Watertown, Massachusetts
A Short History of Watertown
From a Massachusett fishing weir on the Charles, to one of the first inland towns of the Bay Colony, to a federal arsenal and a dense, diverse city that is still legally a town.
Before the Town
Long before any town existed, the falls on the Charles River at what is now Watertown Square were the site of Pequossette, a settlement of the Massachusett people. They built a fishing weir there to trap herring as the fish ran upriver each spring. That same fishing spot, the head of tide on the Charles, is the reason the place was settled at all.
One of the First Towns
In 1630 Puritan colonists led by Sir Richard Saltonstall and the Reverend George Phillips settled at the falls, making Watertown one of the four earliest settlements of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. For its first quarter century the town ranked next to Boston in population and area, and it was the first inland farming town of the colony. Watertown was once far larger than it is now: the modern cities and towns of Belmont, Waltham, and Weston were all carved out of its original bounds.
The Watertown Arsenal
In 1816 the U.S. Army established the Watertown Arsenal on the bank of the Charles. For roughly 150 years it was one of the country’s major centers for making cannon, gun carriages, and ordnance, and it grew into a sprawling complex that employed thousands through the World Wars. After the Army wound down operations, the riverfront site was redeveloped for civilian use and is now known as the Arsenal on the Charles and the surrounding Arsenal Yards, a mix of offices, shops, labs, and housing.
A City of Institutions
In 1912 the Perkins School for the Blind, the oldest school for the blind in the United States, moved to a campus on the Charles River in Watertown, where it remains a national leader today. The city also became a center of Armenian American life in the twentieth century, and the Armenian Museum of America on Main Street is the largest museum of Armenian culture and history in the diaspora.
From Town to City
For most of its history Watertown was governed by Town Meeting, the classic New England form. As the community grew dense and complex, voters approved a new charter that took full effect in 2021, replacing Town Meeting with an elected City Council and an appointed City Manager. In a nod to nearly four centuries of identity, the charter kept the old name: the city’s legal title is The City Known as the Town of Watertown.
Sources: Town and City of Watertown; Perkins School for the Blind; Encyclopaedia Britannica; U.S. Census Bureau.