Bunker Hill Monument
An obelisk on the site of the first major battle of the War of Independence, June 17, 1775
The story
Before you is the Bunker Hill Monument, a granite obelisk 221 feet tall. On the seventeenth of June 1775, on these hills across the Charles River, New England militia faced the British army in a pitched battle for the first time. The battle is called Bunker Hill, but the obelisk stands on neighboring Breed’s Hill, where the militia built an earthen fort, a redoubt, before the fighting. The British took the field, but at a terrible cost: of some two thousand four hundred soldiers and marines, about a thousand were killed or wounded. Doctor Joseph Warren, one of the patriot leaders, was killed too, and he became a martyr of the Revolution. Exactly fifty years later, in 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette laid the monument’s cornerstone. Construction stopped for long stretches: twice the money ran out. Women helped finish it. The magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale organized a week-long Ladies’ Fair in Quincy Market in 1840, which raised about a quarter of the total cost. The obelisk was built of three thousand granite blocks, and the three-ton capstone was lifted by a steam engine. The monument was dedicated on the seventeenth of June 1843. President John Tyler and more than a hundred thousand people attended. Inside, 294 steps lead to the very top.
Visiting
Monument Square, Charlestown. Free entry. The only way up is on foot: 294 steps on a narrow spiral stair, with no more than 25 people inside at a time. Enter the climb through the Bunker Hill Lodge at the base. The climb closes in bad weather. The Bunker Hill Museum is at 43 Monument Square.
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Sources
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