Boston Harbor is spatter with lots of grass knoll , chirp out of the water system like half - inhume egg . Do n’t be shoot by these innocuous - looking islets , these are no average islands : they are sunken drumlins .
drumlin are swimmingly rounded , ellipse hills that are formed when glacier move over debris made of the Great Compromiser , sand , gravel , cobble , and boulders that were deposit directly by the ice . As the glacier slides over , it reshapes the material into streamlined mounds , giving drumlin their elongated and smooth coming into court . They often occur in clusters , call " drumlin fields " , where multiple drumlin are adjust in the way the ice feed yard of old age ago .
In some rarefied lawsuit , field of force of drumlins can be flooded with water system due to rising sea levels , creating a compendium of so - calleddrumlin island . According to the National Park Service , there arejust threeflooded drumline field in the world , one of which is in Boston Harbor .
Boston Lighthouse on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts.Image credit: Wangkun Jia/Shutterstock.com
Over the past 100,000 years , thegeology of the Boston Basinhas been chip at and reshaped by powerful wave of glaciation . In the most late of these icy upheavals , between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago , the landscape painting was sculpt into the classifiable drumlin that still cockle across the terrain today .
The 34 drumlin islands are located inBoston Harbor Islands National and State Parkamong a bunch of hiking trails and some historic beacon light . One of the most impressive drumlin islands is Georges Island . Located at the scuttle of the harbour , it ’s home to a Civil War - era fortification call Fort Warren that was used as a prison house camp for both Confederate captive of war and government officials .
The Son drumlinderivesfrom the Irish Holy Scripture droimnín , meaning " fiddling ridge " . Boston , of course , is importantly act upon by its Irish heritage and is consider one of the most Irish cities outside of the Emerald Isle .
coincidently , another one of the three flooded drumlin fields in the world can be find along the Atlantic coast of County Mayo in Ireland atClew Bay . Local folklore claims there are 365 of them in the bay , one for every day of the class . The third drumlin field of force , by the path , isbelievedto be in Fláajökull , southeast Iceland , another place with a entrancing and unique geologic chronicle .
The presence of these uncommon , flooded drumlin fields in both Boston Harbor and Clew Bay highlights the deep connection between these two places on paired side of meat of the Atlantic . Boston ’s robust Irish inheritance is reflected not just in its culture , but in the ancient landscape painting itself .
