We cannot say when it was last used for safe storage of powder, but remember that our first sight of it (except from the railway cars) was in summer of 1861 as we walked up from Central street to ‘Camp Cameron,’ near Cambridge line, where is now Holland street in West Somerville. The large three-story house of Tufts stood on the opposite corner and bore a sign ‘Somerville House,’ indicating its use as a tavern. A small dwelling and barn were near the powder house, from whose roof the stars and stripes were flying. The old stone quarry was plainly visible. The land southward was entirely vacant and open as far as the Boston & Lowell railway track where was a little flag station called Willow Bridge. The triangular space between the railroad, Menotomy road and present Warner street was partly in Medford and was fenced into cattle pens and had one small structure on which was painted Medford Cattle Market. One day each week was there for years a busy one. Aaron Sargent in Historic Leaves tells of Broadway (the Menotomy road) in 1842, when Somerville came into being, naming the then existing houses, and only named two between Medford street and Menotomy river,—the Tufts house and that of Russell, far away on the western slope of Walnut hill.
So the old mill and powder house stood in lonesomeness when the ‘Somerville House’ was destroyed by fire, leaving its massive chimneys as gaunt reminders. Across the railroad track in Medford was erected the Willow bridge house, which accommodated the drovers
