This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Grape Island (Massachusetts) is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Grape Island is an island in the Hingham Bay area of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. The island has a permanent size of 54 acres, plus an intertidal zone of a further 46 acres, and is composed of two drumlins, reaching an elevation of 70 feet (21 m) above sea level, and connected by a marshy lowland. Tidal sand spits extend from the west end towards Weymouth Neck in Webb Memorial State Park and from the east end towards Slate Island.1
As a visitor attraction, Grape Island offers trails, rocky beaches, and camping in wooded campsites. At weekends and summer weekdays it is served by a shuttle boat to and from Georges Island, connecting there with ferries to Boston and Quincy.2
The island was farmed and grazed for three hundred years, up until the 1940s. On the eve of the American Revolution, the island was owned by Hingham resident Elisha Leavitt, a Tory.3 In 1775 British troops raided the island during the Siege of Boston, as Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John about May 24, 1775: "...it seems their Expidition (sic) was to Grape Island for Levets hay."3 A pitched battle ensued until the British were forced to retreat to the mainland. The angry colonists burned Leavitt's barn to the ground.4
Since the abandonment of agricultural use in the 1940s, the natural succession of vegetation has created a wooded and shrubby landscape. Vegetation on the island includes early successional tree and shrub species on the drumlins, including Staghorn Sumac, Gray Birch, and Quaking Aspen. The island has an abundance of berries, including Blackberry, Dewberry, Raspberry, Blueberry, Huckleberry, and American Elderberry. The island's marshy lowland contains salt tolerant species such as Saltspray Rose, Cordgrass, Purple Loosestrife, Honeysuckle, and Seaside Goldenrod.1
References
- ^ a b "Grape Island Factsheet". Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. Retrieved on August 28, 2006.
- ^ "Boston Harbor Islands Ferry Schedule". National Park Service. Retrieved on July 29, 2006.
- ^ a b Bouve, Thomas Tracy (1893). History of the Town of Hingham. Town of Hingham. http://books.google.com/books?id=xuigq23ybG0C&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44.
- ^ Klein, Christopher (May 17, 2008). "The Forgotten Battle". The Patriot Ledger. Retrieved on 2008-09-21.
External links
- Grape Island web page, with visitor information.
- Harbor Islands Boat Schedule
  |
This Massachusetts state location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 25 October 2008, at 19:26.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Grape Island (Massachusetts)".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.