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Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston.

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GAINING GROUND: A HISTORY OF LANDMAKING IN BOSTON. BY NANCY S. SEASHOLES. xiv and 533 pp.; maps, ills., notes, index. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. $52.00 (cloth), ISBN 0262194945.

Boston is a city of enchanting antiquity that has fascinated historical geographers since the early nineteenth century. In this long local tradition, Nancy Seasholes has completed a comprehensive study of Boston's landfill, which she defines as "landmaking," from 1630 through 2003. As an archaeologist, Seasholes focuses on the historic sequence and actual matter of the fill material that has expanded the original Boston shoreline by some 30,000 acres. Her study is bounded both by time and by the city limits. It thus includes the classic sequences of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market in Town Cove, the Back Bay residential district, the Charlestown Navy Yard, and, most recently, Logan International Airport. The study is based on legal documents in colonial town records, court cases, and, most fascinating for historical geographers, a sequence of original period maps that trace the slow and minute expansion of the Boston shoreline. The result is a case study of urban fringe development that will become a classic in its field, both for Boston and for other American cities of its type.

Gaining Ground is based on Seashole's Boston University dissertation (1994) on the landmaking operations of central Boston that developed with the "Big Dig" Interstate 93 highway project. The book is most fascinating in those sections of the city that have historic veneration for tourists, although all sections of the city are treated with equally careful research. After a brief introduction (chapter 1) of the various landmaking districts to be discussed, the study opens with a chapter on the nature of landmaking technology (chapter 2) from the earliest trash dumps, to systematic importation...

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