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Seasons on the Charles

Seasons on the Charles

If you are visiting Boston for the first time or looking for summer activity without leaving the city, the Charles River and its shores provide a setting for several events and opportunities for recreation and rest. The continuous pathway on either the Boston or Cambridge side of the river can take you to a number […]

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Swimming in the Charles

Swimming in the Charles

Many around here are familiar with the Standells’ ode to the Charles River “Love that Dirty Water,” and during sailing lessons at Community Boating when I was young, we were told to be careful about falling into the water because of its unsavory quality. Well, the water did look a bit murky,*and there was some […]

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The Forgotten Half-Mile

The Forgotten Half-Mile

Prior to the construction of the Charles River dam in 1910, the tides had brought in salt water that mingled with the fresh water of the river, and as the tides receded, brackish, stagnant water was left behind creating an unpleasant stench, especially when the refuse of neighboring homes was added – the whole thing […]

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Esplanade

Esplanade

A previous blog entry described the geological depression where the city of Boston is situated as the Boston Basin and the pond between Boston and Cambridge as the Charles River Basin, the crown jewel of a nine-mile basin from Boston and Cambridge to Watertown Square that is part of the seventeen-mile long Charles River Reservation […]

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The Longfellow Bridge

The Longfellow Bridge

The Longfellow Bridge looks out over the Esplanade, the sparkling waters of the Charles River basin where boats sail from April to November, and the city of Boston with its gold-domed capitol building atop Beacon Hill providing a backdrop for this scenic view. The 3,500-foot Longfellow Bridge on the Charles River basin between Cambridge and […]

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Boston’s Basin

Boston’s Basin

The Boston Basin is the geological description of the area where the city is situated, a depression of land bordered on three sides by higher ground forming a rim that extends from the Fellsway in the north (“Fells” is a Saxon word meaning “rocky, hilly, tracts of land”), to the rocky suburbs west of the […]

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Beginning of a River

Beginning of a River

The water that will become the Charles River falls several feet from a small circular dam at the Milford Reservoir, passing through a water treatment plant and flowing under a bridge on Dilla Street. The newly formed river then rambles through a park and disappears in a culvert beneath the main street in Milford, before […]

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