![]() Wharf builders came up with a solution: they stretched their wharves further and further into the harbor to accommodate large and small craft, even at low tide. But the shallow water surrounding much of the city was a problem for loading and unloading ships. Early European communities relied heavily on Indigenous ecological and economic systems for their survival.Ĭolonial Boston depended on the ocean for trade, food, and a constant influx of settlers from England. The fish weirs they built were some of the most important and extensive human interventions into the coastal landscape. ![]() The Massachusett people knew that the marshes around this peninsula - known as Mashauwomuk (or Shawmut) - held thriving fisheries. The Boston peninsula was a good place for defenses, and also a rich intertidal ecosystem. That was the hub of Boston’s maritime traffic. (now State St.) and Dock Square (where Faneuil Hall stands). If you look at the lower right section of the map, you’ll see an arc of docks at the foot of King St. The Bonner map shows Boston sitting on a peninsula - in technical terms, it’s actually a “tied island” connected to land by a sandy spit called a “tombolo.” Tidal marshes and flats surrounded most of the city the Common, near the center of the map, backed up onto Roxbury Flats, which stretched from what is now the Public Garden all the way to near Northeastern University. (Courtesy Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library) This particular version shows the city between 17. It provides some of the best evidence for what the city looked like in the first century of European colonization, before massive engineering projects dramatically reworked the city’s coastline. An English captain named John Bonner originally created the map in 1721, and it was revised many times throughout the 18th century. The Boston we see in this first map hardly resembles the city we know today. These eight historical maps, selected by Garrett Dash Nelson, curator of Maps & Director of Geographic Scholarship at the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map & Education Center, offer snapshots of Boston’s growth over time, documenting the city's ongoing - and ever-changing - relationship with the sea. Now that climate change is causing rapid and accelerating sea-level rise around Boston, much of that made land isn’t quite high enough to resist the highest high tides, and the problem will worsen in coming decades. People built new land by filling in the spaces between wharves, or building out into marshes and tidal flats, and usually constructed their new land right above the high tide line. That’s an astonishing amount, and that history of landmaking is part of what makes Boston so vulnerable to sea level rise today. You'll also find many ponds and lakes throughout the landscape.Facebook Email This article is more than 1 year old.Ībout one-sixth of Boston sits on landfill. Natural features like the Charles River, Mystic River, Boston Harbor, and numerous islands and bays can be seen. Famous universities like Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, and MIT can also be found. Other smaller airports and runways can also be found in the image.ĭowntown Boston is home to several large skyscrapers that can be identified in the image, such as Hancock Place, Prudential Tower, Federal Reserve Bank Building, One International Place, and One Boston Place.īeing such a historically significant city of the United States, Boston is home to several landmarks, buildings, and parks that you can find in the map, such as Faneuil Hall, Boston Common, Massachusetts State House, Bunker Hill Monument and Bunker Hill Bridge. Logan International Airport is very prominent in the image. The native resolution of the satellite imagery is 1 px = about 15 meters, which is detailed enough to see large buildings, parks, neighborhoods, major streets, golf courses, and many other features of the city. Neighboring suburbs and towns such as Cambridge, Brockton, Quincy, Lynn, Newton, and Weymouth are all included in the image. This aerial map includes the entire Boston area.
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