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[p. 18]

Forgotten industries and enterprises.

by Moses W. Mann.
IN almost every town or city may be found traces, faint, perhaps, yet bearing silent testimony of pursuits once followed or perhaps of enterprises abandoned. All such have had their effect, beneficial or otherwise, upon the community; and upon investigation prove of interest, as showing what spirit of improvement has been rife in the past. Medford is no exception, and while the Historical Society is doing good work, in its memorials of the more ancient matters, possibly some of those of the earlier half (or later) of the last century may be forgotten.

The passer-by on Main street sees no trace of the half-mile race track that once occupied the site of the Lincoln School, nor yet the long sheds and brick kilns of thirty years ago that succeeded the track. The cattle sheds and pens extending from ‘Willow Bridge’ to Harvard street, with the lowing cattle and bleating sheep, and the long trains from the north every Tuesday morning are a thing of the past, and the ‘Medford Cattle Market’ is no more.

The ‘Middlesex Horse R. R.’ that once conveyed Medford people to Boston exists only in the memory of the long-suffering passengers who rode in its jolting cars.

Where is the aqueduct in its course from the reservoir to Charlestown? Built forty years ago and later duplicated; are not its mains now in disuse, and what buildings are built over it? What has become of the old reservoirs used by the Fire Department fifty years ago, and where were they located?

Perhaps a century hence someone may unearth the conduit from Mystic Lake through Ward Six, and under Mystic River, and wonder if a sort of Liliputian subway was once operated there.

Those who remember the turnpike will recall the fourand six-horse tandem teams that hauled single logs of mahogany to the mills at Winchester; but they come no more by the old town pump in the square.

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