The Rise and Fall of Boston’s Tide Mills

The small West End Museum in Boston just opened a small exhibit about “Tide Power in Colonial Boston.” On Tuesday, 21 July, at 6:00 P.M. the museum will host a reception for that show. Both exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.

The event announcement says:

Tide Power in Colonial Boston explores the mechanisms of the mills and trades they supported. Historical maps illustrate the role of Boston’s topography in the construction of the mills and the demand for land-making which contributed to their downfall.

The rise and fall of tides have been harnessed for energy since Roman times. The earliest known tide mills date back to sixth-century Ireland. As the tides come in, sea water enters into a reservoir called a mill pond. When the tides recede, the stored water is released to turn a water wheel which powers the mill.

Around 1630, a settler named Crabtree attempted to extend an island in Boston’s North Cove—approximately where Causeway Street is today—to build a dam and form a tidal mill pond. The task proved to be too much for one person, so he soon abandoned the project. Thirteen years later, Henry Symons and five associates were granted the rights to the Cove on the condition that they construct a mill pond and erect one or more mills. They succeeded and, for the next 150 years, no fewer than five tide mills operated there.

The Mill Pond appears just below the compass on the map above, a major feature of colonial Boston. The mill creek that connected that pond to the inner harbor also served to define the North End, or at least the North End Gang’s territory. Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography about playing beside the Mill Pond. The Baptist Meetinghouses were built along its edge to make adult baptism easier.

But with population and economic growth after independence, Boston needed land more than it needed tidal power. In 1797 a consortium proposed filling in the Mill Pond to make new land. It took ten years before the government approved that change, and more than twenty before the project was done. The West End Museum exhibit tells that whole story, concluding with a next-generation, never-realized plan to dam the Back Bay and create more tide mills—another project overwhelmed by the demand for real estate.

“Tide Power in Colonial Boston” will be up until 19 September. Visitors can view it during the museum’s regular hours, which are noon to 5:00 P.M. Tuesday through Friday and 11:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. on Saturdays. The West End Museum is at 150 Standiford Street.

In addition, the Massachusetts Historical Commission has an online exhibit about archeological finds at the site of the old Mill Pond.