fairyland pond is a kettle lake. If you don’t know what that is, please head on over here to learn more about this awesome feature. There are also many steep sides surrounding the pond. These steep sides are kames, features that forms when sediment accumulates on top of the glacier and is then deposited on the ground as a hill when the glacier melts. To learn more about kames, please click here. Together, these two features form a kame and kettle landscape which is very common in glacial outwash plains.

Another angle of the pond.

How do we know that Fairyland pond is a kettle lake and not just a regular lake? Well, normal lakes rely on rivers to constantly supply them with water, so there are typically many streams flowing in and out of them. Kettle lakes, however, are special. They get their water when the outwash from the glacier drains into them. Therefore, it is uncommon for there to be streams flowing into them, supplying them with water. That is the case for Fairyland Pond, there is only a small brook that drains out of it.

This map shows the steepness of the kames around the pond, as well as the solitary stream running out of it.

Tessie had a ton of fun walking around Fairyland Pond with me and hopes you have a fantastic day!

Image Citation:
Map copyright Google Maps