Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park is a combination national recreation area and state park situated among the islands of Boston Harbor. The park is made up of 34 islands and peninsulas and is managed by the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. Twenty-one of the islands are also included in the Boston Harbor Islands Archeological District.

The park is significant for a wide range of natural and cultural resources, including three national historic landmarks, unique geological features, archaeological resources resulting from thousands of years of occupation of the islands by indigenous people of Massachusetts, and complex natural communities.

Attractions include hiking trails, beaches, the Civil War-era Fort Warren, and Boston Light, the oldest lighthouse station in the United States. Georges Island and Spectacle Island are served seasonally by ferries to and from Boston, and Peddocks Island is served by a ferry from Hingham.

The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area is made up of islands and peninsulas on and around Boston Harbor. These include:

Though they are located in Boston Harbor, neither Castle Island nor Spinnaker Island belong to Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. Other former islands (Apple Island, Governors Island and Noddle's Island) were obliterated by the formation of East Boston and the expansion of Logan International Airport before the creation of the national recreation area.

The islands have been places of significance to indigenous Native Americans for many thousands of years. Extensive archaeological evidence of indigenous activity in the area motivated the designation of 21 islands in an archaeological district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Indigenous tribes connected with the Boston Harbor Islands include the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the Nipmuc Nation, and the Narragansett Indian Tribe.

People began using various sites among the islands on a seasonal basis starting in the Middle Archaic period and intensified this occupation throughout the Late Archaic and Woodland periods. The islands’ rich variety of resources, including shellfish, migratory birds, nut-bearing trees, fish, seals, and mammals like deer and raccoon, made them ideal places for temporary settlements. Prehistoric people also practiced controlled burning, woodcutting, and plant collecting, using traditional subsistence methods that made minimal impacts on natural resources. Beyond subsistence, the islands have also served as sites for ceremony and burial grounds.

During King Philip's War, English colonists distrusted indigenous people, even those that had converted to Christianity and moved to “praying towns.” Colonists forcefully removed hundreds of Native American people, mostly women and children, from their homes in these towns (along with non-Christian Native Americans) and placed them in internment camps on Deer Island, Long Island, Peddocks Island, and Great Brewster Island. With inadequate shelter and food, about half of them died due to starvation or exposure while others were sold into enslavement in the West Indies. Women and children made up the majority of people interned on Deer Island. Today, descendants of the Tribal Nations involved in King Philip's War meet yearly on Deer Island to commemorate their ancestors’ suffering.