05/17/2008, 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Bike Tour
There is simply no better way to experience Boston's Emerald Necklace than on a bike. Among the greatest and most enduring of Frederic Law Olmsted's works, the Emerald Necklace continues to provide respite, renewal, and recreation to Boston's residents and visitors alike. We begin our journey on Boston Common, at the Boston Common Visitor Information Center, next to Park Street Station. Our bike posse will travel along the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, the Back Bay Fens, and the Riverway. Our further destination will be the glorious Franklin Park, the largest park in the Emerald Necklace System, home to Franklin Park Zoo, the Elma Lewis Playhouse, and the seond oldest public golf course in the United States. Nearby we pick up the Southwest Corridor Bike Path, returning through Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and the South End. No other tour gets you from the heart of the city through so many neighbhorhoods, with stunning urban landscapes both wild and cultivated all along the way. We will learn about the history of Boston's development over 100 years-from the creation of the Emerald Necklace in the 1870s through the activism of the 1970s that transformed plans for an interstate highway in to the Southwest Corridor Park. Our tour guides are Jeffrey Ferris, owner of Ferris Wheels Bike Shop in Jamaica Plain and member of the Emerald Necklace Greenway Project, and Anne McKinnon, bike enthusiast and transportation planner for Howard/Stein-Hudson Associates. Bike and helmet rental fees are included.
TG07 Saturday, 8 a.m.-noon, $75

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