A HISTORY OF EAST BOSTON CAMPS

• Main Author: Marian Harman
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Native Americans In his beautifully illustrated book; The New England Indians; C. Keith Wilbur describes the; Wilbur; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.613.552; http://www.ebsoc.org/documents/EastBostonCampHistory.pdf

The land we know as East Boston Camps has undergone many transformations and many changes of ownership. But in some fundamental ways, it has changed remarkably little since the glaciers retreated some 16,000 years ago. The known history of East Boston Camps is largely a history of the human uses of this beautiful 286 area of wooded land. But to understand these uses, we need to start at the beginning of what we can know about the land. Geology and Pre-History East Boston Camps lies north of the Clinton-Newbury fault zone, which runs right across Westford. Bedrock in this zone consists of granite. Westford's Open Space Plan of 2002, states: "The particular type of granite that underlies Westford is known as Chelmsford Granite. It is excellently formed granite, and one that is much sought after for ornamental use. " (pg.14) Granites are formed from cooled molten rock, a result of plate tectonic and volcanic action, which at some distant era ruled this area. Approximately 65,000 years ago a vast ice sheet covered the land, several miles thick. It endured in this area for about 50,000 years- the most recent ice age. When the climate warmed and the glacier finally retreated sometime between 18,000 and 16,000 years ago, sedimentary material was deposited, overlying the bedrock. This sedimentary material was deposited in the form of multiple north-south aligned eskers. Eskers formed as tunnels, which filled with the sediments that the glacier had scraped off the bedrock as it moved forward. When the glacier melted back, responding to a warming climate, the tunnels of sand were left as great hills of sand and gravel. Slowly some vegetation and animal life returned to this desolate land.