Rock Meadow is a parcel of land, approximately seventy acres, located on the western edge of Belmont. It is bounded by Waltham (Beaver Brook), Concord Avenue, Mill Street, the Kendall Gardens subdivision, and Town of Belmont land that was formerly the site of the town incinerator. Rock Meadow, which connects with the open lands of Habitat, McLean Hospital, Metropolitan State Hospital, and Olympus Hospital, forms a greenway through Belmont, Waltham, and Lexington, and contains streams and woodlands as well as a meadow. Its walking trails, accessible from a small parking area off Mill Street, are popular with bikers and birders.

Today, the Belmont Conservation Commission manages the land for Belmont. In 1968, the town purchased from Massachusetts General Hospital what was then called "McLean Farm" for the sum of $555,800. The United States Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, Department of the Interior, funded 50 percent of the purchase, and the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources funded 25 percent. The 1968 Belmont Annual Report stated: "The need for preserving this last piece of available land in the congested and overbuilt town of Belmont was recognized by the Commissioners." The following year the commission changed the name to Rock Meadow, which it stated was the "historically correct and older" title.

What the glaciers left behind

Rock Meadow was shaped by the Wisconsin glacier that covered New England between 10,000 to 80,000 years ago. John L. Alexander, writing in 1879 in the History of Middlesex County, stated that the area was "evidently a lake during the glacial period, but was drained by cutting a channel down a rocky gorge, in which now flows a rapid stream, called Beaver Brook." More recently, Rock Meadow was described by a Boston University Preservation Studies team as a gravel-filled fresh water meadow with boulders, or "erratics," left by the glacier.

Unlike other parts of town, Rock Meadow still looks much as it did in Colonial times. In the early 1600s, the Book of Proprietors Records referred to an area called "Rocke Meadow":

"The country in this section was generally open. The frequent burning over by the Indians had left the largest trees but no underbrush, and the country looked like an English park." A 1640 reference stated that "the great Rock Meadow above the mill pond supplied meadow hay, which attracted settlers at an early date."

Over 250 years later, the naturalist William Brewster wrote in his 1906 book Birds of the Cambridge Region:

This fine, large meadow, upwards of one hundred acres in extent, has changed but little, either in character or surroundings, within the past thirty or forty years. It lies partly in Belmont and Waltham, but chiefly in the southeastern corner of Lexington, near the source of Beaver Brook. Although for the most part open and grassy, it contains many swampy thickets, several tracts of low-lying maple woods and a few wooded ridges and 'marsh islands.' The Concord Turnpike crosses it from east to west on an ancient causeway bordered by pollarded willows. Through the long and alluring vista formed by the trunks and overarching branches of these fine old trees one may walk or drive in cool and unbroken shade during the hottest June day, listening to the songs of Bobolinks, Red-winged Blackbirds, Swamp Sparrows, Yellow Warblers, Maryland Yellow-throats, Catbirds and other marsh- or thicket-loving birds. . . As the meadow is also bordered on every side by sparsely populated country, abounding in woods, thickets, cedar pastures and grassy fields, it offers to the bird lover one of the most attractive and interesting resorts to be found anywhere, at the present time, within easy reach of Cambridge.

McLean dairy farm kept 150 cows

During the first half of the last century, the Belmont portion of Rock Meadow was used as a dairy farm by McLean Hospital. The hospital moved to its present location in the late 1800s and shortly afterward purchased land in the Rock Meadow area from Jonas Kendall and Edward Brown. In 1908, it purchased an additional 56 acres west of Mill Street from the Brown family. By 1927, the area included " a farmhouse, two stables, a stone crusher, cow barn, dairy barn, silo, two piggeries and a pump house," according to the town historian Richard Betts. When McLean abandoned the farm in 1944, due to the labor shortage occasioned by World War II, there were 150 cows that supplied 500 quarts of milk to the hospital daily. The farmhouse and stable are still standing on land owned by McLean and abutting Rock Meadow. This 4.58-acre parcel west of Mill Street is part of the 105.7 acres of public open space in the proposed McLean Hospital redevelopment project.

Since 1968, when Rock Meadow was purchased by the town, the Conservation Commission has maintained the meadow portion of the land by mowing. Over the years, volunteer groups have provided additional maintenance. In May 2001, the commissioners and the contractor who mowed the previous year agreed that a plan was needed to control the encroaching woodlands and invasive plant species, such as bittersweet and poison ivy.

Gardeners, bikers, dog walkers share space

The Belmont community gardens, called the Victory Gardens, were moved in 1969 to Rock Meadow from what are now the high school playing fields. At a recent Conservation Commission meeting, the organizers of the Victory Gardens reported that Rock Meadow has become much more heavily used in the last few years, especially by mountain bikers and dog walkers. They noted that concerns have been raised about the effect of unleashed dogs on wildlife, especially ground-nesting birds.

Recently, the selectmen appointed an Athletic Field Study Committee to search for possible sites for additional organized sport fields. Four to five acres of land are needed. One possible site is Rock Meadow. A dozen or so citizens attended the April 3, 2001, Conservation Commission meeting to express their disapproval of the use of Rock Meadow for organized sports. Additionally, the Belmont Citizen-Herald has published letters to the editor on this issue, both pro and con. A request from the Athletic Field Study Committee has yet to come before the commission.

(Click map to enlarge)
This 1906 map by Charles Elliot shows the marshy area called Rock Meadow northwest of what was then called Wellington Hill. The elevated land to the right of Rock Meadow is the site of McLean Hospital. For a closer view of the area, see the map below.

Margaret Velie regularly observes Belmont Conservation Commission meetings for the League of Women Voters. For further reading, she suggests the following sources, many of which are available in the Claflin Room of the Belmont Public Library:

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, John L., "Belmont" in Drake, Samuel Adams, History of Middlesex County.
Boston, Estes and Lauriat, 1879.

Atlas of the Town of Belmont, 1998.

Belmont Annual Reports, Belmont, Massachusetts, 1968-1971.

Betts, Richard B., Footsteps through Belmont, Belmont, 1985.

Betts, Richard B., ed., article on McLean Hospital in Belmont Historical Society
Newsletter. Vol. 21, No. 5 (September 1986).

Betts, Richard B., ed., article on Rock Meadow in Belmont Historical Society Newsletter. 
Vol. 29, No. 3 (March 1995).

Boston University Preservation Studies Survey Team, Belmont, Massachusetts,
Belmont Historic District Commission, 1984.

Brewster, William, The Birds of the Cambridge Region of Massachusetts, Cambridge, 
Mass., The Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1906.

Fisher, Alan, AMC Guide to Country Walks Near Boston, Boston, Appalachian 
Mountain Club, 1976.

Hutchinson, B. June and Steinberg, Ann G., A Program for Renewing Rock Meadow
Conservation Land, Project for Radcliffe Seminars Landscape Design Program,
Michael Van Valkenburg and John Furlong, advisers, May 1982.

Rock Meadow Deed dated November 18, 1968, recorded in Middlesex South
Deed Book 11604, p. 584.

Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., McLean Hospital Redevelopment Expanded 
Environmental Notification Form, January 2001.