Spectacle Island completes its latest transformation
Former city dump reopens as a park
After waiting years for a former Boston city dump to open as a public park and tourist attraction, a small crowd braved the rain yesterday to be the first to set foot on a newly restored Spectacle Island.
``I definitely feel the enthusiasm from everyone involved," said Susan Kane , islands district manager for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
``I think the people who came out today are looking forward to coming back and telling more people about it," she said . ``People are going to think that this is pretty amazing."
About 100 people took boats or a ferry to Spectacle Island yesterday. They walked the trails around the island's two hills, called drumlins, and expressed disbelief at its restoration. Some enjoyed sandwiches at a cafe.
The crowd was smaller than expected, but organizers said that after nearly two decades of political infighting and delayed development it seemed fitting that cloudy skies and rain would keep many island hoppers on shore.
``It's the end of quite a saga," said Stephen Burrington , commissioner of the Department of Conservation and Recreation. ``I suppose it's in keeping with the entire history of the place that this weekend it rained, so we're having sort of a delayed start in a sense."
Opening the island to the public has taken years of planning and construction, and deft political maneuvering by both governmental and local harbor advocacy organizations, to turn the former dump into a park and tourist attraction.
``It's been long anticipated, and it is a wonderful milestone," Burrington said. ``It's had quite a history over the last 20 years, beginning with the initial debate about how much of the Big Dig was going to be used on Spectacle Island, but we finally did it."
About 20 years ago, harbor advocates and organizers began planning how to best employ material excavated from the Big Dig that would be dumped on the island.
It was eventually decided that about 3 million cubic yards of dirt and gravel would be used to construct a public park.
The profile of the island, which from the air appears like a set of spectacles, was raised with years of dumping, shaping, and compression.
One of the hills now rises 157 feet , or 68 feet higher than Boston Light, the lighthouse on Little Brewster Island.
Spectacle Island also has been a sort of chameleon. It was used by Native Americans as a dump for clam shells and fish bones, a place to quarantine smallpox victims, a location for illegal brothels and casinos, a horse-rendering location, and then finally as a City of Boston garbage dump that closed in 1959.
``We've invested billions in the cleanup and billions in the Big Dig and millions more in the park. And like a lot of investments, it takes a while to see the return," said Bruce Berman , spokesman for the environmental group Save the Harbor/Save the Bay. ``It's a new park, it's a thrill."
``When I first started to work for Save the Harbor 15 years ago it was a dirt pile and a dump," Berman said. 