History of the Middlesex Fells

The Fells became public land when the Metropolitan Park Commission began buying it in 1894, after decades of mills, quarries and ice cutting. DCR calls it one of the first preserved public parks in the country.

The best place to see that history on the ground is Haywardville, a mill village that has vanished into the hemlocks of Virginia Wood.

Haywardville: The Mill Village in Virginia Wood

Spot Pond Brook was the focus of industry in the Fells. It peaked in 1858 with the Hayward Rubber Mills, and the village that grew up around them was called Haywardville.

The village is gone. DCR describes the site, in Virginia Wood, as a hemlock grove with a self-guided interpretive history trail.

How to See Haywardville Today

Two marked trails go through it. DCR's pick is the Spot Pond Brook Historic Trail, a 1-mile yellow-blazed loop rated easy. Start at the kiosk in the small parking area at 1 Woodland Road. Friends of the Fells says its brochure covers 150 years of water-powered industry along the brook.

The pink-blazed Virginia Wood Trail is also 0.8 miles and connects to the Rock Circuit Trail. Virginia Wood is open to walkers only, with no biking. DCR has free parking on Woodland Road. Check the trail map before you go.

Before the Park: Native People and the Land

For centuries the Fells were hunting and fishing grounds for the Massachusett, Naumkeag and Pawtucket (or Pennacook) peoples, who also planted and stored corn, grain, squash and beans. The Pawtucket are no longer a distinct tribe, but many descendants still live in Massachusetts.

1632: Winthrop Names Spot Pond

Governor John Winthrop and his men explored the area in the winter of 1632. DCR quotes his papers:

...they came to a very great pond, having in the midst an island of about one acre and very thick with trees of pine and beech and the pond had divers small rocks standing up here and there in it, which therefore called Spot Pond.

Spot Pond is still there, though it was raised nine feet in 1900 when it became a drinking water reservoir.

Mills, Quarries and Ice

After settlement, DCR says, the land was valued for its timber, granite quarries, ice and the water power that ran many mills. Spot Pond Brook was the center of that industry.

The Campaign to Save the Fells

The idea of a public forest here is older than the park. Naturalist Wilson Flagg called in 1856 for a thousand acres or more of woodland near every large city, kept for visitors. Henry David Thoreau seconded the idea in his 1859 journal.

In 1864 Boston abolitionist Elizur Wright moved to the base of Pine Hill in Medford. Alarmed by loggers clear-cutting the hills, he campaigned for the whole 4,000-acre landscape to become a public forest park. In 1880 he, Flagg, journalist Sylvester Baxter and others formed the Middlesex Fells Association, and Flagg arranged a visit that won Frederick Law Olmsted's support. Wright's Tower on Pine Hill is named for him.

The state passed a Forest Act in 1882 that let towns take land for forestry. Wright died in 1885 before the Fells were saved.

Virginia Wood and the First Land Trust

Olmsted's protégé Charles Eliot pushed for a new kind of group that could hold land for the public. The Trustees of Public Reservations was chartered in 1891.

Its first gift was 20 acres along Spot Pond Brook, given by Fanny Foster Tudor in memory of her daughter Virginia, who had spent her teens by Spot Pond. The deed called it Virginia Wood, "a natural park for the public benefit." A bronze tablet placed in the wood in 1905 dates the gift to 1894. Friends of the Fells calls it the first land in the world given to a land trust. It became state land in 1923.

The Metropolitan Park Commission, 1892–1894

The Trustees then pushed for a regional park board. The Metropolitan Park Act, drafted by Eliot, was signed on June 2, 1892. It set up a temporary commission, with Eliot as landscape architect and Baxter as secretary.

The commission's 1893 report proposed a park system across 36 cities and towns. In June 1893 the Act became permanent. On March 4, 1894, the Boston Herald announced the Middlesex Fells Reservation, and that year the commission began buying Fells land.

Trolleys, I-93 and the Fells Today

Electric trolleys crossed the Fells from 1910 to 1946. In 1959 Interstate 93 was built through the reservation. Trails are still described as west or east of 93.

Today DCR manages 2,575 acres, six miles north of Boston, which DCR counts among the most mature woodlands in eastern Massachusetts. Learn more about the park or see the reservoirs.