Mystic Valley Parkway is a

parkway A parkway is a landscaped thoroughfare.''"parkway."''Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (14 Apr. 2007). The term is particularly used for a roadway in a park or ...

in Arlington, Medford,

Somerville Somerville may refer to: *Somerville College, Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford Places *Somerville, Victoria, Australia * Somerville, Western Australia, a suburb of Kalgoorlie, Australia * Somerville, New Zealand, a subur ...

, and

Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...

, Massachusetts. It is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, and forms part of Route 16.

Route description

The parkway runs roughly north–south from the Middlesex Fells in Winchester, down the

Aberjona River The Aberjona River is a ,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 heavily urbanized river in the northwestern suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. The name is from the ...

valley, and along the east side of the

Mystic Lakes The Mystic Lakes, consisting of Upper Mystic Lake and Lower Mystic Lake, are closely linked bodies of water in the northwestern suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. The lakes lie at an elevation of 1 meter above sea level, within the towns of Winch ...

into Medford. This section follows the path of the old

Middlesex Canal The Middlesex Canal was a 27-mile (44-kilometer) barge canal connecting the Merrimack River with the port of Boston. When operational it was 30 feet (9.1 m) wide, and 3 feet (0.9 m) deep, with 20 locks, each 80 feet (24 m) long and between 10 and ...

. It then crosses the

Mystic River The Mystic River is a riverU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 in Massachusetts, in the United States. In Massachusett, means "large estuary," alluding to t ...

into Arlington (sharing a bridge with

Massachusetts Route 60 Route 60 is a east–west state highway running through the northern suburbs of Boston. Its western terminus is at U.S. Route 20 (US 20) in Waltham and its eastern terminus is at Route 1A and Route 16 in Revere. Route description Route 6 ...

), and curves to follow the river as it runs east–west through Arlington. A short branch also runs along the southern shore of the Lower Mystic Lake from Route 60 where it ends at a junction with

U.S. Route 3 U.S. Route 3 (US 3) is a United States highway running from Cambridge, Massachusetts, through New Hampshire, to the Canada–US border near Third Connecticut Lake, where it connects to Quebec Route 257. Massachusetts Route 3 connects to ...

and

Massachusetts Route 2A Route 2A is a east–west state highway in Massachusetts. It exists in several sections of Massachusetts, mainly as parts of former Route 2 that have been moved or upgraded. Route 2A runs from Greenfield in the west to Boston in ...

. It meets

Alewife Brook Parkway Alewife Brook Parkway is a short parkway in Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It begins at Fresh Pond in Cambridge (linking to Fresh Pond Parkway via Concord Avenue), and heads nor ...

(and joins with

Massachusetts Route 16 Route 16 is a east–west state highway in Massachusetts. It begins in the west at an intersection with Route 12 and Route 193 in Webster, just north of the Connecticut state border. It runs in a generally southwest-northeast routing through ...

) at a rotary near where

Alewife Brook Alewife Brook Reservation is a Massachusetts state park and urban wild located in Cambridge, Arlington, and Somerville. The park is managed by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation and was established in 1900. It is named for Alewi ...

empties into the Mystic, and then continues to generally follow the course of the Mystic River downstream, crossing it several times before ending at

Revere Beach Parkway Revere Beach Parkway is a historic parkway in the suburbs immediately north of Boston, Massachusetts. It begins at Wellington Circle in Medford, where the road leading to the west is Mystic Valley Parkway, and the north–south road is the Fe ...

where both meet

Massachusetts Route 28 Route 28 is a nominally south–north state highway in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, running from the town of Eastham via Boston to the New Hampshire state line in Methuen. Following the route from its nominally southern end, Route 28 ...

History

The parkway, with surrounding landscape, forms part of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

's Metropolitan Park District, established in 1893. The parkway itself was designed in 1894-1895 by the

Olmsted Brothers The Olmsted Brothers company was a landscape architectural firm in the United States, established in 1898 by brothers John Charles Olmsted (1852–1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870–1957), sons of the landscape architect Frederick Law ...

, the noted landscape architects, with Charles Eliot taking a lead role. It was originally created as one section of a web of pleasure roads designed for their aesthetics, as part of a comprehensive plan for green spaces in and around Boston. Lantern slides in the Library of Congress collection, Courtesy of the Frances Loeb Library, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, offer views of the Parkways in published in 1895. It now forms part of the Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston, and on January 18, 2006, was added to the

as a historic district.

Major intersections

Mystic Valley Parkway - General Plan, November 1895

References

* Charles Eliot, "The Boston Metropolitan Reservations", ''The New England magazine'', Volume 21, Issue 1, September 1896. * William B. de las Casas, "The Boston Metropolitan Park System", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 35, No. 2, Public Recreation Facilities (March, 1910), pp. 64–70. * Charles William Eliot, ''Charles Eliot: Landscape Architect'', Houghton, Mifflin, 1902.

External list

{{Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston Parkways in Massachusetts Transportation in Middlesex County, Massachusetts Roads on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Arlington, Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Medford, Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Somerville, Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Winchester, Massachusetts Transportation in Somerville, Massachusetts Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Somerville, Massachusetts Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts