Over the past four hundred years, Mashapaug Pond has been a site of indigenous settlement and displacement, deforestation and agriculture, urban and industrial development, remediation and activism.

In the 1960s, the redevelopment agency of Providence partook in the nation's claimed that areas around Mashapaug Pond, including the West Elmwood neighborhood, was blighted and substandard.

Gorham began as one of the leading manufacturers of silverware in the U.S., but after the Great Depression and World War II, the company shifted to producing war-related silver products such as weapons.

[8] West Elmwood was home to approximately 500 families, offering them an intimate, secluded community, but with the bordering highways still providing access to the larger world.

[8] As issues of racial integration became more important in the United States in the 1960s, similar interactions were occurring on a local, neighborhood level in West Elmwood.

[9] The neighborhood is fondly remembered as being beautiful, with constant views and access to the pond and endless rows of fruit trees lining the roads.

[4] In the 1960s, "urban renewal projects" were being implemented across the country to knock down old neighborhoods, including West Elmwood, in favor of highways and industrial infrastructure.

In 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), set restrictions around industrial dumping and provided ways to force polluters to clean up toxic areas.

[11] Shortly after the passing of the Clean Water Act, Textron—the company the bought Gorham in 1972—and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management funded the effort to make Mashapaug Pond and its surrounding areas a safe site for human use.

[12] At first the community residents of Mashapaug protested due to the fact that the area was still highly toxic, but public opposition declined after Textron remediated the land and the school promised to include an air filtration system.