US-MA-Ell+Pond+Melrose


 * =Birding in Massachusetts=

Middlesex County
=Ell Pond= Melrose, Massachusetts 02176 Ell Pond webpage

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Ell Pond, Melrose
Coordinates: 42.4619666, -71.0664368 eBird links: Hotspot map View details Recent visits My eBird links: Location life list Submit data

About Ell Pond
The lowest point in Melrose, Ell Pond is like a big dimple near the center of town. It was created 15,000 years ago during the Glacier Age when a large chunk of ice broke off and became trapped under the retreating glacier’s debris. As the chunk melted, water remained in its imprint. This kind of formation is called a kettle pond. The pond today extends for about 22 acres.

The waters of Ell Pond are constantly replenished by three streams (all now buried in underground pipes), an underground spring, and storm drainage. At its mouth, next to Main Street, the pond’s water flows into Ell Pond Brook in the direction of the Wyoming area, where the brook joins Spot Pond Brook and Shilly Shally Brook. It makes its way to the Malden River at around Wellington, then the Mystic River, and eventually out to Boston Harbor, the Atlantic Ocean, and around the world.

The natural flow of water is not the only way in which Ell Pond’s waters have seen the world. During the early 1800s, ice was cut from New England’s ponds and sent all over the world, to places as far away as India and Australia, in order to provide refrigeration for food. Ell Pond was part of this booming ice industry. In 1843 an icehouse was built on its shore, as on several other local ponds. It may be hard now to believe that pond ice was once a major contributor to the area’s wealth, but indeed it was. The electric refrigerator became widely available before the mid-1900s and put an end to that source of revenue, but there are still people in Melrose who remember the horse-drawn ice wagons that used to make deliveries to people’s homes and the icehouses that stored ice all through the summer.

By as early as 1638, the “L-shaped pond” had been named Ell Pond. It was dammed in 1662 to provide power for Samuel Howard’s sawmill on Main Street, which doubled its size and caused it to extend “from Vinton Street to Main Street and north to Albion Street and Brunswick Park. The Knoll was an island at that time,” according to an Ell Pond Improvement Council publication. Cattle were watered and flax was washed on its shores. The removal of Howard’s Dam in 1862 left the area with twenty-five acres of marshland.

Ell Pond had a brief name change at one point when it became Crystal Lake. This was probably a marketing strategy during the flush years of land development that followed the Civil War. At that time, Melrose was popular as a resort town largely because of its many ponds. The Crystal Lake Boat Club’s boathouse graced its eastern bank and offered boat racing and, in the winter, horse racing on the ice. In 1897, the pond was part of the purchase by the City of Melrose to create a park. In 1927, a bathhouse and sandy beach were opened for public use, where bathers thronged to its waters.

In 1951 swimming was banned because of the steady increase in pollutants — a result of urban runoff from the surrounding 1,100-acre watershed. In the years that followed, measures were taken to study and to manage the pond’s water quality.

The effects of development are ever present in Ell Pond’s waters, and restoration efforts and attempts to mitigate its impacts are ongoing. The pond’s flora and fauna change along with the conditions of water quality. Humans are learning to respect the fragile balance that such an ecosystem maintains in order to support the diversity of life that we come to see and cherish. From Ell Pond webpage

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media type="custom" key="28844378" || L521507 US US-MA US-MA-017 42.4619666 -71.0664368 Ell Pond, Melrose