Boston Park Commission is established.

Authorized by the legislature only after attempts to create a Metropolitan Park Commission failed, it is approved by voters on June 9, 1875. The three-member board is charged with establishing a park system and solving the drainage and sewage problem in the Back Bay. All three members named by Mayor Nathan Cobb – Charles H. Dalton, William Gray Jr., and T. Jefferson Coolidge – are prominent Yankee businessmen. The commission releases a report that serves as the basis for today’s parks system in 1876.*