08/21/2026
NEIGHBORHOOD SPOTLIGHT! Haywardville
Where Local History Still Lives
Along the edge of the Middlesex Fells, where Stoneham meets Melrose, Malden and Medford, lies an area with a remarkable past.
Haywardville was once a thriving mill village built along Spot Pond Brook. Long before today's quiet residential streets surrounded the Fells, the flowing water here powered mills producing everything from s***f and spices to chocolate and textiles. Eventually, the area became part of Greater Boston's rapidly growing rubber industry.
Around 1840, Elisha Converse established a rubber operation at the site. In 1858, the mills were acquired by inventor and industrialist Nathaniel Hayward, and the operation became known as the Haywardville Rubber Works, or locally, the "Red Mills."
Hayward was no ordinary factory owner.
Years earlier, he had worked with inventor Charles Goodyear and made important discoveries involving the use of sulfur in treating natural rubber. That work contributed to the development of vulcanization, the process that transformed rubber from an unreliable natural material into something durable enough for widespread commercial use.
By 1860, Haywardville was producing tens of thousands of rubber boots and shoes along with rubber pails, buckets and other products. Houses and tenements were constructed for workers, creating an industrial village surrounding the mills.
From Haywardville to Converse
There's another fascinating connection to the area's footwear history.
Elisha Converse went on to lead the Boston Rubber Shoe Company in Malden, which became one of America's largest rubber-footwear manufacturers and eventually expanded into neighboring Melrose.
Decades later, Converse relative Marquis Mills Converse founded a different company in Malden in 1908: the Converse Rubber Shoe Company.
That company eventually entered the rapidly emerging athletic-shoe business and created the basketball shoe that became the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star.
So while Chuck Taylors weren't being manufactured at the Haywardville mills, there is a genuine historical thread connecting Haywardville, the Converse family, Greater Boston's rubber industry and the development of one of America's most iconic sneakers.
Industry Gives Way to Nature
Haywardville's industrial period wouldn't last forever.
The mills declined during the latter half of the 19th century, and the landscape underwent an extraordinary transformation. In the 1890s, the Commonwealth began acquiring land in the area as part of the creation of the Middlesex Fells Reservation, one of the pioneering efforts to preserve open space around metropolitan Boston.
The former Haywardville site is now within Virginia Wood, where remnants of the old mill village can still be explored along a self-guided historic trail following Spot Pond Brook. DCR specifically identifies Virginia Wood as the location of the vanished Haywardville industrial village.
Haywardville Today
More than 150 years later, the character of the area has changed dramatically.
The factories are gone. In their place is a quiet residential area surrounded by one of Greater Boston's greatest natural resources.
The Middlesex Fells contains approximately 2,575 acres and more than 100 miles of trails, offering hiking, biking, running, paddling and other recreation remarkably close to Boston. Spot Pond remains one of the defining features of the landscape.
Haywardville also occupies an interesting geographic position. The historic village was located in Stoneham near the borders of Melrose, Malden and Medford, while the Middlesex Fells itself now extends through Stoneham, Medford, Melrose, Malden and Wi******er.
That gives today's surrounding neighborhoods an unusual combination: quiet residential streets, immediate access to thousands of acres of protected open space, and convenient proximity to Boston and the communities just north of the city.
And beneath all of it is a history most people driving past the Fells would never suspect.
Rubber mills. Industrial innovation. Nathaniel Hayward. Charles Goodyear. The Converse family. And eventually, one of the world's most recognizable sneakers.
Haywardville may no longer be a mill village, but its history is still very much part of the neighborhood.
