While there are oak trees on Oak Hill Road, that is not where the name of the road came from. The road was really named after Jonathan Oaks, an early Harvard resident and farmer in the mid-1700s. Vital records reproduced in Nourse’s History of Harvard tell us that Oaks was a member of the church congregation in the 1750s, and documents the deaths of a young wife and two children, as well as a second marriage. John Oaks—who may have been Jonathan’s son—began a three-year service in the Continental Army when he was 19 years old. By 1831, however, town records leave no indication of an Oaks family homestead anywhere in Harvard.
This road by the Pin Hill Quarry is aptly named for its location under Pin Hill itself. Named for its long, narrow shape, the hill has sometimes been referred to as “Pine Hill,” presumably because some mapmakers thought “Pin” was a misspelling. For many years, blue slate quarried from Pin Hill provided Harvard and other neighboring towns with headstones and other slate products.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, many New England towns had an Elm Street on their map, and Harvard was no exception. In fact, there are two Elms in Harvard: Elm Street, which runs along the western side of the common, and Elm Road, along the Devens parade grounds. Numerous elm trees were planted to line town streets, where their tall trunks and sweeping branches created graceful canopies in summer. The devastating Dutch Elm fungal blight that began in the 1930s wiped out almost all of the elms by the 1950s, however.
Willow Road turns off Still River Road just before Still River Road crosses the Bowers Brook wetlands. Town records mention early—and continuous—attempts to maintain a passable causeway through these wetlands. As the causeway built up, willow trees thrived in the damp soil along its sides, and this stretch of Still River Road became known as “The Willows.” There are still a few small willow trees in the area, although most most were blown down in the great hurricane of 1938. Pines, hemlocks, and occasional hardwoods now greatly outnumber the willows.
According to the late Harvard historian Elvira Scorgie, Massachusetts Avenue was created as a roadway linking Roxbury to Harvard via Boston, Cambridge, Arlington, Lexington, Concord, and Acton. The first leg of the roadway was created in 1894 when Dorchester was linked to Arlington via the newly named Massachusetts Avenue. Historians speculate that the original intent of Massachusetts Avenue was to extend across the state, a task the creation of Route 2 took on in the 1950s.