Hills of the Boston Basin

In the winter of 1631/1632 Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop was confident enough of the new colony’s survival to go exploring. The Puritan settlers had barely made it through their first winter in America almost running out of food. On January 27th Winthrop led a group of men up the Charles River “about eight miles above Watertown” on an expedition to plan a public road westward.1 After climbing the “high hills” west of Boston, likely in today’s Waltham, looking back the members of the Winthrop party would have noticed that their new home sat at the center of a wide roughly circular basin bordered on three sides by higher ground, and open to the ocean in the east.

A remarkable visualization of this Boston Basin was constructed by local sculptor George C. Curtis for the Paris Exposition of 1900.2 After being moved Museum of Science, in 2010 it was put on display at the Deer Island Treatment Plant Visitors Center. Thirty feet in circumference, and weighing a ton, the plaster topographical relief model represents five hundred square miles, with a diameter of twenty-five miles. Today, Route 128’s semicircular path around Boston roughly defines this basin and its borders, with Nahant in the north and Hull in the south not quite closing the circle.

Description of the Topographical Model of Metropolitan Boston, "The relief showing the topography included within the Metropolitan District of Boston, exhibited at Paris, 1900, is a solid piece of plaster, thirty feet in circumference, weighing about a ton. The scale is approximately five inches to the mile, 1 : 14000, and a vertical multiplication of six, the area included being nearly five hundred square miles, with a diameter of twenty-five miles..." - G.C. Curtis, Sculpture - Internet Archive

The geology of the Boston Basin and its borders is complicated involving colliding continents, exotic terranes, mountain building, volcanoes, earthquakes, weathering, vaulting, erosion, deposition and glaciers.3 All this geologic activity has resulted in a diverse collection of hills, ledges, ridges, rocks, drumlins, kames, knolls, heights, and hummocks. Since the time of first contact with Native Americans, Europeans have been given these features names. Often times renaming them in later generations.

Edward G. Chamberlain (1845-1935), a master surveyor and cartographer, and one of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s earliest members, studied and mapped the region in the late 1800s.4 When asking local people for the name of a specific hill, he would get “about as many names as there were families living near it.” As the country was expanding westward after the Civil War, inconsistencies and contradictions in the naming of geographic features was becoming a serious problem. In 1890, "to resolve all unsettled questions concerning geographic names," the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) was established.5 In 1947, its mission was expanded to "establish and maintain uniform geographic name usage throughout the Federal Government."

Today, the BGN has over 30,000 features listed for just for Massachusetts in categories ranging alphabetically from airports to woods - no arroyos or oilfields in the state, but one arch and one levee. Looking at just the Boston Basin, and only including the categories; cliff, pillar, ridge, and summit, produces a list of about 200 geographic features. Most people will be able to name the “big three B-hills” in Boston, Beacon Hill, Bunker Hill, and the Blue Hills. History buffs will know of Breeds Hill where the Battle of Bunker Hill actually took place. Shoppers know of Chestnut Hill in Newton. Readers of crime stories will know Winter Hill in Somerville and it's notorious gang. But what about Baileys Hill in Nahant? Who was Bailey? Who were the Aspinwalls who have a hill after them in Brookline? Why is there a Sally Rock in Hyde Park? A Whispering Hill in Woburn? Why is a hill in East Boston called Orient Heights?

While a total of 200 hills for the relatively small Boston Basin sounds impressive, the real number of hills is much higher. For example, an 1832 map of Roxbury at the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, shows numerous hills in the area. However the BGN dataset lists only one, Scarboro Hill in Franklin Park. In Charlestown, revolutionary war maps show a Mortons Hill, School Hill, and Town Hill, but none are listed in the BGN dataset. Clearly, the total count of hills in the Boston Basin is much higher than the 200.

Why is the possessive apostrophe not used in the names of hills?

The BGN has an unusual policy when it comes to the naming of hills, the possessive apostrophe is always removed. While Breed’s Hill is almost universally the spelling of the famous hill in Charlestown, the BGN spells it Breeds Hill. Except in directly quoted material this naming convention is maintained on this website. Where did this policy come from? Even the BGN is unsure, .

Myths attempting to explain the policy include the idea that the apostrophe looks too much like a rock in water when printed on a map, and is therefore a hazard, or that in the days of “stick–up type” for maps, the apostrophe would become lost and create confusion. The probable explanation is that the BGN does not want to show possession for natural features because, “ownership of a feature is not in and of itself a reason to name a feature or change its name.”. - U.S. Board on Geographic Names

There are exceptions, but only five,

Since 1890, only five BGN decisions have allowed the genitive apostrophe for natural features. These are: Martha's Vineyard (1933) after an extensive local campaign; Ike's Point in New Jersey (1944) because “it would be unrecognizable otherwise”; John E's Pond in Rhode Island (1963) because otherwise it would be confused as John S Pond (note the lack of the use of a period, which is also discouraged); and Carlos Elmer's Joshua View (1995 at the specific request of the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names because, “otherwise three apparently given names in succession would dilute the meaning,” that is, Joshua refers to a stand of trees. Clark’s Mountain in Oregon (2002) was approved at the request of the Oregon Board to correspond with the personal references of Lewis and Clark.. - U.S. Board on Geographic Names


	U.S. Board on Geographic Names - USGS
1	Life and letters of John Winthrop, v. 2, pg. 104, Robert C. Winthrop, 1869 - HathiTrust
2	Description of the Topographical Model of Metropolitan Boston, George C. Curtis, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1900 - Internet Archive
3	The Geology and Early History of the Boston area of Massachusetts, A Bicentennial Approach, (PDF) Clifford A, Kaye, 1976 - United States Department of the Interior
4	AMC's Master Mapmaker Edward Chamberlain, Hamlet Fort, 2015 - Appalachian Mountain Club
5	Principles, Policies, and Procedures; Domestic Geographic Names (PDF), 2016, U.S. Board on Geographic Names