This week is National Wildlife Week, a time to celebrate our nation’s incredible wildlife. According to their website, “the National Wildlife Federation is working to show how connecting with wildlife and the outdoors can help children and adults thrive during these unprecedented times.”
In honor of this week, we are featuring a special place in Cambridge to observe local wildlife and nature, the Alewife Brook Reservation. In addition to providing information on the history of Cambridge’s built environment, the CHC also collects historical information on Cambridge’s natural environment and landscape, and the City’s various land revitalization projects over the years.
The Alewife Brook Reservation is a unique natural resource consisting of 160 acres of protected wetlands, woods, and meadows. A Massachusetts state park, it is “home to hundreds of species, including hawks, coyotes, beavers, snapping turtles, wild turkeys and muskrats,” as well as birds like osprey and Great Blue Heron. The park’s ponds, Little Pond, Perch Pond, and Blair Pond, are also spawning grounds for anadromous herring.
The surrounding area of Fresh Pond and its natural watershed were formed by melting glacial ice and underground springs. Alewife Brook, historically known as the Menotomy River, is situated in what was the traditional territory of the Massachusett people and served as a gathering place for other groups. Native Americans came to the Pond and nearby area for fresh water; they constructed fish weirs along Alewife Brook, which traversed what was called the “Great Swamp” (also called the Great Marsh) to the north of Fresh Pond; and they hunted in the area’s marshes and uplands. Alewife Brook was given its name after the abundance of alewife fish that returned from the Atlantic each spring, swimming up the Mystic River into the Brook to spawn.
As industrialization in Cambridge grew, the surrounding area was used for claypits and ice harvesting at Fresh Pond. Marshes and wetlands were filled in to make room for new development.
In the early 1900s, landscape architect Charles Eliot planned for a reservation in conjunction with the Alewife Brook Parkway, forming part of the Metropolitan Park District. Eliot hoped to connect the Mystic River with Fresh Pond, creating parks along the watershed system. The Alewife Brook was straightened and channelized next to the parkway between 1909-1912 along with road construction, and landscaping was by the Olmsted Brothers firm.
Today, the Alewife Brook Reservation is a popular spot for people to walk, bike, nature watch/bird watch, and relax, while the Friends of Alewife Reservation work to protect the area. A 2011 project by the City of Cambridge constructed a 3.4-acre storm water management wetland, which also created habitats such as deep marsh and riparian forest.
The CHC has many images – paintings, drawings, photographs and maps – of the Alewife area spanning several decades, as well as reports written in the 1970s and 1980s regarding Alewife’s revitalization. Once City offices are again open to the public, make an appointment with us to see these resources.
For a more in-depth history of the Alewife area, especially during the 19th century, we recommend: The Great Swamp of Arlington, Belmont and Cambridge – An Historic Perspective of its Development 1630-2001 by Sheila Cook (2002) and Fresh Pond: The History of a Cambridge Landscape by Jill Sinclair (2009), a small part of which is available on Google Books. For a visual history of Alewife and the Fresh Pond area, see Charles M. Sullivan’s slideshow, “Finding Alewife” (2014).
Sources:
https://friendsofalewifereservation.org
