August 11, 2007
A Walk Through the History of Fresh Pond
The Cambridge Historical Collaborative worked with Friends of Fresh Pond Reservation to publicize this event. Led by historian Don Ostrowski of Harvard University, an enthusiastic group of 29 people visited the original sites of famous structures such as the Fresh Pond Hotel, the Jacob Wyeth House, a lookout designed by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (left photo), and an ice house that was used as a barracks for Civil War recruits. The tour went by an area used as a training ground by French soldiers while learning how to dig trenches, and terminated at Black's Nook, (right photo) the small pond that was once part of Fresh Pond and was separated at the turn of the century by a wide earthen dam. The legend is that several attempts were made to fill in Black's Nook, and none were successful: the fill simply vanished into the depths.