Bradley Palmer State Park in Topsfield and Hamilton was given to the Commonwealth by Bradley Webster Palmer. The park is operated by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. It preserves the natural setting, layout, and surviving structures of Palmer's estate. Palmer’s mansion carriage house, stable, garage and workshop, gardener’s cottage, gardener’s shed, a storage shed, reservoir, ponds, roads and paths, steeplechase obstacles, and the ghostly outline of a formal garden still exist. Open meadows reflect former farm land. Wetlands and the Ipswich River are important habitats. Stands of evergreens, hardwoods, and mixed forest have multiplied. A wide variety of wildlife inhabit or migrate through the park.

Bradley Webster Palmer (1866-1946) was a highly successful attorney and philanthropist who specialized in corporate law. His office was in Boston and he maintained an apartment there. He consolidated most of America’s banana importers to form the United Fruit Company, which made all involved very wealthy. He served the U.S. during World War I, pro bono on two federal committees and on the legal staff of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace which went to Versailles in Paris, France in 1919.

However, his pleasure was in building Willow Dale, a country estate on the North Shore, where he could ride, boat, fish, and entertain friends and neighbors, He acquired 700 acres from the Lamson family farm 1898, and by 1944 the estate had grown to thousands of acres with many carriage and riding paths, and over 30 buildings, maintained by a staff of 35-40 people. Starting in 1911 Myopia Hunt Club rode to the hounds here and raced on the estate’s steeplechase and flat courses.

Palmer never married and in 1937 he donated some 2,400 acres to the Commonwealth; this became Willowdale State Forest, immediately north of the park. In 1944 he crafted the deed which turned over the core of his estate, today’s Bradley Palmer State Park. The deed expressed his desire that his beloved estate continue to be enjoyed in the manner he had.

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