What Happened to The Rumney Marsh Embankment?

Rumney Marsh is a coastal saltwater marsh and wetland located approximately 7 miles northeast of downtown Boston, Mass., in the town of Saugus and the city of Revere. In anticipation of a northward extension of I-95, approximately 120 acres of Rumney Marsh were filled between 1967 and 1969 with 6 million cu yd of sand and gravel. The fill created a 2.5-mile-long embankment for the highway project that was never completed because the original alignment was abandoned in 1972. While the embankment was left in place, it wasn’t forgotten, thanks to a small contingent of investigative geotechnical engineers who saw the opportunity to use it as a rare, living laboratory for an incredible variety of geotechnical research projects. This article tells the story behind the embankment’s history, the monitoring and conduct of its load testing, the performance predictions by geotechnical experts of the day, and the outcomes of their work.