Resilient Community: Cherryfield Riverwalk

The Narraguagus River runs through the center of Cherryfield. On the eastern banks of the river is a constellation of parks connected by River Road, a quiet neighborhood street. Over the past few years, this informal community gathering space has been evolving, with new parking spaces, benches, and interpretive signs about the river.

This part of town, known as the Cherryfield Riverwalk, brings together a lot of what makes this rural town special. A dedicated group of local volunteers is working to create an even more robust public space to build community resilience, thanks to funding from state and federal programs.

Envisioning more for the Riverwalk

Crystal Hitchings grew up in Cherryfield. She returned to her hometown in 2020 and joined the Cherryfield Planning Board. She knew about the Riverwalk; locals had been strolling the banks of the Narraguagus for years, and visitors come to watch the dramatic fish migration in the spring. Now, the path connects the increasingly popular Downeast Sunrise Trail and the Maine Seacoast Mission campus.  

Still, Hitchings thought the space had more potential. There were spots that needed environmental remediation; the banks of the river were choked with invasive plants like Japanese knotweed and reed canary grass. The parks needed more parking, repairs to culverts and stream crossings, and something to tell visitors the story of Cherryfield through the Narraguagus River.

“People in Cherryfield are very proud of their history and love the river deeply,” Hitchings said. “These are things people have cared about for a long time but haven’t been able to do much with.”

In 2023, the town selectboard officialized the Cherryfield Riverwalk Committee. That same year, they received their first Community Resilience Partnership Community Action Grant to remove invasive plants from the riverbank in partnership with the Department of Environmental Protection, and the work of bringing new life to the Cherryfield Riverwalk began.

Support from Maine Service Fellows

In a small town like Cherryfield, one of the biggest challenges is capacity. With an all-volunteer board, it is difficult to find time to conduct outreach for new projects.

Luckily, Volunteer Maine’s Maine Service Fellows program provides towns with support to do just that. Cherryfield successfully applied to receive a Service Fellow, Emma Holt Sawyer, whose position was funded by the NOAA CRRC Resilient Maine grant awarded in 2024.

“The capacity that it brought to the effort was exponential,” Hitchings said. “We could not have done what she helped us do in the time that she helped us do it.”

During her 2025 term, Sawyer organized volunteer workdays to remove invasive plants and connected with the Maine Audubon native species program for eventual replanting. She led field trips with Cherryfield Elementary School science classes.  

“You’re taking the kids outside, and you’re building their connection with the river. They can come and say to their parents, ‘Hey, let’s walk by the river today,’” Sawyer said. “It’s symbiotic.”

Sawyer developed an e-newsletter, website, and logo for the Cherryfield Riverwalk, and conducted surveys to find out what programming and features residents would like to see. She began conversations with the Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT) about making the area of Route 1 that runs through Cherryfield safer for pedestrians and developed initial designs for crosswalks. Sawyer even helped organize a Halloween event, the “Scaryfield Shiverwalk,” where kids could trick or treat safely at Cherryfield’s historical houses.  

Sawyer also connected with a wastewater engineer in Machias to conduct water testing around private septic overboard discharge systems, which were previously not monitored and stymied business development along the Narraguagus River. The data will help property owners get funding to replace their outdated systems .

“Everyone wants clean water. We’re going to bring some answers and genuinely useful information,” Sawyer said.

Leveraging local talent

Once the wheels were turning on Cherryfield Riverwalk, local talent poured in to help.  

Hitchings connected with Tammy Venneri, owner of Downeast Business Studio, to develop the interactive interpretive signs for the Riverwalk about Cherryfield’s ecology, culture, and history, as well as a new Cherryfield Riverwalk website. The signs feature QR codes to pages on the website that are updated seasonally, with “citizen science missions” where visitors can document observations about the river.

“Every decision has been very intentional,” Venneri said. “We want people to come back again and again.”

Venneri’s husband Dominick D’Andrea, owner of Downeast Dirtworks, donated the labor to create the parking lot at Falls Park. D’Andrea carefully moved donated native blueberry barren rocks for the parking lot, which Hitchings hopes to eventually transform into a blueberry interpretation station.

Yet another local, Rick Harter, is a retired coastal habitat restoration specialist. He helped the committee develop their most recent CRP grant, also funded through the NOAA CRRC Resilient Maine grant, to address culvert erosion at the Riverwalk.

Identifying future Riverwalk needs

So far, the Cherryfield Riverwalk Committee has accomplished a lot.  

Falls Park now has a wheelchair accessible picnic table and grill and new benches. At Veterans Memorial Park, there is a Chronolog station in partnership with Downeast Salmon Federation where visitors can add photos to a timelapse of the river. The committee is also working with a local Eagle Scout to add a memorial path around the American flagpole, and they are hoping to restore the base of the Cherryfield canon, an essential piece of local lore.

Hitchings presented about the progress at the 2026 Stronger Communities Summit.

And they’re just getting started.  

Hitchings said that the town received a grant from the Maine Community Foundation to build a children’s play area at Falls Park. Hitchings is also continuing the work that Sawyer started to make the Route 1 area more walkable and hopes to have a demonstration project with the MaineDOT soon.

“There’s movement and momentum on things that the community has been talking about for a long time and there are actually things happening now,” Hitchings said. “Hopefully that will provide a sense of hope and possibility and encourage more people to participate and support thereby contributing to that community resilience.”