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Walk in New England, and you're walking through history. Whether you're tracing Revolutionary War sites through the tree-shaded parks of Lexington and Concord or stopping by the literary milestones of Cambridge and Boston, you are rediscovering the past in a way that neither books nor websites allow. Whatever your interests, there is a trail that can lead you back into the origins of our country, our social movements, and the arts.
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Explorers' Resources: Black Heritage Trail, (617) 742-5415; Boston By Foot, 367-2345 Boston Duck Tours, 723-3825 Freedom Trail, 242-5642 Longfellow National Historic Site, 876-4491 Minuteman National Historic Park, (978) 369-6993 |
"History is not a collection of facts. It's not static, it's dynamic," says Martin Blatt, chief of cultural resources and historian at Boston National Historical Park, based in the Charlestown Naval Yard. Visits to the places where history was made, he says, are "a way for the history to come alive."
What happens when you get there, of course, is partly up to you. A visit to Minuteman National Historic Park, for example, may mean examining Revolutionary War sites in Lexington and Concord, but could also be an excuse for a picnic. For those who want to delve a little deeper, walking tours are gaining ground, whether self-guided or led by park rangers, historic-site staff, or one of a number of popular commercial tours, such as Boston by Foot. (Those who prefer to cover the ground in a less pedestrian fashion will find trolley and bus tours--as well as the amphibious Boston Duck Tours--that visit many of the same sites.)
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The best-known regional history tour, first outlined in 1951, is Boston's Freedom Trail. This 2.5-mile track, marked by a line of red paint that takes off either from the Visitors' Center at 15 State Street (hard by the Old State House) or from the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau on Boston Common, is regularly restored and revised. Those who haven't visited history's "Red Line" recently will be pleasantly surprised by its changes, small and large, from the improved signs that greet sightseers to the carefully restored Old South Meeting House, which has been rehabilitated at the cost of several million dollars. New exhibits are in the works on the building's history as a meeting place for seventeenth-century Puritans as well as eighteenth-century patriots, including those who decided to "host" the Boston Tea Party.
Whether visitors take one of the Park Service's 90-minute guided tours or avail themselves of a revised and colorful booklet to travel at their own pace, the walk remains an exciting way to revisit the past 350 years. "What's amazing is that here, in a modern city, you can visit these places of struggle," says Blatt. "When you're poised on State Street and you look at the Old State House, it's extraordinary to see this little historic structure surrounded by skyscrapers."
The literary trail of Greater Boston, in the works since 1997 and launched this spring, guides booklovers to the places where many of New England's literary lights lived and worked. "What we're doing, in some sense, is saying that Boston is a museum without walls," explains Robert Krim '70, executive director of the Boston History Collaborative, the nonprofit partnership of historians, museums and libraries, government agencies, and businesses that created the trail.
The Literary Trail--which Krim describes as a work in progress--is partly modeled on the Freedom Trail. The itinerary begins in Boston at the Omni Parker House (Tremont and School Streets), where Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and friends once met for their Saturday Club. It continues to the Boston Public Library and then on into Cambridge for a stop at the Longfellow House gardens. (The home itself is closed through next summer for renovation.) The complete 20-mile trail takes visitors past Walden Pond to the Concord Museum and to Orchard House, once the home of Louisa May Alcott's family. Participants can follow the trail in different ways: there is a four-hour combination walking and trolley tour (reservations are required), but the history collaborative also provides walking and driving information in a 48-page guidebook ($4.95) and on its website (see box), enabling visitors who wish to explore more deeply, or more slowly, to set their own pace, especially since many of the stops feature their own tour guides.
Krim and his colleagues believe in looking at the past from all angles. In early summer the collaborative debuted Boston by Sea: The Maritime Trail. Designed to take visitors through the history of Boston's waterfront, this trail (and a forthcoming guided tour) will highlight the history of the Boston Light and Fort Warren on George's Island, as well as such popular tourist stops as the U.S.S. Constitution and the New England Aquarium. Coming as soon as next autumn, Krim says, will be a Family History and Immigrant Trail Project that will allow visitors to trace the steps of immigrant groups from their arrival in Boston through their establishment of various neighborhood and civic associations. Trails devoted to the abolitionist and civil-rights movements, and another focused on great inventions and technological advances, are slated to be set up within the next few years. "Most of us feel our lives are enriched by knowing the stories of those who came before us," says Krim, who has a master's in history and a doctorate in sociology. "You want people to be able to experience pieces of history in the midst of a vibrant city."
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Several other trails already trace the path of various groups through Boston's history. The Black Heritage Trail, for example, focuses on the history of Greater Boston's African-American community in the nineteenth century. Starting at the Abiel Smith School, which in 1834 became the first publicly funded grammar school for African-American children, and ending at the African Meeting House, where the New England Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1832, the trail includes a variety of sites designed to appeal to all ages. One is the Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpture on the Boston Common dedicated to Robert Gould Shaw, A.B. 1860, and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first African-American regiment raised in the North during the Civil War; they inspired the movie Glory. Another is the Lewis and Harriet Hayden House, which served as a way station on the Underground Railway that smuggled slaves to freedom.
The Boston Women's Heritage Trail takes a similar approach, as it charts five do-it-yourself walks through the city with the aid of a handsome booklet. The Downtown Walk highlights a number of women who thought for themselves, pointing out the statues dedicated to seventeenth-century religious leader Anne Hutchinson, who was expelled from the Bay Colony for her beliefs, and to her follower, Quaker martyr Mary Dyer. Other stops commemorate achievements: 5 Park Street, on the Boston Common, once housed the office of the Women's Journal, the newspaper of the American Woman Suffrage Association, and was later the center of the office-workers' organization 9 to 5. Walks through the Back Bay and Chinatown celebrate the lives and arts of women of various ethnic backgrounds, with stops that include Ruby Foo's Den, a legendary restaurant and meeting place, and Nancy Schon's statuary group The Hare and the Tortoise, which marks the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
The all-volunteer trail began in 1989, when the federal Women's Equity Act provided Boston's public-school system with funding to develop programs incorporating women's history into the curriculum. A group of teachers and schoolchildren selected the sites, developed four walks (now there are five), and wrote the guide booklet. "A trail like this gives you a physical way of remembering," says Mary Smoyer, president of the organization's board. "Place is very powerful," she continues, summing up the work of all the historians involved in setting up the project. And history, she might have added, is at your feet.
Have you wondered what cambridge was like when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived on Brattle Street, or when George Washington had his headquarters there? Now help is at hand. Historic Cambridge Collaborative--a recent joint venture of the Cambridge Historical Commission, the Cambridge Historical Society, Harvard, MIT, the African-American Heritage Trail, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and the Longfellow National Historic Site--has just published a new, illustrated brochure detailing the guided and self-guided tours offered by its members (along with hours of operation, price of admission, and other useful details). The complimentary guide is available at the information kiosk in Harvard Square, at local hotels, and at member sites; prospective sightseers may also want to check the tourist information provided on the City of Cambridge website (www.cambridge-usa.org).
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