Assabet River
The Assabet River is a small river about 20 miles (30 km) west of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The river is 34.4 miles (55.4 km) long. OARS: the Organization for the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord Rivers, headquartered in West Concord, Massachusetts, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, protection, and enhancement of the natural and recreational features of these three rivers and their watershed. The Assabet and Sudbury Rivers merge in Concord to become the Concord River.
The river has had many variations of the same name over the centuries, without anyone knowing for sure what it means. Some traditional meanings are associated with the place. Assabet is said to come from the Algonquian word for "the place where materials for making fish nets comes from." Other traditional meanings are "at the miry place" or "it is miry." It is also possible to decode this name in the southern New England branch of Algonquian, spoken by the Nipmuc, Native Americans who once fished there. The name is segmented assa-pe-t from assa, "turn back", pe, a short form of nippe, "water", used in compounds, and a locative suffix, -t, a shorter form of -et after the vowel. The meaning would be "at the place where the river turns back." During floods the Assabet and Sudbury rivers reach peak height at different times, so that at the junction of the two rivers the flow can be temporarily reversed in one river or the other. A counter-argument is that the name was a corrupted spelling of Elizabeth. On various historic maps and documents the name has been spelled as Assabeth, Asabett, Assabet, Elizbeth, Elizabet and Elizabeth. Historic maps up to 1830 are mostly showing Elizabeth River, but by 1856, consistently Assabet River. In present-day Stow, the Elizabeth Brook flows into the Assabet River.
The Assabet rises at a swampy area in Westborough and flows northeast 34 miles (55 km), starting at an elevation of 320 feet (98 m) and descending through the towns of Northborough, Marlborough, Berlin, Hudson, Stow, Maynard, Acton, and finally Concord, where it merges (42°27′55″N 71°21′30″W / 42.4653°N 71.3584°W) with the Sudbury River at Egg Rock to form the Concord River, at an elevation of 100 ft (30 m).
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