Boston Harbor

The Great Hunger Memorial is a 16-foot tall Celtic cross located on Deer Island in Boston Harbor.In the late 1840s, the Boston Corporation erected a hospital on the island. Irish immigrants, who arrived on coffin ships, were quarantined there. The memorial commemorates the 850 people who died on the island between 1847 and 1850, as they were trying to escape the Great Irish Famine. Their bodies were discovered during construction work done on the island in 1990.The memorial is the result of decades long effort of a number of local Irish-American activists. Its construction was also championed by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and other local officials.The memorial was the brainchild of Michael Kearney, John Flaherty, Peter O’Malley, Bernard Callaghan, and the late William and Rita O’Connell. It was cut and engraved at a quarry in Pennsylvania. It was erected with the help of Feeney Brothers of Boston and Local 25 of the Teamsters Union.The monument was dedicated on May 25, 2019 in a ceremony attended by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Cardinal Sean O’Malley. The dedication included a speech from Boston City Archivist John J. McColgan.

Deer Island Light is a lighthouse in Boston Harbor, Boston, Massachusetts. The actual light is 53 feet (16 m) above Mean High Water. Its alternating white and red light is visible for 9 nautical miles (17 km; 10 mi). The light is at the end of a reef that extends about 1,500 feet (460 m) south from Deer Island. The location first had a stone beacon in 1832. The first light, a sparkplug type light, was lit in 1890. It cost about $50,000. It included a three-story dwelling, a veranda with boat davits, and a circular parapet. The water supply was a cistern in the base of the structure. A spiral staircase ran from the cellar to the top floor. It had a fixed white light, which was changed to flashing red every thirty seconds and then to the present alternating red and white flashes. The old light gradually deteriorated and was replaced in 1982 by a white fiberglass tower. The white tower raised complaints because it blended in with the background and was hard to see, so the Coast Guard moved it to Great Point Light, Nantucket, as a temporary replacement when that tower was destroyed by a storm in March 1984. A brown fiberglass tower was installed immediately thereafter. While the Spark plug light was interesting, it was much more expensive to maintain than the fiberglass structure. Imported from England, the pole light was the first of its kind in the United States.Between October 2015 and May 2016, the brown tower was dismantled and the light was moved about 100 feet (30 m) south of its previous foundation structure. The new light uses LED technology and sits on a steel skeletal tower, atop four piles. Like other lights in Boston Harbor, the automatic fog signal has been replaced by a Mariner Radio Activated Sound Signal (MRASS) which can be activated by nearby mariners by tuning their marine VHF radio to channel 83A (157.17 5Mhz) and keying the transmitter five times consecutively.

Fort Dawes was a World War II Coast Artillery fort located on Deer Island in Winthrop/Boston, Massachusetts. It was part of the Harbor Defenses of Boston.

The Deer Island Prison (c. 1880–1991) in Suffolk County, Massachusetts was located on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. Once known as the Deer Island House of Industry and later, House of Correction, it held people convicted of drunkenness, illegal possession of drugs, disorderly conduct, larceny, and other crimes subject to relatively short-term sentencing. When it closed in 1991, some 1,500 inmates were being held at Deer Island.

Deer Island is a peninsula in Boston, Massachusetts. Since 1996, it has been part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. Although still an island by name, Deer Island has been connected to the mainland since the former Shirley Gut channel, which once separated the island from the town of Winthrop, was filled in by the 1938 New England hurricane. Today, Deer Island is the location of the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant, whose 150-foot-tall (46 m) egg-like sludge digesters are major harbor landmarks. The island's permanent size is 185 acres (0.75 km2), plus an intertidal zone of a further 80 acres (320,000 m2). Two-thirds of the island's area is taken up with the wastewater plant, which treats sewage from 43 nearby cities and towns, and is the second-largest such plant in the United States. The remainder of the island is park land surrounding the treatment plant, and offers walking, jogging, sightseeing, picnicking, and fishing.

The Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant (also known as Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant) is located on Deer Island, one of the Boston Harbor Islands in Boston Harbor. The plant is operated by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) and began partial operations in 1995. The facility was fully operational in 2000 with the completion of the outfall tunnel.Deer Island is the second largest sewage treatment plant in the United States. The plant is a key part of the program to protect Boston Harbor from pollution from sewer systems in eastern Massachusetts, mandated by a 1984 federal court ruling by Judge Paul G. Garrity, in a case brought under the Clean Water Act.From the 1880s until 1991, the northeastern side of the island was the location of the Deer Island Prison.

