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In 1906 the concrete bridge under the railroad near Willard Street was constructed.
The Parkway was also completed this year from Adams Street to the easterly endof the Reservation, and was opened to the Public in December of that year.
In 1916 Administration Road was opened to automobile traffic and the Blue Hill Reservation has been and will in the future prove to be a beautiful recreation ground of natural and picturesque scenery, as the plan of the Commissioners has been to retain the grounds as near as practical in its natural state.
Babel Rock, situated in the Reservation on the Administration Road about ½ mile from Willard Street in West Quincy,
Administration Road in the Blue Hill Reservation.
The Furnace Land contained about 200 acres and was bounded easterly and southerly by the Furnace Brook, westerly by the Boston Common Land, and northerly by a cartway, which led from the Country Highway, to the Common Land; and extended easterly to Little Brook, so called, which empties into Furnace Brook in what is now the Ward Four Playground.
Discovery was early made at Saugus, Lynn, and Braintree of the Bog Iron Ore which is deposited in numerous peat bogs and ponds throughout eastern Massachusetts; and supplied the early furnaces of the Colony. A company was formed in London in 1643 under the name of the Company of Undertakers for the Iron Works and The General Court was applied to for encouragement and participation in the business. The design was approved of, and the General Court granted them on March 7, 1643 the exclusive privilege of making iron for twenty one years, provided they made after two years sufficient iron for the country’s use.
A grant had previously been made in Boston town meeting 19-11-1643 to Mr. Winthrop and his partners and to their assignees forever about 3000 acres of the Common Land at Braintree for the encouragement of an iron work to be set up about Monatiquot River.
Johnson says, “the land affording very good iron stone, divers persons of good rank and qualities in England were stirred up by the providential hand of the Lord, to venture their estates upon an iron work which they began at Braintree and profited the owners little, but rather wasted their stock, which caused some of them to sell away the remainder.”
The Court, in reply to a letter from the Proprietors in 1646, acknowledges the importance of the manufacture to the country, both for domestic supply and for exportation, but as an axe at $12.00 was none the cheaper to him who had not the $12.00 to buy it. So if your iron “they add” may not be had here without ready money, what advantage will that be to us if we have no money to purchase it.
The scarcity of specie is said to have been the principal difficulty in its management and caused the business a few years after to be abandoned.
The three thousand acres of land above referred to were located in what is now Quincy and Milton and a large portion is now included within the Blue Hill Reservation of the Metropolitan Park System, and at the failure of the Iron Works Company this land reverted back to the town of Boston.
The furnace was located near the Furnace Brook in the southerly portion of what is now Hall Cemetery, where quantities of scoria or slag iron are in evidence to this day.
In 1653 the General Iron Company became embarrassed and closed up their business, and in 1674 Mr. Thomas Wiggin obtained possession of the two hundred acres, which he later conveyed to Thomas Savage who in turn conveyed to Gregory Belcher and Alexander Marsh. The text of this deed reads as follows:
“The old furnace at Braintree with all the houses thereon belonging, with all the land thereto being an estimated 200 acres; bounded on the land of Elder Kinsley on the north, on the west by the common lands of Braintree, on the south and east by the Furnace Brook."
At the death of Alexander Marsh, which occurred in 1698, his estate was held in trust, until his son John became of age, when he came into possession of the homestead at Crane’s Plain containing about 40 acres and also the Furnace Land of 200 acres. At the death of Mr. John Marsh in 1747 the estate was divided among his seven children. His daughter Sarah married Captain John Hall of Hingham, who purchased the entire estate of the remaining heirs, and resided at the homestead on Crane’s Plain.