Boston Harbor Islands

The Boston Harbor Islands are a 34-island national park scattered across Boston Harbor, and the fact that most visitors to Boston have never heard of them is one of the city's great missed opportunities. Spectacle Island — the most accessible, a 20-minute ferry ride from Long Wharf — has swimming beaches, hiking trails, and a skyline view that makes every photograph you've ever seen of Boston look incomplete.

The islands have a complicated history. Some were used as military fortifications — Fort Warren on Georges Island held Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. Others served as quarantine stations, garbage dumps, and sewage treatment plants. Spectacle Island itself was a landfill until the 1990s, when it was capped with clean soil from the Big Dig and transformed into the park it is today. The metamorphosis from dump to beach is one of Boston's great environmental success stories.

The ferry system runs from Long Wharf (near the Aquarium) and connects several islands, making it possible to island-hop in a single day. Georges Island has the massive Civil War-era Fort Warren, with dark granite tunnels and emplacements that feel more like a European castle than a New England fort. Peddocks Island has the remains of a military chapel and abandoned barracks slowly being reclaimed by vegetation. The camping on some islands — falling asleep with the Boston skyline twinkling across the water — is one of the most unique overnight experiences available in any American city.