SUBURBAN AND MOUNTAIN PARKS IN MASSACHUSETTS. 563 





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NANTASKET BEACH, BOSTON. 



(A noble example of a beach owned by the people and managed in their interest.) 



rights were regarded with admiration by 

 their townsmen for their smartness. 

 Gloucester, population 25,000, had in 1893 

 no park or common. " Where do they go for 

 band concerts? " a visitor asked. " The band 

 takes the sidewalk and the people the street." 



Abundant rights of public access to the 

 seashore existed years ago, but in 1893 only 

 five out of forty-six Massachusetts shore 

 towns had any legal beach rights worth men- 

 tioning. Westport illustrated the general in- 

 difference. Several people having built 

 houses within the line of a street running 

 1000 rods along the water, the town, to 

 avoid making them move, relocated the- high- 

 way inside the sand hills, thus spoiling a 

 magnificent ocean drive. The rapid pur- 

 chase of the Massachusetts shore front by 

 people of wealth cut the public off from 

 haunts enjoyed since time immemorial, and 

 the rapid erection of gates and barbed wire 

 was fast making the ocean front into some 

 one's back yard. 



Even • the metropolitan district (within 

 eleven miles of Boston) enjoyed public rights 

 to the shore on only a few insignificant tracts. 

 The harbor islands were unavailable because 

 mostly used for penal and charitable institu- 

 tions. Revere, Nantasket, and other resorts 

 open to the public were so conducted under 

 private ownership as to attract hosts of peo- 

 ple of a somewhat disorderly type, so that 

 these lovely shores were enjoyed by one class 

 only. 



' Great Head, in Winthrop, perhaps seven- 

 ty-five feet high, one of Boston harbor's most 

 conspicuous landmarks, was bought in 1883 



for only about $18,000. The 200 lots into 

 which it was cut must have netted a large 

 profit above expenses, as it is estimated that 

 they sold for $400 each. And now, as seen 

 from the decks of passing ships, this head, 

 though a pretty and populous suburb, sug- 

 gests the older materialism of the public, of 

 councilmen and legislators, that no one saw 

 the possibilities of this spot for an unusual 

 and imaginative park development. How 

 easy to have made it into a woodland park, 

 so that one headland of a bleak and treeless 

 harbor horizon might have emulated the 

 beautiful Navesink Highlands of New York, 

 thus offering the ocean traveler a captivating 

 forecast of American scenic beauty. 



WORK OF THE METROPOLITAN COMMISSION. 



A movement for the enrichment of subur- 

 ban and country life through public parks 

 containing the 1 - best of the natural scenery 

 had its beginning about 1892. During that 

 year the Massachusetts Legislature . created 

 the Metropolitan Park Commission, which 

 has now acquired, at the expense of the towns 

 and cities of the district, 10,053 acres in the 

 metropolitan district and outside of Boston. 

 The principal holdings are the Blue Hills 

 and Middlesex Fells reservations, forty-seven 

 miles of frontage on the Charles, Mystic, 

 and Neponset rivers, and five beaches with 

 ten miles of shore. The commission has ex- 

 pended about $12,000,000, and individual 

 cities and towns 'in the district about $23,- 

 000,000 more on their own account. 



When the commission took Revere Beach, 

 the Coney Island of Boston, a railroad ran 



