Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant

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.

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.

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.

Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the Northeastern United States.

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.

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.

Winthrop Shore Drive is a historic parkway in Winthrop, Massachusetts. The mile-long parkway runs through the Winthrop Beach Reservation, and is administered by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). The parkway is one of a series of ocean parkways (and the second one built) that make up a network of parkways connecting major open spaces in the Greater Boston area. Both the parkway and reservation were designed in the mid-1890s by Charles Eliot for the Metropolitan Parks Commission, a predecessor to the DCR. Land was acquired for the parkway in 1899, and construction was largely completed in 1900.The parkway was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

The Broad Sound North Entrance Channel or Boston North Channel is the deepest of three shipping channels connecting Boston Harbor to Massachusetts Bay near Boston, Massachusetts. For this reason, almost all deep-draft ships use this channel.The 1,500' wide channel starts south of the Deer Island Light at the eastern end of the President’s Roads anchorage and proceeds northeastward to Broad Sound, passing eastward of Finn's Ledge. The channel's depth was recently increased to 51 feet in order to attract the larger New Panamax ships in use since the Panama Canal expansion project's 2016 completion.

Snake Island, also known as Bare Island, is an island in Boston Harbor. The island is part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area and is situated in the inner harbor between the town of Winthrop and the reclaimed land that forms Logan International Airport. It is part of the Town of Winthrop. It is named for its serpentine shape, and has a permanent size of 3 acres (12,000 m2), and rises to a height of 10 feet (3.0 m) above sea level.Since the 18th century the island has been owned by variety of owners, and has been used for livestock grazing, and as a squatter camp occupied by lobstermen and clammers. In the 1900s a grounded steamer served as residence for lobstermen from Winthrop. Today the island is uninhabited and classified as "conservation land". Access is by private boat only.The island is less than 1/4 mile from two shores of the Town of Winthrop. Unique among the Boston Harbor Islands, it has an interior lagoon which fills and partly drains, with the tide. The water entrance to the lagoon is winding and only six feet wide, not navigable for even a canoe or kayak, except at an unusually high tide. The lagoon and lack of predators makes the island attractive to birds, including migratory species. It is posted off-limits in the spring, when many bird species nest there. In recent years the island has increased in area, due to shoaling of the surrounding water, especially to the west; its long "tail" is now fully exposed at low tide. Access is only possible by beachable small craft, due to very shallow water and mud flats around the island.