Mattapan is the original Native American name for the Dorchester area,[1] possibly meaning "a place to sit.

Like other neighborhoods of the late 19th and early 20th century, Mattapan developed, residentially and commercially, as the railroads and streetcars made downtown Boston increasingly accessible.

Mattapan's demographics are diverse, with a large population of Haitians, Caribbean immigrants, and African Americans.

Mattapan MBTA Station is the last stop of the Red Line Extension Trolley which is accessible via Ashmont and other points along the route in Dorchester and Milton.

Although humans are known to have inhabited eastern North America for at least 15,000 years, the presence of a continental ice sheet extending south to the level of Long Island and Cape Cod would have limited human habitation in Mattapan until the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,700 years ago.

Sea level rise since then and disruption of soil layers from urban development in Boston limit the earliest confirmed settlements in the Mattapan area to the Woodland period beginning 2000 years ago, when the archaeological record attests to hunting, fishing, and shellfish gathering around the Neponset River and quarrying for stone points in the Blue Hills.

"[5] It fell within the area controlled by the Neponset sachem Chickatawbut at the time of contact with English explorers and settlers in the early seventeenth century.

[6] Although the Massachusett practiced a seasonally shifting settlement pattern, they have left a lasting impact on the layout of current day Mattapan in the form of footpaths that were adopted and eventually transformed into roadways by later settlers: Mattapan and Lower Mills were the main fords of the Neponset River prior to contact, and present day Adams St. and River St. connected Mattapan to fishing weirs at Lower Mills and the Neponset River outlet, while Squantum St. and Center St. in Milton connected it to shell fishing at Moswetuset Hummock and quarrying in the Blue Hills, respectively.

Mattapan has become an important center for the Haitian cultural, social, and political life in the state of Massachusetts.

Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon, in their 1991 book The Death of an American Jewish Community, argue that redlining, blockbusting, and fear in neighborhood residents created by real estate agents brought about panic selling and white flight.

According to Levine and Harmon, the reason behind this orchestrated attack on the community was to lower market values to buy property, sell the housing with federally guaranteed loans at inflated prices to black families who could not afford it, and to get the white community to buy property owned by the banks in the suburbs.

Gerald Gamm disputes these allegations in his 1999 book Urban Exodus, arguing that differences between the Jewish and Catholic communities in Boston constituted the greater contributing factor.

According to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, 70.3% of households are family based rather than single men and women or couples.

Today Mattapan is seeing another major population shift, albeit a natural turn over of housing, as a large number of immigrants from Haiti and other Caribbean countries continue to move in.

Mattapan now has the largest Haitian community in Massachusetts, and is also largely made up of African Americans and immigrants from other Caribbean countries.

[18] However, Boston officials have fought to cancel this transformation[19] because although this would be more cost effective, property values would decrease and would "most importantly, torpedo a mixed-use, mixed-income residential-retail project slated for the Mattapan station parking lot".

The Fairmount Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail also serves Mattapan at the Morton Street and Blue Hill Avenue stations, providing service to downtown Boston and the suburbs.

It is the only Commuter Rail Branch that exclusively serves the City of Boston and MBTA's Urban Core.

[citation needed] The United States Postal Service operates the Zip Code 02126 Mattapan Post Office.

Recreation Areas/ Green Space Ryan's Playground provides water sprinklers, swings and other activities for children to enjoy.

The Mattapan branch began as a reading room attached to the Oakland Hall Building's delivery station.