Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 28.

About the first of December, 1870, water was let into the main then completed as far as Monument street, and the writer was the first user in this tract, in making the plaster of the Ansorge house. Housekeepers found the turn of a faucet much easier than the old pump-handle and water bucket, but soon found that water pipes would sometimes freeze and drainage had to be cared for. In fact, it took thirty years to get an effective system of sewerage, when came another upheaval of streets, relaying of water pipes of iron, street sewers, under-drains and the ‘particular sewer’ into every cellar, and resultant bills to pay. Perhaps there was a readjustment of plumbing fixtures not dreamed of in 1870. Meanwhile other Mystic Valley towns were having similar experiences, and Boston, which had absorbed Charlestown with its Mystic water, found it taking in the tannery drainage of Winchester and Woburn. That was then turned into the Mystic lower lake, which soon became a big cesspool and an intolerable nuisance, only mitigated by the filter beds beside the railroad in Winchester, followed by the abandonment of that supply.

Lexington and Arlington also had to send their sewage to a pumping station across the river in Somerville which raises it sufficiently to carry it across and under the Mystic just below Canal bridge through a corner of this section, and now, after thirty years even this is insufficient, and a new system's installing has kept High street in disruption for a year.

By the abandonment of the Mystic water supply the brick conduit under Sherman and Jerome streets of a mile and a half from the lake remains disused and useless. We wonder, sometimes, what new invention or discovery may come that may make it usable again.

We have mentioned the names of several streets which may not now seem familiar. Only High, Canal and Harvard avenue (first called River street) were public ways in 1870. The others have been accepted as such on petition of citizens at various times. Myrtle