Harbor Islands are settled by Native Americans.

(ca. 12,000-9,000 BCE) The 34 islands and peninsulas (18 in what is today Boston) consist of “drowned drumlins” left by receding glaciers. They are occupied by the first European settlers of the area in the 17th century, used variously as the site of forts, quarantine hospitals, hotels, prisons, and dumping grounds in the 18th and 19th century, and become a state park in 1975* and a national park in 1996.*