Creating Our Harbor Home

in Dorchester

(awaiting installation)

Described by John Smith as “a Paradise of all these parts,” Boston Harbor is a large, sheltered harbor with over 30 islands. The harbor’s diverse ecosystems have attracted abundant life to its coast, rivers, and uplands for thousands of years.

Satellite image courtesy of Wanmei Lang, NASA Earth Observatory

Boston Harbor got its start 550 million years ago in volcanic eruptions that gave rise to the sedimentary bedrock of Boston Basin and the harder igneous rock of its surrounding hills. Eons later, ice age glaciers carved out the future harbor and deposited glacial debris, chiefly as elongated hills called drumlins. As the glaciers melted, sea level rose and flooded an ancient river valley to create Boston Harbor. The drumlins became today’s harbor islands.

Hunters and gatherers arrived 12,000 years ago, before the harbor formed, following game into what was then a tundra-like landscape. People adapted as the region warmed, settling in villages along the coast and rivers.

For centuries, Columbia Point was a marshy peninsula surrounded by tidal mudflats. Indigenous people likely harvested shellfish and gathered plant material here. Later, colonists used it for grazing livestock. In the late 1800s, Bostonians began landfill projects that added acreage and elevation. Today, UMass Boston educates its students about the wonders of Boston Harbor, formed thousands of years ago by glaciers.

Complex processes driven by tides, waves, and wind constantly change coastal landforms such as this gravel beach and eroding bluff on Thompson Island. Sea-level rise and intensifying storm surges due to climate change amplify these processes and threaten the islands’ futures.

Courtesy of Trista L. Thornberry-Ehrlich, Colorado State University

Water depth in Boston Harbor reveals ancient river channels extending east to an earlier shoreline now miles out to sea. The largest of these form today’s navigation channels. Columbia Point is off the map, west of the Paleo Neponset River channel indicated by light blue in Dorchester Bay.

Courtesy of Duncan Fitzgerald, Boston University et al.; Trista L. Thornberry-Ehrlich, Colorado State University

An 1874 map overlayed on a map of today’s Columbia Point shows the peninsula remained marshy and uninhabited before decades of landmaking began. In contrast, the surrounding neighborhoods were undergoing rapid development.

Courtesy of Mapjunction

Sign Location

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Community activists. Colonial law. Political will. New state regulations. The combination created the 43-mile Boston Harborwalk–a public path, stretching from Logan Airport through seven neighborhoods to the Neponset River. In 1978, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) sought to improve public access to the waterfront. They succeeded by integrating early Colonial laws into new state regulations.

In the decades that followed, community activists, city and state government, and developers of shoreline projects have worked together to ensure the Harborwalk is always constructed along the waterfront. Some sites also provide public amenities–bathrooms, meeting places, kayak launches,
etc. The result is a fabulous path welcoming residents and visitors to our vibrant clean harbor.

Early Colonial laws established public right of access along tidelands to protect citizens' rights to fish, hunt, and navigate at sea and along the shorefront. These laws go back even further: They stem from Roman law, which was incorporated into English law and brought over to Massachusetts by English
settlers. Then, in the 1640s, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed laws permitting private docks in the intertidal area (between low and high tide) as long as public access was retained. Almost all of Boston's waterfront is filled land that was once the intertidal area. This, together with the centuries-old legal right of access, served as the underpinnings for the 1978 CZM regulations.

Resources

Acknowledgments

  • Friends of the Boston Harborwalk is deeply grateful to the George B. Henderson Foundation for funding the design, manufacture and installation of the signs at Columbia Point.
  • Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind Recording Studio and Thomasine Berg for their partnership in creating the audio files.
  • Thank you to Wanmei Liang, who graciously provided a custom version of her satellite image of Boston Harbor.