Deer Island, now a peninsula linked to Winthrop since the nineteen thirty-eight New England hurricane filled Shirley Gut, is a major utility site and public waterfront in Boston Harbor. Part of the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park since 1996, it is dominated by the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant, which serves forty-three cities and towns, while the rest offers shoreline trails and sweeping views. The site also holds painful history: colonists interned Indigenous people there during King Philip’s War, and many died; later, Irish famine refugees suffered and died there as well. Its later uses included an almshouse, a house of correction, lighthouse, and expanding sewage treatment works.

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Boston, Massachusetts · USA