Vaughan Woods State Park

About this park

Vaughan Woods State Park, established in 1949, protects 165 acres of old-growth and mature forest along the Salmon Falls River in South Berwick, in Maine's southernmost York County near the New Hampshire border. The park's defining feature is its stands of old-growth forest, genuinely rare in a region where most land was cleared for farming or logging generations ago, giving visitors a sense of what pre-colonial Maine forest actually looked like. Trails wind along the riverbank and through the towering old trees, connecting to the nearby Hamilton House, a preserved 18th-century mansion managed by Historic New England that sits adjacent to the park and adds a layer of colonial-era history to a visit focused primarily on natural scenery. The Salmon Falls River itself forms part of the border with New Hampshire, giving the park a genuinely liminal, edge-of-the-state feel. With no campground or beach, Vaughan Woods functions as a quiet hiking and nature-appreciation park, appealing especially to visitors interested in old-growth forest ecology or in combining a walk with a tour of the adjacent Hamilton House. Its location in Maine's far southwestern corner, closer to Portsmouth, New Hampshire than to Portland, gives it a slightly different visitor base than the parks clustered around Casco Bay.