2013: A LOOK BACK: Burial Hill, Town Brook highlight ‘historic’ year

Not surprisingly, Plymouth looked to its past for inspiration in 2013, spending considerable time and money on a variety of restoration projects that bode well for the towns future.

This was a watershed year for Burial Hill, as first the Community Preservation Committee approved a $500,000 grant for the restoration of 1,000 of the Hills original gravestones and, later in the year, after a concerted effort by town officials and the nonprofit Friends of Burial Hill, the site was finally placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Going forward, the town has hired a firm to develop a master plan that, if approved, would expend several million dollars to restore and/or improve the sites landscaping, pedestrian pathways, major structures and security in time for the towns 400th birthday in 2020.

For the past decade, the town has also been involved in the restoration of the original Town Brook and this year several major projects along that historic waterway made significant progress.

Several dams and the old Plymco mill buildings were removed, and contaminated soils taken out, bringing the town closer to its goal of an unfettered pathway for pedestrians and herring.

When this latest project is complete in 2017, the Billington Street Dam, the Off Billington Street Dam, the Plymco Dam and the Holmes Dam will have been either removed or completely reconfigured and the landscape between them radically modified.

Though there was little money spent on the 1820 Courthouse in 2013, at least compared to other historic projects, a great deal of time and effort was expended by town officials and others to develop a proposal to revitalize the downtown and preserve the most historic aspects of the Courthouse by transforming the hodgepodge of abandoned and worn buildings known as the Courthouse Corridor into a municipal center.

Before this year, most of the effort has been focused on trying to find a commercial buyer for the entire corridor. This year, though, an old idea attributed in part to the late Rev. Peter Gomes was dusted off and given a new coat of wax. A $75,000 feasibility study was commissioned and, when it was completed, the concept of moving Town Hall from Lincoln Street and refurbishing the buildings original courtroom to allow for special meetings and tourist events was presented to the town for its deliberation.

2013 also marked the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, and fittingly the town also found the funding necessary to restore the Civil War Monument on the Training Green on Sandwich Street.

And as the summer waned and word spread that the town was considering demolishing several historic fishermens shacks on land adjacent to Plymouth Beach, supporters of preserving these remnants of the towns not-too-distant past mobilized quickly and the shacks were saved.

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2013: A LOOK BACK: Burial Hill, Town Brook highlight ‘historic’ year