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The troll who lives under a bridge in Dorchester
By adamg on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 8:29pm
Elizabeth photographs him on a trip to Victory Road Park in Dorchester Bay.
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Another Marquette in Dorchester
Great!!! Another blog post about somebody "discovering" something in Dorchester. Can somebody from Dot post something about "discovering" the Minuteman Bikeway or Fort Washington Park?
The park has been there since the late 1980's, located on a district court judge's failed 1960's marina development (My father still calls it (Judge) Troy's Island). The bridge is made from an African wood with strong rot resistance. The park is nice and yes the post about your day is great but even though I have moved on from Boston's most diverse area it is just once more missive on someone "exploring" the area.
Some of us like to read about other people's discoveries....
...even when the places discovered are ones we already know about.
It's a pretty obscure place
and therefore well worth pointing out in a blog. I would never have known it existed if Doug Mink hadn't brought us there on one of his Neponset River bike rides.
I wonder if even residents of Savin Hill know that this park exists.
By the way, there's also a Victory Road across the bay in Squantum. Was there ever a plan to connect them with a bridge?
Victory Road is Victory Road
The road was the way to the Victory Shipyard in Squantum, with a bridge connecting Dorchester to Quincy. You can see the bridge on a map here
Don't Put Your Faith On The Map about the Bridge being there.
I wouldn't put too much stock in that map. There are many streets on the map in East Boston that have never been constructed, laid out, but never built that still show up on maps. In the 1990's I had a map book showing streets located where the sign for the Don Orinone statues lies along Route 1A. I have aerial pictures of the Squantum Naval Air Station from the 1920's. The bridge was never built. I grew up going to Tenean Beach and have seen the Neponset at low tide. There are no piles, nor bridge abutments, nor any other indications that a bridge was there. There are still wharves from the 1820's on the Neponset next to the expressway in Milton, however there are no signs of a bridge from the WWI era.
Even on the Adams Corner section of the map you have Lennoxdale, Myrtlebank, and Allendale Streets running to Minot Street. That never happened.
Many times maps were made from older maps, city surveys, and developer's plans. Most of the material in pre-Google Earth days was not field checked.
The bridge isn't there, but it was there
It opened on the 11th of January 1918. I ran across this when I stumbled on a request that a trolley line from Dudley Square be routed to the plant over the bridge.
I can't say when it was torn down, but my guess is that it happened around the same time the plant closed.
Mea Culpa
Bridge went up in 1918 and was taken down in 1925. Please excuse my obstinance.
Amazing
I wonder why this was taken down after only 7 or so years?
Where can I learn more about this?
Can you cite the book, pamphlet, or web page where you found out this information? I'd like to learn more.
Victory Road
I was a little mean spirited in my post. However, I see so many of these "Wow Dorchester isn't anything like an episode of The Wire posts" I soon expect to see a post about Dorchester from someone in the ABC/Brookline Newton axis that says "the people of the region have many different skin hues with many living in three story woodframe buildings with on street parking."
Victory Road on the Dorchester side was known as Mill Street. In WWI Bethlehem Steel had a submarine / destroyer shipyard where Marina Bay is now. (The current marina slip area is the old launching area) I have never seen a picture, nor have ever seen piles, but I have seen a map that showed a bridge over the mouth of the Neponset. The Victory Road appelation must have been a planned merger of the two streets, ala West Chester Park becoming Massachusetts Avenue with the completion of the Harvard Bridge. My best guess is that the bridge was never built but was part of a wartime plan to get workers to the yard faster from population centers such as Dorchester and Roxbury, rather than waste time going Neponset Avenue to Hancock Street to Squantum Street. The streets got renamed anyway, but a portion of Mill Street remains in part on the Dorchester side running from Victory Road by Dorchester Pottery to Freeport Street.
Agreed re: the Wire
That series unfairly maligned the good people of Dorchester-- citizens, police, even the criminals. Shame on Cinemax, shame on them.
Yeesh
What do you think this is, boston.com or something, treating a Boston neighborhood like it belongs on the travel pages? I didn't link to that post because I was trying to show Dorchester is more than just Baltimore North. I hope I have more awareness of the city than that - and I hope most of the people reading this do as well.
I linked to it because a) It was something I personally didn't know about (amazing but true: Roughly 85% of Bostonians do NOT live in Dorchester; yes, I am one of those), b) It was a nice photo essay on something cool in Boston and c) I loved the troll. Gotta love the troll.
DOT
Not to be picky, but don't roughly 75% of Bostonians don't live in Dorchester, as its population makes up roughly a quarter of the total population of Boston? Regardless, I liked the post and there are plenty of places in the City that I have never been despite having lived here my entire life and I like "discovering" things in other neighborhoods. As a native of DOT I can sypathize with the complainer's angst at the media's belief that Dorchester should only appear in the news when a murder happens (and regardless of whether it happens in Dorchester), but I think they are misdirecting that angst to a nice story about something to see in Dorchester.
Math was never my strong suit
But if you assume there are 90,000 people in Dorchester (somebody correct me if that figure's wrong), then that's 15% of Boston's population in the last census of about 600,000 (yeah, yeah, I know the city claims it's higher than that). In any case, we can both agree that a majority of Bostonians do not live in its largest neighborhood.
As for media anger, yeah, but Universal Hub isn't Channel 7 :-). If anything, it's folks in East Boston who have reason to complain about me, since I'm forever posting accounts of gang mayhem there. In fact, time to go check eastbostonpolice.com ...
Speaking of which
When are you going to make a head-punching tag?
As Buddy Rich used to say..
"anybody got any requests? Good, because I don't take requests..it's my band"
Thank you!
Many thanks for linking to my blog. I appreciate all of the thoughtful comments, which provide a bit more context and history. While I certainly don't claim to have discovered Victory Road (either side of it) I live not far from the park and enjoy sneaking down there every once in a while to enjoy the peace and quiet. The rope ladder below the bridge surprised me, and I couldn't help but imagine we had a troll in our midst. Perhaps I should get a life. In the meantime, my thanks!