Arlington, Massachusetts
A Short History of Arlington
From the Massachusett homeland, to the village of Menotomy and the bloodiest fighting of April 19, 1775, to the ice trade on Spy Pond, to the dense and diverse suburb of today.
Menotomy, Before the Revolution
The land that is now Arlington was home to the Massachusett people long before English colonists arrived, and they called the area Menotomy, a name tied to the swift-running brook that powered later mills. Settled as part of Cambridge in the 1630s, the village grew up along the road we now call Massachusetts Avenue, the main route between Boston and the towns to the northwest.
The Bloodiest Day of 1775
On April 19, 1775, the running battle of Lexington and Concord poured back through Menotomy, and the fighting here was the deadliest of that first day of the Revolution. Colonial militia ambushed the exhausted British column as it retreated, and the close combat reached its peak at the Jason Russell House, where eleven colonists were killed. The house still stands on Jason Street, bullet holes and all, kept by the Arlington Historical Society.
A Town, and a New Name
Menotomy was set off from Cambridge as the separate town of West Cambridge in 1807. For decades it was a farming and milling community, and in winter it became something more unusual: crews cut blocks of ice from Spy Pond and shipped them, through Frederic Tudor’s ice trade, as far as the Caribbean and India. In 1867 the town renamed itself Arlington to honor the soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Mills, Art, and the Streetcar
Industry clustered along Mill Brook. The Old Schwamb Mill, working since 1864, still turns out oval picture frames and is one of the oldest operating mills of its kind in the country. The sculptor Cyrus Dallin made Arlington his home for decades and filled it with bronzes, including the Menotomy Indian Hunter at Robbins Library. When the streetcar and then the railroad arrived, Arlington filled in fast with the triple-deckers and tidy houses that still define its neighborhoods.
From Rails to Bikeway
The railroad that once carried commuters and freight through the center of town closed in the 1970s, and in 1992 the corridor reopened as the Minuteman Bikeway, one of the most popular rail trails in the country. It traces the same route the British marched in 1775 and now carries cyclists and walkers from Cambridge through Arlington and on toward Bedford.
Modern Arlington
Today Arlington is a dense, diverse, and largely residential suburb of more than 46,000 people, still governed the old New England way by representative Town Meeting. It has grown more diverse and is working through the questions that come with success, from how to add housing near the Alewife transit corridor to how to pay for the close to 290 million dollar high school it finished in 2025. The town that saw the worst of the Revolution’s first day now spends its energy on what gets built next.
Sources: Town of Arlington; Arlington Historical Society; Old Schwamb Mill; National Park Service; U.S. Census Bureau.