The Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory was founded by American meteorologist Abbott Lawrence Rotch (1861-1912) in 1884. By the time he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1884, Rotch had conceived and carried into execution his plans for the erection of a meteorological observatory on the summit of the Great Blue Hill, ten miles south of Boston, Massachusetts in the Blue Hills Reservation, a 6,000-acre (24 km²) public park managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.