THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, July 28, 2017
RIDING | from page 4 by cancer or knows somebody who has cancer. There’s people who have cancer who ride. There are people who are survivors who ride. So, it’s an emotional ride,” Phelps said. “There are people who are triathletes who ride. There are people with one leg who ride. There are doctors who ride with their patients. It’s a big community – the riders and all of the volunteers. It’s pretty awesome.” she said. Phelps had initially planned not to ride in this year’s PanMass Challenge. But she had a change of heart and decided to dedicate her ride to an
ASKS | from page 5 smith shop and we give them away as souvenirs to the kids. And people will come in and say, “My nephew got a nail, can I get one?”or something like that. So, a lot of people ask about the nails. Q: So that’s a popular item? A: Yeah. For some reason, it just catches people’s imagination – just a little souvenir that sort of sums up the whole place. Q: How many visitors a year do you get here? A: About 3,500, and that’s in a six-month season. We’re open from May 1st to Oct. 31. We count the number of visitors every single day. We track it. And it’s about 3,500 per season. Q: Are most of the visitors from out-of-town? A: I think it’s about half and half. It’s amazing to me how far people travel. I did this tour this morning, and we had people from Portland, Oregon. I was apologizing for the rain, and they were saying, “Oh, we’re used to that. … It rains in Seattle. It rains in Oregon all of the time.” We get people who come from around the world. Last year we had Chinese archaeologists. There was a conference for Chinese archaeologists at BU and they scheduled a special side trip out to the Iron Works. So people from around the world know about this place. But then the other half of them [visitors] are people who are driving down Route 1 and they see the sign and they decide to stop in to find out what’s going on. Q: I imagine you get a lot of visitors that way. A: Yes. So it’s about half and half. People who make a long, long trip to get here and then people who are sort of just driving by. Q: Now, what is the oldest item on the premises? A: Well, the archeology actually found the bulk of the stuff – this is kind of a funny thing about the site, because the site is focused on the iron-making. But that’s not what most of the
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aunt who is responding well to cancer treatments. “I’m riding this year out of gratitude because of my aunt, who was diagnosed in December. She had to have surgery, but no chemo, and she’s in remission,” Phelps said. “And there are a lot of people who are riding because they’re angry because they lost somebody to cancer and they want to find a cure. Everybody knows somebody with cancer, so there’s always somebody to ride with and ride for,” she said. Phelps maintains a philo-
sophical outlook on her participation in the Pan-Mass Challenge. “As long as I can. As long as my legs work,” Phelps said, reinforcing her commitment to a cause she believes in. “We always say that cancer doesn’t stop. So, why should we?” You’re only tired a few days and you have to go back to your normal life. Other people less fortunate have to go to treatments,” she said. Anyone who wants to sponsor Phelps on her ride or check out her progress can connect to http://profile.pmc.org/ cp0157. For more details about the Pan-Mass Challenge, go to A SIGN OF GRATITUDE: One of the cancer survivors who greetthe website http://www.pmc. ed Chelsea Phelps and several thousand other cyclists in last org/. year’s Pan-Mass Challenge.
