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Dorchester Heights Monument

95 G St, Boston, MA 02127, USA

Massachusetts, USA

PARK

TICKETED:

NO

​PARKING:

NO

RESTROOMS:

NO

OVERLOOK

EST. 1776

FORTIFICATION

EST. 1776

BATTLEFIELD

March 4, 1776

General_George_Washington_at_Trenton_by_John_Trumbull_edited_edited.jpg

Knox, Henry

General_George_Washington_at_Trenton_by_John_Trumbull_edited_edited.jpg

Washington, George

HISTORIC PEOPLE WHO WERE HERE

2

HISTORIC PRESERVATION at Dorchester Heights Monument.

A 115-foot marble commemorative tower stands atop the preserved Dorchester Heights landscape in Thomas Park. Completed in 1902, the monument and surrounding grounds are administered by the National Park Service as part of Boston National Historical Park, with exterior access and interpretive signage.

About Dorchester Heights Monument

A syndicate of Dorsetshire fishermen organized an outport of fishing stages and flakes at Dorchester in 1623. Most of the early Dorchester settlers came from the English West Country, and some from Dorchester, Dorset, where the Rev. John White was chief proponent of a Puritan settlement in the Americas. The town was centered on the First Parish Church of Dorchester. It is now operated as the Unitarian-Universalist church on Meeting House Hill and is the oldest religious organization in present-day Boston. On October 8, 1633, the first Town Meeting in the United States was held in Dorchester.

HISTORY HAPPENED HERE at Dorchester Heights Monument

The Fortification of Dorchester Heights was a decisive action early in the American Revolutionary War that precipitated the end of the siege of Boston and the withdrawal of British troops from that city.


The idea of bringing the cannons from Ticonderoga to the siege was raised by Colonel Henry Knox. Knox was eventually given the assignment to transport weapons from Ticonderoga to Cambridge. Knox went to Ticonderoga in November 1775, and, over the course of three winter months, moved 60 tons of cannons and other armaments by boat, horse and ox-drawn sledges, and manpower, along poor-quality roads, across two semi-frozen rivers, and through the forests and swamps of the sparsely inhabited Berkshires to the Boston area.


On March 4, 1776, troops from the Continental Army under George Washington's command occupied Dorchester Heights, a series of low hills with a commanding view of Boston and its harbor, and mounted powerful cannons there threatening the city and the Navy ships in the harbor. General William Howe, commander of the British forces occupying Boston, planned an attack to dislodge them. However, after a snowstorm prevented its execution, Howe withdrew instead. British forces, accompanied by Loyalists who had fled to the city during the siege, evacuated the city on March 17 and sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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