Historical maps can help us to learn more about an area beyond the snapshot of life that they originally documented. They can provide information as to the impact and adaptations that humans have made to their environment and how it has affected the geography of the land long-term. A tiny peninsula tucked in a Massa-adchu-ed-et archipelago has undergone drastic change since European arrival.

​

In 1630, British Puritans settled a small community on a tiny 738-acre peninsula attached to the mainland by a narrow neck. Shawmut was surrounded by low-lying salty marshes and bordered by the Charles River and the Atlantic Ocean. If there was a very high tide or localized flooding, this small community became an island.

 

No early maps were created or published of this tiny town before the 1700s, but in the late 1880s, local cartographer George Lamb began to meticulously chart how Boston grew from a tiny and rather isolated Puritan settlement in 1630 to the booming metropolis of Boston of the late 1800s.