The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area is a national recreation area situated among the islands of

Boston Harbor Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeastern United States. History ...

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 ...

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. The area is made up of a collection of

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

s, together with a former island and a peninsula, many of which are open for public recreation and some of which are very small and best suited for wildlife. The area is run by the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. It includes the Boston Harbor Islands State Park, managed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Twenty-one of the 34 islands in the area are also included in the Boston Harbor Islands Archeological District. Attractions include

hiking Hiking is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century.AMATO, JOSEPH A. "Mind over Foot: Romantic Walking and Rambling." In ''On Foot: A Histor ...

trails, beaches, the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

-era Fort Warren on Georges Island and Boston Light on Little Brewster Island, the oldest lighthouse in the United States. Georges Island and Spectacle Island are served seasonally by ferries to and from

, connecting on weekends and summer weekdays with a shuttle boat to several other islands, Hull, and Hingham. In 1996, there was a project proposal by Boston's mayor Tom Menino and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

professor Clifford A. Goudey to revitalize the aquaculture and fish population in Boston Harbor. This would have involved using the old tanks and granite canals on Moon Island. In 2008, Peddocks Island was used for filming scenes in

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...

's '' Shutter Island''.

List of islands and peninsulas

The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area is made up of a series of rocky islands and other places on and around Boston Harbor. These include: * Bumpkin Island (Hingham) * Button Island (Hingham) * Calf Island (Boston) * Deer Island (Boston) *

Gallops Island Gallops Island, also known as Gallups Island, is an island in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. It is situated between Georges Island and Long Island, and is just over from downtown Boston. The island has a permanent size of , pl ...

(Boston) * Georges Island (Boston) * Grape Island (Weymouth) * The Graves (Boston) *

Great Brewster Island Great Brewster Island is one of the outer islands in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, situated some offshore of downtown Boston. The island has a permanent size of , plus an intertidal zone of a further . Unlike the other out ...

(Boston) * Green Island (Boston) * Hangman Island (Quincy) *

Langlee Island Langlee Island or Langley Island is an island in the Hingham Bay area of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. The island has a permanent size of , plus an intertidal zone of a further , and is composed of a massing of Roxbury puddi ...

(Hingham) * Little Brewster Island (Boston) * Little Calf Island (Boston) * Long Island (Boston) * Lovells Island (Boston) *

Middle Brewster Island Middle Brewster Island is a rugged outer island in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, located offshore from downtown Boston. The island has a permanent size of , reaches a height of above sea level, and is bounded by sharp cliffs ...

(Boston) * Moon Island (Quincy) *

Nixes Mate Nixes Mate, also known as Nixes Island, Nix's Mate and Nick's Mate, is one of the smaller islands in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. Located in Boston Harbor's outer limits near the convergence of three major channels, the isl ...

(Boston) * Nut Island (Quincy) *

Outer Brewster Island Outer Brewster Island, also known as Outward Island, is one of the outer islands in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area and is situated some 10 miles offshore of downtown Boston. The island has a permanent size of 20 acres, and consi ...

(Boston) * Peddocks Island (Hull) * Raccoon Island (Quincy) * Ragged Island (Hingham) * Rainsford Island (Boston) * Sarah Island (Hingham) * Shag Rocks (Boston) * Sheep Island (Weymouth) * Slate Island (Weymouth) * Snake Island (Winthrop) * Spectacle Island (Boston) * Thompson Island (Boston) * Webb Memorial Park (Weymouth) * World's End (Hingham) Two islands ( Castle Island and Spinnaker Island) in Boston Harbor are not part of the National Recreation Area, and other former islands (''e.g.'' Apple Island,

Governors Island Governors Island is a island in New York Harbor, within the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is located approximately south of Manhattan Island, and is separated from Brooklyn to the east by the Buttermilk Channel. The National Park ...

and Noddle's Island) were obliterated by the formation of

East Boston East Boston, nicknamed Eastie, is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts annexed by the city of Boston in 1637. Neighboring communities include Winthrop, Revere, and Chelsea. It is separated from the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown and d ...

and the expansion of

Logan International Airport General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport , also known as Boston Logan International Airport and commonly as Boston Logan, Logan Airport or simply Logan, is an international airport that is located mostly in East Boston and partial ...

before the area was designated.

Management

The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area is managed by the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership, a statutory body established as a federal operating committee by the park enabling legislation. The partnership consists of individual members who represent a range of federal, state, city, and nonprofit agencies, including: *

United States National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mu ...

Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation The Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) is a state agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, situated in the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. It is best known for its parks and parkways. The DCR's mission i ...

Massachusetts Port Authority Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) is an American port authority in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It owns and operates three airports—Logan International Airport, Hanscom Field, and Worcester Regional Airport—and public terminals i ...

Massachusetts Water Resources Authority The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) is a public authority in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that provides wholesale drinking water and sewage services to certain municipalities and industrial users in the state, primarily in th ...

* City of Boston *

Boston Redevelopment Authority The Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA), formerly the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), is a Massachusetts public agency that serves as the municipal planning and development agency for Boston, working on both housing and commercial de ...

