East Point, Nahant Through Time Format: other

The history of East Point commences in the 1700s and continued through construction of an elegant summer hotel for Bostonians, later becoming the property of a Massachusetts Senator. The strategic site was used during the Spanish American War as a signal and mine system and later for experimentation of Hammond's radio-controlled ships, aircraft and defensive torpedo batteries, followed by electronic companies that used the site for the development of powerful searchlights. During World War I, U.S. Navy and Allied scientists, along with civilian scientists, came to the site to develop and test the highly secret submarine detector, mobile searchlights, and more advanced radio-controlled apparatus. During World War II, the site maintained the massive coastal defense gun batteries while the United States Navy operated a magnetic loop and sono-radio buoy station at East Point. The coastal defense site was dismantled postwar, and in 1952, it became an antiaircraft gun site followed by a Nike Ajax missile battery. The missile site was phased out in 1961 and the land was later purchased and presently operated by Northeastern University.

Captain Gerald W. Butler, of the Massachusetts State Guard, is the former curator of Fort Warren and Fort Independence, Boston Harbor, and Fort Rodman, New Bedford, Massachusetts. He has published six books and numerous periodicals on seacoast fortifications and served as a military consultant to military museums and state parks. He was the former historian for United States Navy mine warfare units in New England, and his illustrations of seacoast weaponry and fortifications are published worldwide. He served in the elite United States Regular Army's Intelligence Security Agency's Special Operations Unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Shemya Island, Alaska.