ON A STREET WITH NO NAME
EXCLUSIVE FOR READERS OF OUR DIGITAL EDITIONS
I’m always on the lookout for birds, but I’m also watching for history: street signs that tell stories. Along with the humdrum street names in our state, the Mains, Middles, Gardens, are more evocative names that draw me into the past. The story is geological at High Popples Road, a short, winding Gloucester street that ends at Bass Rocks, where boulders have been tossed up by the sea and heaped along the shore. A “popple” is a heaving of water over stones: Storm surges here send waves crashing over abraded rocks, sometimes swamping Atlantic Road. Drumlin Road in Rockport was named for one of the rounded hills, formed by glacial deposits, that mark eastern Massachusetts from Hog Island in Ipswich to Bunker Hill. A Boxford street is called Bald Pate, a name for a bald hill above a prairie (in a location now neither bald nor prairie) and for the American Wigeon, a dabbling duck with a creamy cap. Other