* Boston Harbor Island Alliance * Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center * The Trustees of Reservations In addition, the Partnership includes representation from the Boston Harbor Islands Advisory Council, whose purpose is to make recommendations to the Partnership about park management. There are 13 Partners in total, together with 13 Alternates. Apart from the representative for the Coast Guard, who is appointed by the

Secretary of Homeland Security The United States secretary of homeland security is the head of the United States Department of Homeland Security, the federal department tasked with ensuring public safety in the United States. The secretary is a member of the Cabinet of the U ...

, all the members of the partnership are appointed by the Secretary of the Interior after consultation with the appropriate agency or other body. In practice, day-to-day management of each individual island or other site is the responsibility of one of the partner agencies or other bodies. The partnership provides a consistency and coordination across the whole park.

Boston Harbor Islands State Park

Boston Harbor Islands State Park is a

state park comprising 13 islands located in

, which now forms part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. The park was developed from the 1970s by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management (DEM). In 1996, the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area was created, including the State Park's islands and many others. However, due to the unusual partnership management arrangements of the National Recreation Area, the State Park still exists as a low profile administrative entity. It is now managed by the DEM's successor, the

, from a park headquarters near to the ferry terminal in Hingham. The islands of the Boston Harbor Islands State Park are: * Bumpkin Island * Calf Island *

* Grape Island *

* Green Island * Hangman Island * Little Calf Island *

* Raccoon Island * Sheep Island * Slate Island

Transportation

Boston Harbor Cruises offers ferry service from Long Wharf at Christopher Columbus Park to Georges and Spectacle Islands. Free service is available between Georges and Spectacle, as well as between the other islands. Summer service is also available from Hingham Shipyard and Hull to Georges Island via Grape, Bumpkin, and Lovells Islands. (These services are separate from MBTA Boat harbor ferries.) Thompson Island is only open to the public on Sundays during the summer. It is served by a ferry leaving from both Spectacle Island and the EDIC dock on Terminal Street in South Boston, operated by the Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center. Private boats can dock (with various restrictions) at Spectacle, Grape, Bumpkin, Lovells, and Peddocks Islands. The public dock on Georges Island was recently condemned by engineers, although access is still available by making anchor off shore and using a dinghy to row ashore. Deer Island, Nut Island, Worlds End, and Webb Memorial are accessible by road from the mainland. Moon Island and Long Island are not open to the public; though Moon Island is accessible by road from Quincy, access is controlled by a police guard station at the beginning of the causeway on the Squantum peninsula. The causeway from Moon Island to Long Island was demolished in 2015 and it is no longer accessible by road.

References

Bibliography

* Best, Neil A.
"Preliminary Design of a Recirculating Aquaculture System in Boston Harbor"
Masters Thesis, Ocean Engineering, MIT, February 1997. Technical Advisor, Clifford A. Goudey. *

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

"Harboring recreation"
Guest Editorial, June 3, 2006. * Kales, Emily, Kales, David, "All About the Boston Harbor Islands", Hewitts Cove Publishing, 1983. * Marcus, John
"Scientists Test Once-Polluted Harbor’s Crop Potential"
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, January 11, 1998 * Mikal, Alan, "Exploring Boston Harbor", Christopher Publishing House, North Quincy, Massachusetts, 1973. * Northeastern Naturalist, Volume 12, Issue sp3, July 2005. Articles on the Boston Harbor Islands

* Richburg, Julie A.
Patterson, William A.
III
"Historical Description of the Vegetation of the Boston Harbor Islands, 1600-2000"
Northeastern Naturalist, v.12, Special Issue 3, 13-30, 2005. * Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell, "Boston's Harbor Islands", Images of America series, 1998. * Sherman, Annie
"The Other Islands: The Harbor Islands make for an easy day trip for sunbathers, history buffs—and especially the traffic-weary"

Boston magazine ''Boston'' is a monthly magazine concerning life in the Greater Boston area and has been in publication since 1805. History and profile ''Boston'' magazine was started in 1805. Metrocorp, Inc. bought the magazine in 1970. The company also owns ...

, May 2007 issue. * Snow, Edward Rowe ** "The Islands of Boston Harbor", 1935.

** "Sailing Down Boston Bay", Yankee Publishing Company, 1941.
"Some Events of Boston and Its Neighbors"
printed for the State Street Trust Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1917.

in "Some Events of Boston and Its Neighbors", Chapter 4, printed for the State Street Trust Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1917. * Sweetser, M.F., "King's Handbook of Boston Harbor", Moses King Corporation, Boston, 1882; reprinted in 1988 by Applewood Books, and The Friends of Boston Harbor Islands, and in 2010 by BiblioLife. (2010 reprint). This book was written about the time when the first Boston almshouse was being built on Long Island.

External links

Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area

Boston Harbor Islands Visitor Guide

Boston Harbor resources site

NOAA Soundings Map of Boston Harbor

Island Alliance (Boston Harbor)

- Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation (DCR).
The Boston Harbor Association resources
*
Volunteers and Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands Inc. records, 1770-2011
University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library,

University of Massachusetts Boston The University of Massachusetts Boston (stylized as UMass Boston) is a public research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus University of Massa ...

* {{authority control 1996 establishments in Massachusetts National Park Service National Recreation Areas Islands of Massachusetts Coastal islands of Massachusetts Boston Harbor State parks of Massachusetts National Park Service areas in Massachusetts Parks in Boston National Register of Historic Places in Suffolk County, Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Plymouth County, Massachusetts Protected areas established in 1996