Metropolitan Parks Commission is established.

Gov. William E. Russell signs the bill passed by the Massachusetts legislature that creates a park system covering 38 Boston-area cities and towns. The first regional park system in the U.S. and the first effort at large-scale regional and open space planning in the U.S., its creation was championed Boston Herald writer Sylvanus Baxter and landscape architect Charles W. Eliot Jr. Without it, Baxter warns, the Boston area would become, “A vast desert of houses, factories and stores, spreading over and overwhelming the natural features of the landscape.” It is modeled after the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission, and the two merge in 1919.*