About
Crane Ledge Woods
Crane Ledge Woods gets its name from Crane Ledge - a rock cliff offering a stunning view looking southwest across Hyde Park and the Stony Brook Valley far below. A forest of mature native trees and diverse plant life surround the towering granite cliff, preserving an inspiring sense of wilderness and keeping the area cool on hot days.
The view across the valley gives visitors a rare sense of Hyde Park as it existed more than a century ago, when Crane Ledge was a site for weekend picnics known as Pine Garden.
Boston City Archaeologist, Joe Bagley referred to Crane Ledge Woods as a potential indigenous archeological resource site, similar to the nearby Mattapan Quarry which has been protected, due to its rhyolite stone that the Massachusett Tribe used for toolmaking.
Excerpt of a map from 1867, when the forest around present-day Crane Ledge was common land for picnicking and animal pasture known as Pine Garden.
BPDA has defined CLW as one of Boston's “Urban Wilds & Natural Areas”. Although the property is not under the protection of Parks & Recreation Department, the city has identified this land as key opportunities to make progress on its own climate resilience, environmental justice and open space equity goals.
Crane Ledge Woods is more than half the size of Chinatown - one of Boston’s hottest neighborhoods in the summer due to tree loss and over-development. There is not enough plantable space in the entire neighborhood to replace the trees that would be lost due to the project proposed for Crane Ledge Woods, and none of those trees would reach maturity in most of our lifetimes.