Moseley Woods, Cashman Park & Atkinson Common in the North End

If you live on this side of the Chain Bridge rotary, you already know the three green spaces that anchor the North End. What most guides miss is that they aren't interchangeable. Each one solves a different problem in a resident's day, and the Clipper City Rail Trail is quietly stitching them into a single network that will feel very different once MassDOT finishes the Route 1 work.

This post is for people who already walk these paths. The point is to argue that Moseley Woods, Cashman Park, and Atkinson Common function as a system, and that the system is about to get better connected. Once you see them that way, the choice of where to go at 7:15 on a Tuesday morning stops being a coin flip.

Three anchors, in the order you'd actually use them

Moseley Woods, on the bluff

Located at 14 Spofford Street along the Merrimac River in Newburyport, Moseley Woods covers 16 acres, offering on-site parking, a playground, picnic tables, benches, and stunning views of the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge. The playground has a zipline, climbing wall, and walking trails on a wooded bluff overlooking the Merrimac River. The park sits adjacent to the rotary near the Chain Bridge, with entrance from Spofford and Merrimac Streets and Moseley Avenue.

That combination of features is unusual for a city park inside city limits. A shaded picnic table with a river view is a fifteen-minute round trip from most North End addresses. If you have out-of-town guests and forty-five minutes to fill, this is the answer.

Cashman Park, on the water

Cashman is the workhorse. The park sits on the Merrimack River waterfront with an enclosed toddler play area, nautical themed play structures, open space, a tennis court, basketball court, ball field, and soccer fields. Add to that walking paths that connect to the Clipper City Rail Trail, plus pickleball courts and a baseball diamond. There is also a community boat ramp on site.

The reason to know Cashman inside out is that it does not compete with Moseley. Moseley is a destination trip. Cashman is where you go when you have a toddler with forty minutes of energy to burn, or when you want to run intervals on flat ground before work.

Atkinson Common, at the top of High Street

Atkinson Common is the quiet one. The Newburyport Parks Division maintains formal gardens at Atkinson Common as part of the same portfolio that includes the entire length of the Clipper City Rail Trail and the athletic fields used by public schools and private groups. It also hosts Kids Day in the Park, scheduled for Wednesday, July 29th, from 10 am to 2 pm in 2026.

If you have never sat on a bench at Atkinson Common on a weekday afternoon, that is the gap in your North End life. It is the closest thing the neighborhood has to a formal garden square, and it is almost never crowded.

Off-leash windows, side by side

Half the value of knowing these parks is knowing when you can let the dog off the leash and when you cannot. The rules are set by city ordinance, and they are not the same at each park.

Those windows come from Newburyport Code of Ordinances Chapter 3: Animals, Section 3-26(e), which also requires that dogs be licensed and vaccinated, leashed when entering and exiting, and that dogs younger than four months are not allowed off leash.

Two practical reads. First, Moseley's dawn-to-dusk window is the more forgiving one for anyone with a variable schedule. Second, the Cashman windows line up almost exactly with the commuter rhythms of North End residents who work in Boston, which is presumably intentional and worth using.

The rotary project that will finally close the loop

Here is the change most residents have not fully absorbed. The Clipper City Rail Trail is close to being a real loop, and Moseley Woods is right at the point where the last link is being welded on.

The 3.35-mile Clipper City Rail Trail was designed and constructed over the course of about 25 years, and the last segments of the loop trail were completed in 2024. The full continuous loop around the core of Newburyport is almost complete, and the remaining sections to be built include MassDOT's crossing of Route 1 at the rotary. MassDOT initiated a $17M project in the spring of 2023 to resurface Route 1, and the project includes reconstructing the rotary in Newburyport and installing a multiuse pathway missing link along with pedestrian-activated signals for crossing the highway. The overall 7-mile project in Newbury, Newburyport, and Salisbury including the rotary work will take approximately 2.5 years to complete.

For a North End resident, the practical effect is that the walk from your front door to Cashman, and then continuously around to the MBTA station, will stop requiring you to negotiate the rotary on foot. The signals and the missing multiuse-path segment are what close the loop.

The Rail Trail already connects to Cashman Park via a paved boardwalk. Currently it connects the waterfront, downtown Newburyport, the Newburyport MBTA Station, residential neighborhoods, businesses, schools, shops, restaurants, recreational facilities, and parks, and it includes the scenic Harborwalk, which follows the shoreline of the Merrimack River. Once the rotary link goes in, a resident living near Moseley can walk the entire loop without breaking stride at Route 1.

Two things worth watching if you use these paths daily. First, the trail sees serious volume already: it is used by thousands of people, over half of whom are daily users, and it is connected to a larger regional Coastal Trails Network in the neighboring communities of Newbury, Amesbury, and Salisbury. Second, the parks system is doing more with less than most residents realize. As part of the Department of Public Services, the Parks Division is responsible for both maintenance and improvements at over 100 acres of parks and playgrounds. The Parks Division does all this work with just 3.7 full-time-equivalent staff members.

That staffing number is the one to hold in your head the next time you consider whether to bag a piece of trash on the trail yourself.

Picking your park by the hour

If you already live here, the useful move is to match park to purpose. A short field guide:

• 6:45 AM, dog needs to run before work. Moseley Woods. The dawn-to-dusk window means you are not racing a clock, and the loop trails give the dog real distance.
• 8:15 AM, toddler with an hour to fill. Cashman. The enclosed nautical toddler area is safer than an unfenced structure and closer to a coffee stop on Merrimac Street.
• 11:30 AM, out-of-town guest, one-hour window. Moseley picnic tables with a river view, then a quick drive to the Chain Bridge overlook.
• 3:45 PM, older kid needs to be tired out. Cashman fields and courts, or the zipline and climbing wall at Moseley if the fields are booked.
• Any weekday afternoon, you need quiet. Atkinson Common. Bring a book.
• Saturday morning, long walk. Start at Cashman, take the paved boardwalk onto the Rail Trail, and keep going until you feel like turning around. Restrooms are limited to the commuter rail station, Waterfront Park, and seasonally at Cashman Park.

The fall bookend

Fall is when the North End's outdoor triangle earns its keep. The trees at Moseley are mostly deciduous. Atkinson Common's formal gardens change character weekly through October. And downtown wraps its own season with Autumn Fest, hosted by the Newburyport Chamber and set at Waterfront Park a short walk from Cashman. The event runs from 10 am to 4 pm in downtown Newburyport, a community-wide celebration of gratitude and appreciation that welcomes visitors to share in the excitement of local fall festivities.

If you are the kind of North End resident who does one downtown outing per season and otherwise stays close to home, that is the one to catch. The rest of the fall, the three anchors above will more than earn the walk out your front door.

Person + Person Group has spent decades helping owners on this side of the Chain Bridge think about their homes in the context of the streets, parks, and river that surround them. If you are weighing a move within the North End, or wondering how the changes at the rotary will shape the walk to your door, Person + Person Group is happy to talk. Download the Newburyport Guide or request a personalized market plan to start the conversation.