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Charles River Sunset Cruises depart from Lechmere Canal, The ticket booth and boat departure is located outside the doors at the canal side of the CambridgeSide Mall. Over the years, I have ridden my bike across a swath of the Mongolian steppe to visit the towering statue of Genghis Khan, and also kayaked nearly the whole 51-mile length of the Los Angeles River. I did this in part because it’s my belief that our current environmental crises—climate change, species die-off, water pollution—are rooted partially in our alienation from nature. Undamming the whole Charles is still more of a green dream than a firm plan.
Charles River Cruise: A Tour of Boston by Riverboat
Charles River Boat Company offers daily sightseeing tours, sunset and cocktail cruises, plus an architectural tour on the Charles River. Enjoy a relaxing cruise as their crew points out the historic sights of Boston and Cambridge. View Beacon Hill, Esplanade Park, Back Bay, Boston University, MIT, and Harvard while cruising past countless sailboats and rowers. Charles I is a custom designed 75’ classic riverboat perfect for cruising The Charles River and Boston’s inner harbor.
Sites Along the Charles River
On that morning last autumn, songbirds darted over the water as I kayaked downstream through a wide channel lined by maples and oaks in the suburban semi-wilderness of Millis, Medfield, and Dover. The river twisted through S-turns, the current silent but strong under my boat, pushing me along. These days, thanks to the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, the Charles is only invaded with sewage after heavy rains. Freeing the river of dams wouldn’t erase the river’s rainy-day problems, but it would certainly improve things, says U.S. Still, civilization and its ugliness were at hand my whole way down the Charles.
TOUR HIGHLIGHTS
The New Charles River Dam will remain; the tides will never flow into the city. But upriver, if the dams go down, the old Charles will spring back. The river will meander free as it did long ago, and the change, I’d argue, could prove to be a tonic for Greater Boston. It would connect the region to nature and give us a bit of the old Charles River. As I continued my voyage, I neared two major dams, and there was no way I was going to paddle them. The first, the Silk Mill Dam in Newton, boasts a roaring 15-foot-high waterfall.
Boston Hop On Hop Off Tours
In the 1800s, the human stain upon the river was a lot worse. The Pilgrims and their descendants flushed the city’s sewage straight into the Charles—so bountifully, in fact, that on summer days, a ghastly smell pervaded the streets. By 1879, water pollution was such a concern that Boston enacted a “Sanitary Improvement” plan, creating the Fens, a restored salt marsh in the Back Bay, to absorb flood waters and sewage. In Needham, a large white bird, a great egret, flew straight toward me and landed right near my boat, its feet skimming the water, kicking up a tiny wake. It emerged and flew for 100 or so yards, just inches over the water, eyes down as it continued to hunt.
The 90 Minute Architecture Cruise on Charles River is narrated by a volunteer from Boston By Foot. Enjoy a 90-minute cruise while taking in the spectacular scenery of Boston and Cambridge. After an hour, I neared the Watertown Dam, which likely will be the next to come down after the South Natick Dam. The city council is in support of its removal, and the DCR, which owns the dam, deems it a “significant hazard dam” in “fair” condition.
Cocktail Party
The Charles River begins in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which is about 36 miles west of Boston. Hopkinton is a small town with a population of less than 3,000 people. But the city is fairly well-known, having gained its fame by being the starting point of the annual Boston Marathon. Our boats board at the Lechmere Canal, which is directly outside the doors at the canal side of the CambridgeSide Mall. Park in the CambridgeSide Mall Parking Garage then proceed to the first floor and the ticket booth and boat can be found outside on the canal side of the mall.
Built in 1778, it powered a paper mill and, later, a cotton mill that in 1807 manufactured the sails for “Old Ironsides,” a.k.a. the USS Constitution. As I approached the dam, I was exceedingly fearful of capsizing a third time, in the dark. My plan was to take out the moment I heard the dam’s rapids, portage around them, and then make a final late-night surge to the harbor in Boston. I opted for a car portage that involved a little planning.
Moments after I climbed into my kayak, in the day’s first light, I saw a large-antlered deer swimming in the river right in front of me. Deer are abundant in suburbia, certainly, but I felt lucky to be communing with this one on such a lovely morning. I could just as easily have been inside, staring at a screen, or stuck in one of the traffic jams gathering on the highways nearby.
This Trip Will Be the Longest River Cruise in the U.S. — Visiting 20 States in 60 Days - Travel + Leisure
This Trip Will Be the Longest River Cruise in the U.S. — Visiting 20 States in 60 Days.
Posted: Mon, 27 Mar 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
After I portaged over the dam and put my boat back in the water, the river was roiling, its channel narrowed so the current sprang as hose water does when you constrict the flow with your thumb. Suddenly, I encountered lots of boulders and found myself bouncing along through foamy white rapids, my pulse thumping hard in my throat. Other sites in Boston that your guide might point out during your riverboat tour, include Boston University, Fenway Park and the Esplanade, which is a three-mile path that runs along the Charles River. Enjoy a 90-minute cruise while taking in the spectacular scenery of Boston and Cambridge from the serene waters of the Charles River.
The Boston Tea Party and many other dramatic events that helped shape our nation took place in Boston. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. View award-winning vacations sailing from your backyard and discover deals you won't have to go great distances for with our collection of cruises near you.
By the mid-20th century, the structure was no longer used, causing it to fall into disrepair. I was not eager for such an onerous abs workout, so I began my adventure on the Charles around River Mile 5 in suburban Milford. The source of the Charles River is a reservoir called Echo Lake in Hopkinton. Kayaking there is not permitted, so I began looking for a place to start just downstream from the dam forming the reservoir. The Charles that I encountered there, on the side of a bike path, was a mucky little trickle, ankle-deep and maybe 2 feet wide as it flowed through a swamp. In 2020, when Salvatore paddled the river source-to-sea, he assiduously made it through the section by using his paddle to push himself through the muck.
On the Cutler Park Reservation, a square mile of preserved marshland, I saw a less common snowy egret—smaller, with a slender black bill—perched in a tree. I paddled about a mile until I came upon the remnants of the Caryville Dam, the very first dam on the Charles that has been deliberately removed. It was once the centerpiece of a thriving little village with its own grist mill, cotton mill, and shoe factory.
Your riverboat tour guide will be pointing out sites in both cities. Drinks and snacks are available for purchase onboard the Charles River Boat. At the end of the river cruise, you will return to the Cambridgeside Mall to board your trolley for the return journey back across the river into Boston. Still, I paddled on, heading toward the fully breached Bemis Dam, which has Class 1 rapids after it.
I dropped my paddle so I could use both arms to pry myself up onto the log. Pressed by the current, my legs were dead weights—1,000-pound rocks I had to lift skyward. Still, I managed to wrench my way up to safety on top of the log. Then I watched in horror as my paddle floated downstream, and I asked myself why I’d been stupid enough to embark on this solo seat-of-the-pants Charles River expedition. The Charles began taking a new course in 1634, when entrepreneur Thomas Mayhew erected a small stone dam in Watertown to power a grist mill, making the river one of the first in the country to be dammed. Over the centuries that followed, many more dams went up on the Charles to drive corn mills and sawmills and, later, to power textile mills.
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