1938, Massachusetts disincorporated four Swift River towns for Quabbin Reservoir; 88 years later, Dana Common still preserves cellar holes above Boston’s water source

In 1939, rising waters began to cover a valley that had been home to generations of Massachusetts families. Four towns, Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott, had been cleared to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir, a vast new water source for Boston. Yet one small part of Dana escaped the water. Eighty-seven years later, Dana Common remains above the reservoir’s flow line, where cellar holes, stone walls and granite steps mark the outline of a community that disappeared from the map.

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