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Historic leaves
Vol.
II.January, 1904.no. 4.
The Prospect Hill Park Celebration.
The Dedication of the
Prospect Hill Park, October 29, 1903, called attention to one of the most significant historic locations in our local limits, and one of the most significant historic events in our national history.
The raising of the flag on
Prospect Hill, January 1, 1775, was an event that looms larger and larger as time goes on. It was a small, but sturdy people shaking the fist of defiance at an old and powerful empire.
Subsequent events disclosed that this was no idle threat.
A young nation really announced itself at this time.
Prospect Hill has not attained the renown which its significance deserves.
It should be a spot of historic pilgrimage second only to
Bunker Hill and
Lexington.
But it has received very meagre attention at the hands of the general historian, and, until lately, has been held in but slight local estimation.
This condition of affairs will now continue no longer.
We now see the events which happened on this height in their true perspective, and their significance is felt and appreciated.
The
Somerville Historical Society will, undoubtedly, from time to time, unearth new facts and forgotten events in connection with this place.
It furnishes a theme worthy of much investigation, and new historic data of significance may be expected.
But even if no further historic facts are brought to light,
Prospect Hill cannot, in the future, lapse into the comparative obscurity of the past.
It must remain one of the beacon heights in American history.
Prospect Hill Park, as it is at present arranged, is one of the most beautiful parks in the state for outlook and for general beauty of arrangement.
But at first it was a very unpromising location, unsightly in the extreme, and by no means an ornamental
