Every September, the same assumption makes its way around town: once the last chukker sounds at Myopia, the horses go inside for the winter and Bay Road goes quiet until spring. Four Sundays remain in Myopia Polo Club's 139th season, which closes on October 11, and the assumption has some truth to it. The tailgates fold up. The gate stops charging admission. But watch what actually happens on the trails a mile south of the polo field in the weeks after, and the pattern runs the other direction. The closing of one season is the opening of another, and it plays out on the same horses, the same riders, and in some cases the same families, just a different address.
The Season Everyone Circles
Myopia Polo Club plays out of 435 Bay Road in South Hamilton, with gates opening at 1:30 p.m. and the match starting at 3 p.m. every Sunday from late May through Columbus Day weekend. This is the club's 139th consecutive season. Myopia was one of seven charter members of what is now the U.S. Polo Association back in 1890, and of those seven original clubs, only Myopia and Meadowbrook on Long Island still exist. Myopia is the only one still playing on its original field. General admission runs $20 at the gate, kids 12 and under get in free, and the routine hasn't changed in years: bring a blanket, a cooler, a leashed dog if you've got one, and stick around after the final whistle for the trophy presentation.
The Sunday schedule gives the season its own private calendar of names. Early in the season, matches carry titles like the Joseph and Peter Poor Cup and the Neil Ayer Cup, giving way by midsummer to USPA-sanctioned tournaments like the National Chairman's Cup. By the second Sunday of October the fields go dark for the year, at least for spectators with tickets.
What Fills In When the Gate Closes
The horses that fill Bay Road on Sundays do not go into storage for the winter. Many of them go to work on the trail network at Bradley Palmer State Park, a short drive south on Asbury Street, where 721 acres of former estate grounds carry hikers, cyclists, dog walkers, and mounted riders on the same shared paths. Come fall specifically, that trail system also becomes a route for organized fox hunts riding out from neighboring farms, a tradition considerably older than the polo season itself. Myopia Hunt Club, the organization whose grounds host the Sunday matches, was founded in 1882 as a foxhunting club first, six years before its first official polo match against the Dedham Polo and Country Club in 1888. Hunting on horseback across this stretch of Essex County has been part of the fall calendar since before the polo field existed, and it is still very much active once the leaves turn.
Practically, that means the rhythm on Bradley Palmer's trails shifts the same week Bay Road empties out. A hiker who has the Discover Hamilton Trail or the Bay Circuit Trail mostly to themselves in August should expect more hoofprints, not fewer, by the third week of October.
The Park That Absorbs the Overflow
Bradley Palmer State Park was once the private estate of attorney Bradley Palmer, and the restored stone mansion at its center, the Willowdale Estate, still anchors the property. The Ipswich River runs along one edge, and the Accessible Ipswich Riverside Stroll passes remnants of the 1730 Lamson Bridge, a detail that turns a flat, wheelchair-friendly walk into something closer to a short history lesson. The park's Healthy Heart Trail is graded easy and benched for anyone who needs to rest partway through, and two long-distance routes, the Bay Circuit Trail and the Discover Hamilton Trail, cross directly through the property rather than skirting it.
None of this is seasonal in the way the polo schedule is. Bradley Palmer is open year round, sunrise to sunset, with a parking fee in effect from May 14 through October 30. Winter turns the same paths over to cross-country skiing. What changes in autumn isn't whether the park is open. It's who else is using it.
Here is how the two calendars line up this month:
| Myopia Polo Club | Bradley Palmer State Park | |
|---|---|---|
| Season | May 31 to Oct 11, 2026 | Open year round |
| Sunday hours | Gates 1:30 p.m., match 3 p.m. | Sunrise to sunset |
| Cost | $20 general, 12 and under free | Parking fee through Oct 30 |
| What you'll see | Match, tailgating, trophy presentation | Hikers, cyclists, and by fall, mounted riders |
Across the Street From the Polo Field's Neighbor
Directly across Asbury Street from Bradley Palmer's main parking lot sits the Patton Homestead, 650 Asbury Street, the former home of General George S. Patton Jr. and his son, Major General George S. Patton IV. The town accepted the 27-acre property as a gift from Joanne Patton in 2012, and the exterior grounds, including the fields, the trails along the Ipswich River, and a scenic overlook deck, are free and open to the public from sunrise to sunset every day of the year. The Wenham Museum now manages the Patton family archives on-site and offers tours of the house itself, but the trails require no reservation and no admission.
For a resident who has already walked the Bradley Palmer loop a dozen times, the Patton grounds offer the same river, a different vantage, and a piece of local history that most visitors to the park never notice sits directly across the street.
Where Bay Road Ends Up on a Sunday Night
Myopia's address, 435 Bay Road, and POST, the New American restaurant at 16 Bay Road, sit on the same stretch of road in South Hamilton. POST is open Sundays until 9:30 p.m., which makes it a straightforward stop whether the afternoon was spent at the polo field or on the trails at Bradley Palmer. A few minutes away, 15 Walnut Tavern runs its own recurring fixture, a Wednesday night of dollar oysters and live music that draws a regular crowd on a night that has nothing to do with polo or hiking. Different day, different draw, but the same underlying point: Hamilton's calendar has more than one thing that repeats.
The Takeaway for Anyone Walking These Trails This Month
The instinct to treat October 11 as the end of Hamilton's horse season misses what's actually happening on the ground. Myopia's gate closes for the year, but the animals and the riders who fill it every Sunday from May through Columbus Day don't go anywhere. Many of them show up on the same trails everyone else is using, at Bradley Palmer and on the paths bordering the Patton Homestead, right as the polo tickets stop selling. For a resident who walks a dog on the Bay Circuit Trail or takes the Healthy Heart loop on a weekday afternoon, that means October brings more shared-trail traffic, not less, whatever the polo schedule suggests.
Knowing which local rhythms actually overlap, rather than assuming one season quietly hands off to the next, is the kind of detail that only comes from paying attention to a town over time. Henry Gourdeau works this stretch of the North Shore for exactly that reason, and if a conversation about Hamilton or a neighboring town is ever useful, a free consultation is always the place to start.
