Revere Beach Reservation National Register of Historic Places Listing

It started as a mess. Before 1896, private railroads ran right along the high-tide line, choking off the coast with a chaotic jumble of shanties, bathhouses, and saloon tents that dumped trash directly into the surf. Then Charles Eliot stepped in. Working for the Metropolitan Park Commission, this visionary designer convinced the state to bulldoze those private structures and push the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn Railroad tracks back some four hundred feet. A bold, expensive move. His plan created the nation's very first public beach, opening up three miles of crescent shoreline to the masses.

For a nickel train fare from downtown Boston, working-class immigrants flooded the sands on hot summer Sundays. We are talking hundreds of thousands of people squeezing onto the shore. They packed into the massive brick bathhouse, rented heavy wool swimsuits for twenty-five cents, and braved the frigid Atlantic waters. But the beach offered more than just saltwater. Over the next few decades, a wild amusement strip grew along the boulevard, boasting gargantuan wooden roller coasters like the Cyclone, alongside carousel organs and the greasy smell of fried clams. It was loud, crowded, and gloriously unpolished. That gritty, democratic playground is exactly why the federal government recognized this stretch of coast as a landmark of American recreation.