Boston's Former Landfill Is Now A Vibrant Park With Woodland Nature Walks, Birdwatching, And Skyline Views

For the 11 months I lived in Boston, Millennium Park was a favorite place to spend time. My apartment in West Roxbury was small, and my son was young and energetic. We needed somewhere big and open for him to run around. Millennium Park was where he mastered his balance bike. This was where he saw his first football field. When the weather was right, people flew kites on the grassy lawns. We loved to stroll the miles of paved paths that looped their way around the hilltop.

In all that time, we had no idea that Millennium Park was built on top of a city dump. Exploring those woods and fields with my four-year-old, I could never have imagined this place was previously known as the Gardner Street Landfill, which was capped in 1994. The opening of Millennium Park in 2000 is a sustainability success story, partly because of how it was constructed. To cover the mountain of garbage, engineers used soil excavated from "The Big Dig," the famous tunnel project under Boston. In other words, the soil we walked every day was brought there from underneath downtown Boston's skyscrapers.

We visited Millennium Park many times, but we were limited to what a preschooler could handle. The park is bigger than I realized — 100 acres — and two major trails delve into the surrounding woodland: Blue Heron Trail is a nearly 3-mile out-and-back wetlands path, a prime environment for birding, and City on the Hills Trail, which starts in Millennium and meanders an impressive 6.8 miles through several additional woods and parks. You could easily add it to a list of go-to places to take friends when they visit Boston.

One reason I loved Millennium Park was its proximity to where we lived, on the edge of Boston's city limits. Despite its superfund past, the park provided natural space and fresh air. For us, it was a place of pigeons and an occasional wild turkey, but serious birders have spotted more than 240 species in Millennium Park, according to the tracking site eBird. There's a chance you could train your binoculars on herons, indigo buntings, and common nighthawks.

Most of what I thought of as Millennium Park was a single hill, an ovular mound crowned with athletic facilities, several open fields, and a playground. We always gravitated to the swing sets, never thinking to continue walking down to the banks of the river. Here, many miles before the Charles River becomes the main artery through Boston, it's a placid body of water, almost like a pond. There's a kayak launch here, where paddlers can put in and explore the banks and wetlands that circumscribe Millennium Park. Now that I know this, I can't wait to visit again (with my much-older son) and explore the area on my stand-up paddle board.

There's also the view. The Boston area isn't exactly flat, but there aren't many overlooks. From certain points in Millennium Park, you can see the skyscrapers of downtown Boston on the horizon. Living in West Roxbury often felt isolated, and this vista would remind me how close the city center was. I'd remind myself that Boston is one of the greenest cities in the world, an iconic New England gem with breathtaking parks and river walks.

Boston isn't an easy city to navigate, and although Millennium Park is only about 10 miles from Boston Common, you might have to muscle through gridlock traffic on confusing streets for over a half-hour before you pull into Millennium's parking lot. Unfortunately, that's also your best option, as public transit will require at least an hour of your time, and you'll have to transfer at least once. Boston may have America's more reliable public transportation subway, but bedroom communities like West Roxbury take some time to get to.

That said, West Roxbury is located near Dedham, a town full of shopping, restaurants, and hotels. Visitors who want to avoid the paralyzing prices of Boston accommodations often look to Dedham for a place to stay, where a night in a chain hotel generally costs a little over $100 per night. When my wife and I were looking for apartments, we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Dedham. If you're driving into Boston as part of a wider road trip, this is a great place to park as you explore the inner-city on foot — and most of these hotels are only a 12-minute drive from Millennium Park.