Best Places to Fly
Your Drone in Boston

The Horn Pond Recreation Area is a drone-friendly spot located a short way outside of Boston. The tree-lined fish-packed pond is the focal point, which has a pleasant 2.4-mile trail around it. There are also a few park benches dotted around from where visitors can relax and take in the views. This idyllic location has plenty of space for flying drones and filming. The trail around the pond can sometimes see heavy traffic, so please be mindful of this when flying drones.

The Reading Town Forest is probably one of the best spots to hone your drone flight skills. FPV racers will get a kick out of navigating the dense pine trees in the forest. There are a lot of offshoot trails that you can explore to find good drone flight spots away from the main crowd.

Birchwold Farm near the boundary of MA and RI is a vast open green space with a small network of walking trails. This is an excellent place to fly a drone whether you prefer to fly in open space or through and over trees. Birchwold Farm can be crowded during the mid-day, so it’s best to fly a drone here in the morning or early evening.

Capron Park Zoo about an hour south-west of Boston offers a medium-sized area to fly drones, particularly in FPV mode. There is plenty of open space to fly your drone without going too near the zoo area. The zoo tends to get crowded during mid-day, so it’s best to be here by early morning.

Lynn Woods, Massachusetts, is a much-loved area for drone pilots, especially owners of camera quadcopters. The vast 2200-acre densely-forested park is teeming with wildlife, charming ponds, and landmarks. The most notable structure is the Stone Observation Tower on top of Burrill Hill. The surrounding scenery offers spectacular views from the ground up and the sky down.

NOTE: Magazine Beach is within the Charles River Reservation, a park classified under the DCR. Appropriate restrictions may apply.

A short ride from the city, Magazine Beach gives a spectacular view of the Charles River and the surrounding cityscape that includes some of the most iconic Boston buildings. In the autumn, the park comes alive with colorful leaves and trees. You can’t exactly fly your drone very far from the beach, but it’s still a good vantage point for some nice aerial shots.

The 3.74-acre Chandler Hovey Park has a welcoming grassy area next to the harbor that few can resist. A scenic harbor mouth view, park benches, and picnic tables allure all who make eye contact. The Manchester-By-The-Sea and Beverly shorelines are also visible. However, the focal point that interests most camera drone pilots is the Marblehead Light Tower.

The pyramidal skeletal lighthouse rises high above the sea traffic below. It replaced the original brick and wood-built tower in 1895. Drone footage captured around here is spectacular and records a little bit of US coastal history.

One of the most beautiful parks in Boston, the Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park boasts of open fields, a rose garden, covered walkways, and a great view of the Boston harbor. Flying a drone over the park isn’t likely because of the frequent crowds, but you can try taking off from the harbor and flying out over the water. The cityscape of Boston looks great from this perspective, especially when bathed with the reddish hue of the harbor sunset.