Tin Shop Pond

Tin Shop Pond is an important natural landmark in our town. During the summer, many photographers marvel at the abundance of wildlife that call the beloved pond home. When the ice freezes over in the winter, Tin Shop comes alive as skaters take to the ice and play pond hockey well into the night.

As aquatic plant species continue to grow and decay, Tin Shop Pond is becoming increasingly difficult to use for recreation, choked with vegetation in the summer and softer ice in the winter.  After investigating, Trails Group member Dan Reed says that Tin Shop is well on its way to becoming a floating bog.

Currently, a big, fibrous mat of dead yet only semi-decayed plant material, mostly water lily, is floating just below the surface of water. Sinking in the winter and rising in the summer.  Over the next few years, it will build up more and more until it floats mostly above the surface.  Then it will begin to support other bog plant species and peat moss and eventually trees such as tamarack. This will make Tin Shop impossible to use for skating, canoeing, and other recreational activities.

One way to solve this problem involves dredging the pond. The town is  reviewing various options regarding the cleanup of Tin Shop Pond. Dan Reed is also looking into ownership of the pond as this will need to be determined before dredging can be completed, which is turning up much interesting history about the transformation of “Poverty Plains” into Marlow Village nearly 200 years ago.

The perimeter of Tin Shop Pond has already seen improvements. Town resident Jeannie Merwin put a lot of work into cleaning up the pond picnic area and painting picnic benches which has already bolstered the appearance of our frequently photographed pond.