archaeology found. What most of the archeology found were Native American artifacts. People have been living in this spot for at least 8,000 years. We have thousands of Native American artifacts going back to millennia, so the oldest stuff is 8-10,000 years old. Q: That’s like pottery and arrowheads. A: Exactly. Pottery doesn’t even come into the culture 10,000 years ago. It’s mostly stone tools and things like that. Then 400 or 500 years ago, you get pottery and other kinds of artifacts. We have thousands of Native American artifacts in our collection here. Q: Wow. A: People have been living in Saugus for a really long time. Q: From your perspective as a researcher, what’s the neatest thing that you know about this place? Like, when you get friends – some of your college buddies or friends who come to visit you – you might tell them, “You want to know something interesting about this place …” A: Yes. The neatest thing for me is the size of the operation. The way the myth is presented, the early colonists come here and they have to make everything by hand. They have to weave their own clothes and they have to hunt for food because they can’t even grow their own crops. People have this image that these people were really, really primitive. And it’s not true. It’s not true at all. When they set up the iron works here, they set up a massive operation. Our park right now is nine acres. Their original site was 600 acres. So there were all sorts of things that aren’t in the park boundaries that are yet to be discovered. When they did the archeology – the park is right in the middle of Saugus – so there is a limit to how much you can go poking around in people’s backyards and things. But there were houses for the managers. There was a 30-acre farm where they kept oxen. There was an entire village called Hammersmith
where the workers’families lived. There’s probably 125 to 150 people who lived there. There were 240 acres of ponds running the waterwheels – all sorts of things that must have been there, but are outside the park boundaries, so people have yet to discover them. Q: Now, you have a registry of a lot of people who worked here over the time the iron works was in operation? A: Yes, the records of the original iron works are actually in the collection of the Baker Library at the Harvard Business School. They’re not complete, but they are pretty extensive. The iron works was in operation about 24 years. So we don’t have all 24 years’ worth of records, but we have quite a few records. The most popular thing is people with Scottish ancestors. They brought 50 or so Scottish prisoners of war here in 1651. And we get descendants of them all of the time coming through. So there’s actually a little booklet we have in the gift shop that lists all of the names of the people who were Scottish prisoners that were here. Q: Neat. Like you had last year when you had researchers come over. A: Yes. Exactly. We had the people from the University of Durham here last year – the archeology team that discovered some mass graves in Durham from the same battles. The Scottish prisoners actually have an interesting organization: the Scots’ Charitable Society of Boston. In the 1650s, some Scottish immigrants in Boston got together with some of the indentured servants here and they started the charitable organization to help each other out. And it’s the oldest charitable organization in North America, and it still exists in Boston. Nowadays, they don’t do the same sort of stuff. They give scholarships to college students; that’s what they do now. There’s an organization of Scots in Boston that’s been here for 350 years. Q: And they have connections
~FOR YOUR VISIT~
Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site At A Glance
Historical Significance: The first successful integrated iron works in North.America. Established in 1646. Location: 244 Central St., Saugus, a short distance up the street from Town Hall. Area: 9 acres. Phone: (781) 816-7299 Hours of Operation: Open daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., May 1 through Oct. 31. Admission: Free Things to do: Join a ranger for a tour through the reconstructed iron works and learn about the production of iron on this site in the mid-1600s. View a 12-minute film and many iron works artifacts in the museum. Walk a halfmile-long nature trail that
to Saugus? A: Yes. Direct connections. Q: When somebody visits the Saugus Iron Works, what can they expect to see? A: Well, there are couple of things. First of all, when you first come in from the parking lot, you see a house that was built in the 1680’s. And it was a special house. It was built by very wealthy people, so it’s very large and it’s very ornate. Then we have a museum that has artifacts from the archeology and it explains the history of the archeology of the site and the technology of the site. And then there are the reconstructed buildings. And then we have a big chunk of the Saugus River, too. We have a lot of interesting wildlife – a lot of plants and a lot of wildlife that come here. These tidal estuaries have quite a few different kinds of fish and birds and animals. There’s a mixture of things.
winds through woodland and tall-grass overlooking the Saugus River. Enjoy a takeout lunch from a downtown restaurant on picnic tables that are available in a tree-shaded area. The Visitors Center includes brochures on park information, a museum store for books and gifts, and a virtual tour. Stop by the herb garden, the forge, the slitting mill and blacksmith shop -getting a feel for the way life during the time that the iron works was in operation. Highlights: The Iron Works House is the only structure at the site that survives from the 1600s. For More Information: https://www.nps.gov/sair/
Q: Any famous people ever visit here? Presidents from this country or other countries? A: Not that I’m aware of. But this is only my third season. The person who was involved in this becoming a National Park in 1968 was Ted Kennedy, so I assume that Ted Kennedy was here at some point in time. Q: So he [Kennedy] was key in getting this to become a National Park. A: Yes. It had started as a private museum in 1944 and it was turned over to the National Park Service in 1968. As a matter of fact, it’s easy to remember the date it became a National Park because it was around the same day that Martin Luther King was assassinated – two weird coincidences. But Ted Kennedy was the sponsor for the legislation that set this up as a National Park.
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