HEIGHT OF SOME GROTON HILLS. 99 



HEIGFIT OF SOME GROTON HILLS. 



During the summer of 1887 a party of engineers employed 

 by the United States Geological Survey perambulated the 

 town of Groton and its neighborhood, and took the direction 

 of the roads and the elevation of the hills, as a part of the 

 topographical survey of the State, which was begun some 

 years previously. They also laid down on their charts the 

 brooks and ponds, and even the dwelling-houses along the 

 roads. From time to time the result of their labors has been 

 printed at Washington, on sheets or maps, under the author- 

 ity of the Department of the Interior, which is conducting 

 the work of the Geological Survey. Each sheet contains a 

 group of towns, though without indicating their boundary 

 lines, and each sheet is named after some central or promi- 

 nent town in the group. The altitudes are shown by con- 

 tour intervals of twenty feet, so that the various heights are 

 represented within that distance. 



The Groton Sheet contains the following towns, which are 

 here given in their geographical order: Leominster, Lancas- 

 ter, Harvard, Littleton, Lunenburg, Shirley, Ayer, Groton, 

 Townsend, Pepperell, and Dunstable, in Massachusetts, and 

 Mason, Brookline, Hollis, and Nashua, in New Hampshire. 

 Through the courtesy of Marcus Baker, Esq., who is con- 

 nected with the Division of Geography at Washington, I am 

 enabled to give the exact height of the prominent hills in 

 Groton, as follows : — 



Chestnut Hills, 544 feet; Indian Hills, 524; Gibbet Hill 

 516; Prospect Hill, 503; Snake Hill, 497; The Throne, 484; 

 Brown Loaf, 448; Barralock Hill (north of Baddacook Pond), 

 422; a hill south of Wattle 's Pond, 412; and a hill west of 

 the southerly end of Baddacook Pond, 352 feet. Nonacoicus 

 Hill in Ayer is 393 feet high ; a hill, near Shirley Village, 

 lying in a northwesterly direction, 441 feet ; and a hill, perhaps 

 two hundred rods west of Shirley Common, 463 feet. The 

 measurement of these altitudes is taken from mean tide on 

 the coast line. 



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