Newton

Sister cities

• San Juan del Sur

History

Newton was originally part of "the newe towne", which was settled in 1630 and renamed Cambridge in 1638. The first English settlement of what is now Newton began in 1639. Roxbury minister John Eliot persuaded the Native American people of Nonantum, a sub-tribe of the Massachusett led by a sachem named Waban, to relocate to Natick in 1651, fearing that they would be exploited by colonists. Newton was incorporated as a separate town, known as Cambridge Village, on December 15, 1681, then renamed Newtown in 1691, and finally Newton in 1766. It became a city on January 5, 1874. Newton is known as The Garden City. In the early 1600s, Watertown had claimed a large area of land on the south side of the Charles River (modern-day Newton). They gave it up to Newtown, except for a strip "two hundred rods long and sixty rods wide" to "protect their fishing privileges". In Reflections in Bullough's Pond, Newton historian Diana Muir describes the early industries that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in a series of mills built to take advantage of the water power available at Newton Upper Falls and Newton Lower Falls. Snuff, chocolate, glue, paper and other products were produced in these small mills but, according to Muir, the water power available in Newton was not sufficient to turn Newton into a manufacturing city, although it was, beginning in 1902, the home of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, the maker of the Stanley Steamer. Nineteenth-century Newton, following the American Civil War, was a patchwork of villages. The northern villages of Auburndale, Newton Corner, Newtonville, and West Newton were the most affluent. In contrast, both Waban and Chestnut Hill were sparsely populated. Each April on Patriots' Day, the Boston Marathon is run through the…

Geography

Newton is a suburban city approximately from downtown Boston, in Middlesex County. It is also bordered by Waltham and Watertown on the north, Needham and the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston on the south, Wellesley and Weston on the west, and Brookline and the Brighton neighborhood of Boston on the east. The Charles River flows along the north and west parts of Newton, and Route 128 passes through the western part of the city. The Mass Pike passes through the more urbanized northern section of the city before heading into Boston. Additional major highways in Newton include Route 9, serving the southern parts of the city, and Hammond Pond Parkway, which is the main north–south route through Chestnut Hill and provides access to Brookline and West Roxbury. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and (0.82%) is water. Geologically Newton is located within the topographic lowland of the Boston Basin of the Appalachian Mountain chain. This lowland is surrounded by a ring of highland drumlins which were left after the last glaciation twelve thousand years ago. There are several unique outcroppings of rocks around Newton where geologic history revealing of how territory have formed and has changed over the past hundreds millions of years of drift supercontinents and ancient oceans, earthquake activity associated with volcanism and related faulting activity and changing climate. There are mainly three types of bedrock: Roxbury Conglomerate, Cambridge Argillite or Slate, and Brighton Volcanics and the Mattapan Volcanics pre-Cambrian foundation of Dedham Granodiorite. The Boston Border Fault and the Shawmut anticline of Newton formed as the alpine mountains of east-central Massachusetts were created. Unique…

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  176,294
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  165,792
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  146,618
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  138,587
• Mourning Dove

  Zenaida macroura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  133,747
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  130,930
• Song Sparrow

  Melospiza melodia (A.Wilson, 1810) · Aves
  129,023
• Downy Woodpecker

  Dryobates pubescens (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  115,894

Most recent

• M 3.8 — 2025-01-27
  9 km SE of York Harbor, Maine
• M 3.6 — 2020-11-08
  10 km S of Bliss Corner, Massachusetts
• M 2.7 — 2018-02-15
  0 km SE of East Kingston, New Hampshire
• M 2.6 — 2015-01-13
  2 km E of Wauregan, Connecticut
• M 3.3 — 2015-01-12
  0 km NE of Wauregan, Connecticut
• M 2.5 — 2007-10-19
  2 km WSW of Littleton Common, Massachusetts