Long Island Head Light is an historic lighthouse on Long Island in Boston Harbor, Boston, Massachusetts. The current brick tower is the fourth lighthouse on the island. The light was first established in 1819, largely as a result of a study conducted by the Boston Marine Society, which had built the daybeacon on Nixes Mate 14 years earlier. It was a 20-foot (6.1 m) stone tower known as "Inner Harbor Light". It was the second of the four Boston lights—103 years after Boston Light, but ten years before the first daybeacon at the site of Deer Island Light, and before The Graves Light, built in 1905. In 1853, it was reported in the New England Farmer, that Captain Charles A. Beck, was keeper of the Light for twenty-eight years.The stone tower fell into disrepair and was replaced by one of the earliest cast iron lighthouse structures, thirty-four feet tall (pictured below). In 1857, a fourth order Fresnel lens replaced the lamps and reflectors which had been in place. During the next twenty years it sustained damage in a number of storms. In 1881, it was replaced again, by a conical cast iron structure and a new wood keeper's house. Fort Strong was significantly enlarged around the start of the 20th century and it was necessary to move the lighthouse to a location out of the way of the concussion from the guns, so the current brick tower was constructed in 1900-01. Remnants of the fort can be seen to the southeast of the light in the satellite views available by clicking on the coordinates.The Coast Guard discontinued the light in 1982, but reconsidered the decision in 1985, and installed a modern, solar powered system. It received a major refurbishing in the summer of 1998.Long Island Head Light was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Long Island Head Light on June 15, 1987.

Fort Strong is a former U.S. Army Coast Artillery fort that occupied the northern third of Long Island in Boston Harbor. The island had a training camp during the American Civil War, and a gun battery was built there in the 1870s. The fort was built in 1893-1906 during the Endicott period of expansion in U.S. coast defense, and was part of the Coast (later Harbor) Defenses of Boston. Formerly, it was also known as Long Island Military Reservation. Before World War I, a large station for handling submarine mines was added to the fort's defenses. Prior to World War I the fort was probably manned by over 1,000 soldiers. During World War II, two batteries of 3-inch guns (Basinger and Stevens) defended channel minefields, but the big guns and other 3-inch batteries (except for the AA guns) were decommissioned. Declared surplus in 1947, the fort served as a Nike missile site until 1961, and was redeveloped in 2005-2009 for a children's summer camp and later a homeless shelter. However, in 2014 the island's bridge was demolished due to safety concerns, and all activity ended.

Long Island is located in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. The island is part of the City of Boston, and of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. The island is 1.75 miles (2.82 km) long and covers 225 acres (0.9 km2). Prior to October 2014, access to the island was via a road over a 4,175-foot (1,273 m) causeway from the Squantum peninsula of North Quincy to Moon Island, and from there, over a 3,050-foot (930 m) two-lane steel bridge – officially named the Long Island Viaduct – from Moon Island to Long Island. Access to the causeway leading to Moon Island and Long Island was controlled by police at a guardhouse at its southern end, and permission needed to be obtained in advance since it is a restricted area. In October 2014, all access to Long Island was cut off for the indefinite future by then Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, based on the warning of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation that the bridge was unsafe. All those living on Long Island and being serviced by recovery programs or who were guests in the homeless shelter were no longer able to get there. They were abruptly relocated elsewhere on an emergency basis. The bridge to Long Island was demolished on March 23, 2015. The future uses of the island and its buildings are still under discussion.

Yirrell Beach is a main beach of Winthrop, Massachusetts. The southern part is also known as Point Shirley Beach, as the neighborhood is Point Shirley. Farther north is Winthrop Beach, Short Beach and eventually Revere Beach in Revere. Yirrell Beach is located along Shirley Street and is a popular destination for families with small children, as the area by the base of Water Tower Hill is shallow for 300 feet (91 m). The beach is home to Winthrop's Sandcastle Festival in June and the Old Fashioned Family Day at the Beach in July.

The Broad Sound Channel Inner Range Lights were a pair of lighthouses in Boston Harbor. They were removed around 1950 when the channel they helped to mark was superseded by a parallel channel to the north.

World Airways Flight 30 was a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30CF airliner which suffered a fatal accident upon landing at Boston Logan International Airport in Boston after departing Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey on January 23, 1982. Two of the passengers were never found, and are presumed to have drowned.