It is often difficult to imagine what a place must have been like in a different time. Even in a town as steeped in history as Boston, it can be difficult to envision the lay of the land in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Most of the buildings have long since disappeared or been destroyed by one of the many fires that have devastated the city since its founding in 1630. The roads have changed too, but less than one might imagine. The original road out of town down to the Neck still exists, although it has been completely transformed by development of almost four centuries.  I aim to walk to the original entrance to the town of Boston, the gate on Boston Neck, which was first built in 1631. This gate is only a little more than a mile from where I stand in front of the Old State House, but  this is one of the most historically dense miles in all of the United States. I aim to walk back and forth in time as well, attempting to recall what was and to examine what is. The gate is long gone, much of the area formerly under water has been reclaimed by landfill, the inhabitants have changed dramatically over time, both in number and in provenance, but the road still exists and there are many stones that still speak of another time.

In 1690, after seventy or so years of British colonization of North America, five settlements in the American colonies could be considered to be more than villages: Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and Charles Town (Charleston, South Carolina)(1). Together these five provincial towns totaled about ten percent of the entire population of the colonies, which has been estimated at about 206,000 (2). Boston, with roughly 7,000 people, was by far the largest town in the American colonies, followed by Philadelphia and New York each with about 4,000, Newport with approximately 2,600, and Charles Town at the foot of the table with 1,100 inhabitants. Boston would remain the largest town in Colonial America until the eve of the American Revolution, and the three largest aforementioned cities would maintain their lead as the largest cities for over a century. In between these five settlements “stretched eleven hundred miles of wilderness, broken only by rare and occasional settlements.”(3) The road connecting these cities would have been a lonely and dangerous place, through territories still not under the control of the Englishmen who nominally ruled the colonies and peopled by understandably hostile Pequots, Narragansett, Massachusett, and other Indian peoples, through dark and dangerous woods populated by bear, catamounts, rattlesnakes, and wolves, intersected by fast running and wide rivers, and bereft of decent places to sleep or eat. A trip on the road that would become known as the Post Road was an adventurous journey, not to be taken lightly.

The position of Boston on the Shawmut peninsula was not an accident. Surrounded on all sides by water save for the Neck connecting it to the mainland, it was relatively safe from assault by hostile native people, and its position well inside a large and almost landlocked harbor kept hostile forces from across the sea at bay. By 1740, Boston had more than doubled in size to about 17,000 people, all contained within the confines of the Shawmut peninsula. Although this seems small, it should be noted that only London (population about 675,000 in 1750) and four or five other towns in England (Bristol at 45,000 was the second largest town in England in 1750), exceeded Boston in population in the middle of the eighteenth century (4). Boston was still the largest town in the colonies, but the other towns were catching up and at the first census in 1790, New York (33,131) had become the largest town in the United States of America, a position it has maintained to the present time. Boston,with a population of 18,320, followed Philadelphia (28,522) as the third largest city in the new nation, but was only slightly larger than it had been fifty years earlier(5). The peninsula was quickly becoming full, and only the addition of more territory would enable the city to grow. Unlike New York or Philadelphia, the town was hemmed in by water and in order to increase in population would need literally to increase in land.

 When looked at from the perspective of an eighteenth-century visitor, Boston was a major metropolis, crowded and bustling, the seat of government and commerce, and a major destination for traders, settlers, and soldiers alike.  One in thirty settlers in all of the colonies resided in Boston in 1690. Yet from the Old State House to the Gate which marked the limits of the town, the “street leading to the Neck” measured a mere one mile and a few yards. This thoroughfare was and continues to be, the main commercial road in Boston. Today the city limits of Boston are much greater and the population of the city proper is close to 600,000.