Things to Do in Hull, MA: Fort Revere, Nantasket Beach, and the Paragon Carousel

Fort Revere Park: Telegraph Hill's Revolutionary-to-WWII Coastal Defenses

Telegraph Hill in Hull Village was first fortified by Patriot forces in 1776 to help defend Boston Harbor, under the name Fort Independence — a separate, unrelated fortification from the better-known Fort Independence on Castle Island in Boston itself, and the two should never be conflated. By January 1777, a ditched pentagonal fort with 15 embrasures stood on the hill. In August 1778, French Marines arrived under Chief Engineer du Portail and substantially expanded the works, adding a 30-gun water battery, barracks, a hospital, and an associated cemetery — a real, if lesser-known, French-alliance connection to the Revolutionary War. The fort was deactivated in 1782.

The hill did not stay dormant. By the 1840s it had become a semaphore and, eventually, electric-telegraph signaling station, warning Boston of approaching merchant vessels — a functional continuity for the site even while its fortifications sat unused. The U.S. government purchased the site from the town in 1898, and the modern Fort Revere was built 1898-1906 as part of the nationwide Endicott program of coastal-defense fortifications. Its named batteries included Battery Ripley, a pair of 12-inch guns; Battery Sanders and Pope, mounting 6-inch disappearing guns; and Battery Field, with 5-inch guns. The fort was reactivated for World War II with a newly built Anti-Motor Torpedo Boat Battery of four 90mm guns, completed in 1943, before being disarmed for good in 1947 and transferred to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Today Fort Revere Park is an 8-acre site operated by DCR, preserving a historic water tower with a public observation deck, some of the original gun batteries, and the former officers' quarters, now a small museum. A monument dedicated on July 14, 1976 — Bastille Day, a deliberate nod to the fort's French-alliance history — commemorates the French forces who served and died there. Confirm current hours, any museum-access schedule, and observation-deck availability directly with DCR before planning a visit.

Fort Duvall on Spinnaker Island: A Separate Fort, and Boston Harbor's Biggest Guns

Fort Duvall is a distinct fortification from Fort Revere, built on a different piece of Hull geography and armed with an entirely different, far larger class of weapon — the two should not be treated as the same site or the same story. The U.S. government acquired the site, then known as Hog Island, in 1917; the fort itself was built in the early 1920s and named in 1922 for Major General William Penn Duvall.

Fort Duvall's Battery Long held a pair of 16-inch guns, the 16-inch gun M1919 model, of which only seven were ever produced nationally — making these the largest-caliber weapons anywhere in the Boston Harbor defense system, well beyond the 12-inch, 6-inch, and 5-inch guns mounted at Fort Revere. The guns were casemated in 1942 for protection against air attack and were scrapped in 1948. The site went on to host 90mm anti-aircraft guns from 1952 to 1955 and then served as a Nike missile control center from 1956 to 1974, before eventually being sold for private residential redevelopment. Spinnaker Island today is a gated residential community, and one of the fort's old gun casemates now functions as a parking garage — a striking, if quiet, afterlife for what was once the most heavily armed point in the harbor's defenses.

Nantasket Beach: A Historic Resort Shoreline, Now a State Park

Nantasket Beach is a long, gently sloped stretch of fine, light-gray sand on the ocean side of Hull's peninsula. European farming activity in the area dates back to roughly 1624, not long after Plymouth Colony's founding, but Nantasket's identity as a resort destination took shape starting in 1825, when Paul Warrick opened "The Sportsman Hotel" on Nantasket Avenue. By the 1840s, steamboats were running regular daily service between Nantasket and Boston, cementing the beach's role as an easy day-trip escape for city residents decades before the automobile.

The beach also does real ecological work: it provides habitat for federally protected piping plovers and least terns, both of which nest along this stretch of shoreline. Today Nantasket Beach is administered by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation as the Nantasket Beach Reservation, a state park open to the public. Check DCR's own site for current-season parking, lifeguard coverage, and any posted shorebird-nesting closures before a visit.

