Dana

A town ended by legislation so a city sixty miles away could drink

Dana was cut from parts of Petersham, Greenwich and Hardwick and incorporated in 1801, named for the Massachusetts statesman Francis Dana. It stood in the Swift River Valley, and Boston wanted the valley.

Boston's demand for water had outrun its local supplies early in the nineteenth century. In 1893 the state Board of Health recommended a reservoir in the Swift River Valley, a 1922 study endorsed it as the next extension of the system, and in the 1930s the Winsor Dam and Goodnough Dike went up across the river. Boston-area lawmakers backed the project enthusiastically; the people of the affected towns opposed it. The reservoir displaced 2,500 people. In April 1938 Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott were disincorporated, Dana on the 28th, and all of its land went to neighbouring Petersham. Houses were moved or razed. On 14 August 1939 the diversion tunnel was sealed with rock, and over the next seven years the water rose 170 feet behind the dam until the reservoir was full in June 1946, swallowing all but the peaks of about 60 hills. Quabbin, from a Nipmuc word for a place of many waters, holds 412 billion gallons and, with the Wachusett Reservoir, supplies Boston, 65 miles east, and 40 other cities and towns.

Most of Dana's land is still above water. Its common survives as a clearing of cellar holes and stone walls in the woods, and the common and a 68-acre area around the old centre are on the National Register of Historic Places. The state Department of Conservation and Recreation still keeps the centre somewhat maintained. A stone marker put up by the Dana Reunion in 1996 reads "Site of Dana Common 1801-1938" and is dedicated to all those who sacrificed their homes and way of life.

The old road is closed to cars, so the only way in is on foot. From Gate 40 in Petersham it runs about a mile and a half through woodland and open fields, flat and easy, and it is often called the best historical hike on the Quabbin lands. At the common there are cellar holes from the schoolhouse and the homes, and the posts of the cemetery fence still stand. Another mile or so on, the road reaches the water, with a view of Mount Zion.