is New England's premier full service
marina and waterfront complex.
History
Quincy, pronounced “Quinzy” locally, a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, was the hometown of presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and thus bears the nickname, “The City of Presidents.” As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 88,025. Originally part of neighboring Braintree, Quincy was formed in 1792 and named after Colonel John Quincy. The two nationally known franchises, Howard Johnson’s and Dunkin Donuts, have their roots in Quincy.
Among the town’s numerous “firsts” was the nation’s first commercial railroad, the Granite Railway, constructed in 1826 to carry granite from a local quarry to the Neponset River in nearby Milton, MA, where the stone was loaded into boats and transported to Charlestown, MA to build the Bunker Hill Monument. Quincy granite won national attention, and stonecutting became the city’s principle economic activity for much of the 19th Century.
Quincy’s second major industry was shipbuilding. The Fore River area became a shipbuilding hub during the 1880’s when Thomas Watson of telephone fame established the famous Fore River shipyard, a yard that turned out countless warships including the famous aircraft carrier, USS Lexington (CV-2), the battleships, USS Massachusetts (BB-59) and USS Nevada (BB-36), and the USS Salem (CA-139), the world’s last all-gun heavy warship—and now the main exhibit at the United States Naval Ship Building Museum in Fore River. John J. Kilroy, the author of the famous “Kilroy was here” graffiti, was a welding inspector at Fore River.
The city was also an early aviation center; Dennison Field in the Squantum section of town, was partially developed by Amelia Earhart, and served as one of the world’s first airports. In 1910, Denison Field was the site of the Harvard Aero meet, the second “air show” in American history. It was later leased to the Navy as an airstrip, and became the Squantum Reserve Airbase into the 1950s.
During the 1960s and 70s, Quincy won national recognition as one of the country’s richest winter flounder fishing ports. Stocks buckled amid serious concerns about Boston Harbor’s water quality during the 1980s, but the advent of the Deer Island wastewater treatment facility in Nahant rapidly reversed these conditions. Now Quincy and Boston Harbor are once again regarded as a world-class angling, cruising and whale watching destination, with access to prime inshore grounds, as well as famous offshore terrain like Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary, Jeffreys Ledge and countless others around the Gulf of Maine. Marina Bay is regarded as one of northern New England’s premiere marinas, and draws cruisers, sailors and anglers from all points along the eastern seaboard.