Waterways, Watersheds, and Penguins: Part 3

In the nearby city of Newton there is a road that I have been noticing for years. I like to roll its name around in my mouth: Albemarle Road. It's not a major route, but it has some striking qualities (apart from its name). It wanders along, crossing more important streets at sometimes funny angles, and wherever it goes it sports a broad green median strip. You can see why it wanders: it's following a waterway: in the middle of the green strip is what looks like an elegant drainage ditch, its sides lined with stone. The elegance is spoiled somewhat by the fact that there's usually not much more than a slimy trickle of water in it. At least that's my impression. Maybe I'm being unfair. I should really get out of the car and take a closer look.

At the northern end of all of this the road comes to a dead end (or rather two dead ends, one on each side of the water) and the stream disappears into the woods, casts aside its artificial stone walls, and after about 100 yards debouches into the Charles. Moving in the other direction, upstream, you come to a residential block of Albemarle Road (two one-way roads joined by a footbridge) followed by a longer block in which one side is residential but the other is a big public park with a playground, athletic fields, and a swimming pool. Through the middle of all of this runs the stream in its stony ditch, with grassy banks sloping down to it from the roadway. At Watertown Street the grassy banks suddenly give way to a stretch of impenetrable-looking jungliness, a fenced-off block in which weeds and vines have been allowed free rein on both sides of the water; and then suddenly the jungle gives way to an attractive little neighborhood park with benches and paved walks and plantings. Here Albemarle Road ends and the brook, still with squared off stone-lined sides, can be seen running between back yards. To spot any more of it from a public place you have to zig-zag around the neighborhood looking for all the spots where the stream ducks under yet another road. After about five of those I lose the trail. It emerges from under a street, but across the street is no sign of it.

Of course I have looked at a map. The Newton page of my Street Atlas of Metro Boston and Eastern Massachusetts shows that there is quite a bit more to this waterway: its headwaters are shown as being about a mile to the southwest of where I lose it (quite close to another part of the Charles, in fact--there is a ridge of high ground by the river in that part of Newton, so that rain falling quite near the river will initially flow away from it, not finding its way in until much further downriver). This supposed upper portion of the brook is on the other side of the Turnpike from the lower part that I have described. But I've gone over there and looked, and I can't find it.

Oh, the map told me its name, too: Cheesecake Brook.

Now, I have lots of questions about all of this, such as: How did Cheesecake Brook and the area around it get chosen for this special treatment, with stone walls and parks and footbridges and all? Was that jungly bit once meant to be a public park, too? What is the history of Albemarle Road? Why can't I find the upper part of the brook? And why "Cheesecake"?

I have not been in a hurry to answer these questions. (The answers might not be as enjoyable as the questions, you know.) I do in fact have tentative answers to some of them, based on some internet searching. But before I go into that I might have to tell some stories about family life, the Mystic/Charles divide, and the mighty Mississippi.