The Paragon Carousel: The Last Piece of Paragon Park

The Paragon Carousel is Hull's most tangible living link to Paragon Park, the amusement park that operated alongside Nantasket Beach from 1905 to 1984. Built in 1928 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, it's one of Massachusetts's only surviving four-wide carousels, carrying 66 wooden horses — 42 of them mobile, or "jumping" — plus two Roman-style chariots, all housed inside a distinctive twelve-sided building built specifically to match the carousel's scalloped roofline.

When Paragon Park closed in 1984, the carousel's components were put up for auction along with the rest of the park's rides. A local preservation committee purchased most of the pieces to keep them from being dispersed or lost, and the restored carousel reopened at its current location, 1 Wharf Avenue, in 1986. It's run today by the Friends of the Paragon Carousel, with music supplied by a Wurlitzer #146-B Band Organ, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 as the sole surviving physical element of the original Paragon Park. (The park's other signature ride, The Giant Coaster, was itself relocated in 1985 and reopened as "The Wild One" at Six Flags America in Maryland — it never came back to Hull.) Confirm current operating days and hours directly with the Friends of the Paragon Carousel before visiting, since it typically runs a seasonal schedule.

Hull Lifesaving Museum: Honoring Joshua James at the Old Point Allerton Station

The Hull Lifesaving Museum occupies the former Point Allerton Life-Saving Station, and it exists specifically to preserve the story of Joshua James, one of the most decorated figures in the history of American lifesaving. James was born in Hull in 1826, and at age 10 he witnessed his own mother and infant sister die in the wreck of the schooner Hepzibah in Hull Gut — the same dangerous channel that separates Hull from Peddocks Island. He began actual rescue work at age 15 in 1841, and went on to a rescue career credited, across the Massachusetts Humane Society and the U.S. Life-Saving Service combined, with saving more than 500 lives.

At age 62, James received special Congressional authorization to become keeper of the newly established Point Allerton station, bypassing the U.S. Life-Saving Service's normal mandatory retirement age. Over his 13 years there, he and his crew are credited with saving 540 lives. The museum housed in that former station building today tells this history in detail, and the town commemorates "Joshua James Day" each May 23 at his grave in Hull Village Cemetery. Verify current museum hours and exhibit schedules directly before a visit.

Hull Yacht Club and Hull Gut: Boating and Water Recreation

Hull Yacht Club was founded on June 26, 1880, when 13 Hull summer residents who owned small sailboats met to form the club, with W.B. Lambert serving as its first commodore. The club was formally incorporated in 1882, with membership already at 128 that year and surging to 405 by 1883. Hull Yacht Club operated on a deliberately "Corinthian" — amateur, owner-skippered — philosophy, connecting it to the broader history of American amateur sailboat racing, and it remains an active sailing club today.

Hull Gut, the narrow, naturally dredged channel running between Pemberton Point and Peddocks Island, is a working piece of the harbor as much as a scenic one: it's roughly half a mile wide and about 35 feet deep, carrying strong cross-currents and heavy commercial shipping traffic bound for Boston Harbor's Inner Harbor. It has its own small human-interest history — in 1909, 14-year-old Rosie Pitenhof of Dorchester became the first known person to swim across the Gut and back — alongside the far graver history tied to Joshua James's own family, above. Boaters and paddlers should treat the Gut's currents and traffic with real respect rather than as simply a scenic passage.

Planning a Visit

Hull rewards a visitor willing to treat it as more than a single beach day: two genuinely distinct forts telling two different chapters of Boston Harbor's defense history, a working state-park beach with two centuries of resort history behind it, a rare surviving antique carousel with its own dramatic rescue-from-auction story, and a maritime-heroism legacy strong enough to anchor its own museum. None of these sites are far apart on this narrow peninsula, making a single day trip realistic. Confirm current hours, access, and any seasonal closures directly with DCR, the Friends of the Paragon Carousel, and the Hull Lifesaving Museum before building a day around them, since schedules can shift from season to season.