Historic leaves, volume 1, April, 1902 - January, 1903

[14] streets between them, eighty rods, or one-quarter of a mile apart, the ranges being sub-divided into lots. The rangeways, though spoken of in the record of 1681 as being twenty-four feet in width, are later recorded, with one exception, as being two rods wide, and so remained until after Somerville became a separate town. The rangeways east of the Powder House were known by numbers from one to eight, and corresponded with the following present streets. viz.:—

The first rangeway was Franklin street; the second Cross and Shawmut streets, which was laid out three rods wide, being the exception heretofore noticed; it was called ‘Three Pole Lane,’ and was known by this name within the memory of the writer. The third rangeway was Walnut street; the fourth, School street; the fifth, Central; sixth, Lowell, portions of which are extinct: seventh, Cedar; and eighth, Willow avenue.

There were three more rangeways west of Powder House square, which were numbered from one to three, all running northerly from Broadway over College hill.

Rangeway No. 1 came into Broadway about opposite Simpson avenue, but it is now extinct. Rangeway No. 2 is now Curtis street, and No. 2 is North street.

The Stinted pasture did not include any land north of Broadway which lay to the eastward of Powder House square; the larger part of this land was the ‘Ten Hills Farm,’ granted to Governor Winthrop in 1630. Nor did it seem to include any territory south of Washington street and Somerville avenue.

The boundaries of the Governor Winthrop estate were well defined but the locations of lands which were granted south of the Stinted pasture, and which extended to the Cambridge line, are very obscure in the earlier records. Thus has been sketched the laying out and beginning of that section of our city which we may very appropriately name the Highlands of Somerville, covering nearly eleven hundred acres of land, the larger part of which is now our most thickly settled territory.