Boston

Environment

Located on the Shawmut Peninsula, at the mouths of the Charles and Mystic Rivers, Boston has an excellent natural harbor that has played a decisive role in its history as a shipping and shipbuilding center, and its access to the Atlantic Coast has contributed to the cosmopolitan character of the city. Once the maritime capital of the nation, Boston today remains its leading fishing port, with more than 907,200 kilograms (two million pounds) of fish caught in the surrounding waters annually.

At the time the city was founded, Boston's hilly peninsula was almost entirely surrounded by water and connected to the mainland by only a narrow strip of land. The area today known as Back Bay was composed of marshes and mud flats that were covered by water during high tide. In the early nineteenth century a dam was constructed there to generate power for the new mills that were being built. By the 1830s, the portion of the Back Bay just west of the Boston Common was filled in to create the land for the 10-hectare (24-acre) Public Garden. In the latter part of the century, additional land from the peninsula was leveled to fill in and reclaim more of the marshlands, adding significantly to the original area of the city.

In the 1880s a master plan for a network of city parks was laid out by esteemed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903). A large open park called the Fenway was created, linking the Boston Common and Public Garden with Franklin Park. The Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain, affiliated with Harvard University, was part of the network as well.