Boston Neck

The first wave of settlers built a wooden town gate and earthen wall on the neck in about 1631 to prevent attacks from natives and to keep out unwanted animals and people.

In colonial times, the Charles River marshes were north of the neck, and Gallows Bay was on the south side.

Gage ordered a ditch to be dug in front of the fortifications, that would fill with salt water during high tides, effectively cutting Boston off from the mainland.

The neck had soft mud on both sides at low tide, making it very difficult to enter Boston on foot except through the town gate.

[1] The law specifically prohibited the firing of guns near the Boston Neck due to hunters frightening horses which injured their riders passing along the road.

[2] On the night of April 18, 1775, Patriot leader Doctor Joseph Warren sent Paul Revere and William Dawes on horseback with identical written messages to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the British expedition to capture them and to seize the powder in Concord.

On July 8, 1775, during the Siege of Boston, the Neck was the site of a small engagement between a handful of British regulars and two hundred Colonial volunteers.

Today, at the intersection of East Berkeley and Washington Streets, nothing of the town gate or the fortifications remains, with the MBTA Silver Line's East Berkeley bus rapid transit station replacing the old Orange Line's Dover elevated station at that location.