Not only are the Boston Harbor Islands a source of natural
beauty and wonder--they're also rich in history and legends,
with tales to tell of pirates, shipwrecks, wars, abandoned
prisons and even ghosts!
History & Legends
Peddocks Island
has a long history of use by American Indians, and then
British and American inhabitants.
Boston Light, Little
Brewster Island's lighthouse, was the first light
station established in the U.S. and remains the only
lighthouse staffed by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Gallops Island
quartered the Mass. 54th Colored Regiment during the
Civil War. Their story was later immortalized in the
movie "Glory."
On Georges Island,
Fort Warren, used as a prison for captured Confederate
soldiers during the Civil War, is said to be inhabited
by "The Lady in Black," the ghost of a prisoner's
wife.
Lovells Island
was the site of a number of notable shipwrecks, most
famous of which was the 74-gun French warship Magnifique
in 1782.
Once the site of U.S. Naval barracks, Bumpkin
Island was used to house German prisoners rescued
from the harbor during World War I.
During the Revolutionary War, the U.S. and Great Britain
fought The Battle of Grape
Island.
Thompson Island,
known for its longtime Native American residents, was
once a Native American trading post in the early 1600's.
Landscape Architect Frederick Law Olmsted planned a
bucolic landscape for Worlds
End.
Deer Island
was one of several islands used for internment camps
for American Indians during King Philip's War, which
began in 1675.
A World War II military post on Great
Brewster Island included 90 mm rapid-fire guns,
searchlight stations, and a command post that aided
in controlling the harbor's minefield.
Nature & Wildlife
Some of the slate bedrock that underlies the entire
harbor region is visible as an outcrop on the bluff
at Grape Island.
Dozens of Great Black-Backed and Herring gulls nest
on Gallops Island
each spring.
Sea gulls may seem numerous today but, in the 1800s
gulls were hunted almost to extinction for their feathers.
Apple and pear trees remain on Bumpkin
from the island's agricultural past.
Hundreds of Brant, a small goose, stop on Georges Island
each spring and Snowy owls have been seen there during
the
winter.
Lovells Island
has a large population of European hares, introduced
during the 1940s and 1950s.
Little
Brewster and nearby Shag Rocks offer roosting sites
for Cormorants that fish the waters nearby; Cormorants
are sometimes called Shags in Britain.
Tidal flats at Worlds
End attract thousands of migrating shore birds each
autumn.
Marshes on Thompson
Island serve as a nursery for fish and shellfish
and a stop-over for migrating shore birds in the spring
and fall.
Peddocks Island has
sand bars, called tomobolos, that connect with Prince's
Head; over time this area of the island has eroded
greatly.
Fishing for flounder and striped bass is now a favorite
pastime off Deer
Island, thanks to the new wastewater treatment plant
and public concern for a clean harbor.
One hundred-foot bluffs on the Great
Brewster Island drumlin offer spectacular views.
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