History
The Trustees of Reservations began in 1890 when the New England periodical Garden and Forest published a letter by landscape architect Charles Eliot (protégé of Frederick Law Olmsted) entitled "The Waverly Oaks." Eliot's letter proposed the immediate preservation of "special bits of scenery" still remaining "within ten miles (16 km) of the State House which possess uncommon beauty and more than usual refreshing power." To this end, Eliot proposed that legislation be enacted to create a nonprofit corporation to hold land for the public to enjoy "just as a Public Library holds books and an Art Museum holds pictures."
In the spring of 1891, the Massachusetts Legislature established The Trustees of Public Reservations "for the purposes of acquiring, holding, maintaining and opening to the public beautiful and historic places within the Commonwealth." The act was signed into law by Governor William E. Russell on May 21, 1891. The word "Public" was dropped from the organization's name in 1954 to avoid confusion with government-owned land.
Virginia Wood in Stoneham was the first property acquired by The Trustees. This property was conveyed to the Metropolitan District Commission in 1923 and is now a part of the Middlesex Fells Reservation. Waverly Oaks itself was also conveyed to the state by TTOR and is part of the Beaver Brook Reservation, established in 1893.
In 1925, The Trustees joined with the Appalachian Mountain Club, Massachusetts Audubon Society, and the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England) to organize a conference on "The Needs and Uses of Open Spaces." This conference led to a 1929 report emphasizing the need to protect the state's rural character and countryside and the importance of identifying and describing the qualities and characteristics of specific sites that should be preserved. Today, nearly every site listed in the report is protected by a government or nonprofit conservation agency.
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