[p. 27] hill, or the ‘hill pasture,’ as it was known in the early days of the plantation.
What is called Pasture hill at the present day is the easterly portion of a hill that extends westerly to Marble or Meeting-house brook.
The crest of the hill is but a short distance from Medford square. The extreme southerly portion thereof, that centers where the old high schoolhouse is situated, formed the bank of the river.
From this point, where the width of the granite formation was quite narrow, the rock extended down under the river, to reappear on George street, opposite the Lorin L. Dame schoolhouse.
Its next and last appearance in Medford is in a field south of, and adjoining the estate of the late George L. Stearns. Powder House hill, in the city of Somerville, is of the same formation.
When the Metropolitan sewer was constructed, this granite ledge was found in the excavation in High street, in front of the schoolhouse lot, very near the surface and extended down below the bottom of the excavation, which was below high-water mark.
From this point of the hill that formed the bank of the river, the elevation sloped down, both east and west to the line that separated the upland from the marshland.
At several places it was quite abrupt.
This line on the west began at Marble or Meeting-house brook near Winthrop street, and ran along in the rear of the estates that front on High street, substantially as it exists today, until it reaches St. Joseph's church lot. Then it crosses a portion of that lot just west of and adjoining the Armory building, to the landing place formerly called the bank, which was the northerly end of the ford, and which is now a part of the Armory lot. On this lot once stood a tannery, slaughter-house, and one of Medford's ship-yards.
Bordering the river around the base of the hill, the marshland begins again near the square, following down near Riverside avenue, crossing the avenue just below the brick engine house of the Boston & Maine Railroad Corporation, and passing in the rear of the old burying-ground to Salem street near Gravelly
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Medford, MA. 1915.
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