The park encompasses nearly one-fifth of the entire land area of the city and represents a significant natural, watershed and public recreational resource in eastern Massachusetts.

Breed's Pond, at the southern end of the reservation, was dammed for industrial use in the 1840s, and Dungeon Rock became a tourist attraction in the 1850s.

Demands for improved water supply (for both consumption and fire suppression) in the 1860s led to organized activities to conserve the woodlands surround Breed's and Walden Ponds.

In 1881 the Trustees for the Free Public Forest were established to oversee the area.

They were folded into a newly organized Lynn Parks Department in 1889 to manage 1,600 acres (650 ha) of water supply and park land in the reservation; this grew to the current 2,200 acres (890 ha) in 1892.