One of The Ginger Ramblers, our walking group’s, favorite places to roam is Breakheart Reservation in Saugus. As we’ve gotten older we appreciate the paved roads through the park, as well as the hills, which together give us a good workout without having to stumble over roots.

Breakheart is full of hills, in fact it’s named for one, but in addition to Breakheart Hill, there’s Eagle Rock, Rocky Hill, Montowampate 

Hill, and several others. It is a beautiful place, with tall white pines that shed veils of yellow pollen in spring breezes, two large ponds, a section of the Saugus River, and all those hills, packed into a mere 600-acre package. In summer, there’s swimming at the family beach; and in winter, cross country skiing on the roads; and in early spring the DCR demonstrates maple syrup collection and evaporation. 

Like most other New England landscapes,  Breakheart’s current aspect belies its historic past. In colonial days, this area was part of Lynn. In 1666 John Gifford, the second general agent of the Saugus Iron Works, who had left the company over a dispute with its creditors, purchased 260 acres along the Saugus River from Thomas Breedon of Boston. He established his own iron works on the site, which was later succeeded by a sawmill (1703–1740), wire-manufacturing operation (1814–1828), a snuff-grinding mill (1837–1871), and a second sawmill (1871–1902). In 1814 a milldam was built further downstream to provide power for a sail manufacturing plant which closed a few years later, but the milldam still survives.

Most of what is now Breakheart, referred to back then as the “600 acres,” were divided into woodlots for the Lynn settlers in the early 1700s and was mostly stripped of trees. In the early 1800s, an 18-acre farm was established in what is now the eastern side of the reservation. An excerpt from “Hearths and Homes of Old Lynn”, published in 1907, says of the farmhouse:

Through its centre from Oaklandvale and Melrose flows the calm and even-tempered Crystal Brook, till within sight of the house on the east, beyond the turnpike, it joins the Saugus, under the shadow of a hillside colored with foliage that no painter dare imitate. 

The author complains that since the establishment of Saugus the appearance of the road had been neglected: It must be remembered that town officials are apt to slight such matters, because they are not taught nor paid for aesthetics.

But others did notice the beauty of the place. In 1891, Benjamin Newhall Johnson, Micajah Clough, and John Bartlett of Lynn began buying up the land that was to become Breakheart Reservation. Benjamin Newhall Johnson was a well born and heeled American attorney, whose grandfather was the abolitionist Benjamin Newhall. Benjamin junior attended Chauncy Hall, Phillips Exeter, and Harvard (cum laude in philosophy) before getting his law degree from Boston University. He was also avidly interested in the history of Lynn and Saugus and a charter member of the Lynn Historical Society.  Johnson and his partners built the dams that created the two ponds in Breakheart, the upper one called Upper Pond, later renamed Silver Pond, and I’ll leave you to guess the name of the lower one.  Johnson bought a log cabin in Maine and had it faithfully reconstructed on the shore of Lower Pond, and the partners officially opened their private reserve, Breakheart Hill Woods, 

No good story would be complete without a sensational murder. One of the pieces of land the partners acquired was the aforementioned farm. Johnson hired George C. Bailey to manage the farm and keep out trespassers. Bailey hired John C. Best to assist him on the property. On October 8, 1900, after a dispute, Best shot and killed Bailey. He then dismembered Bailey’s body, placed the pieces in burlap bags, drove Bailey’s carriage down to Floating Bridge Pond in Lynn, and dumped the bags in the pond. After a sensational trial, Best was found guilty and executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison.

The recent history of Breakheart begins in 1934 when the heirs of Johnson and Clough sold the forest to the Metropolitan District Commission. The MDC immediately invited in the depression era Civilian Conservation Corps to establish a camp and make improvements. For six years the CCC engaged about 100 men at camp number 1149 to build flood control, trails, dams, a ski slope, and the scenic road system of the park under the direction of a nationally prominent landscape architect, Arthur Shurcliff. They even published a newsletter called the Breakheart Mirror. In 2003 the road system, the Breakheart Reservation Parkways, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

So, when you go to Breakheart to walk your dog, as many do, swim, or push a stroller along the beautiful rolling paved roads, know that there is a lot of history there. The Naumkeag, who had a camp along the Saugus River in Breakheart in pre- colonial times, would probably be able to recognize the place, but just barely.