Lawrence, Massachusetts

Everything Lawrence is known for

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History of Lawrence

America's Stonehenge RoadyGoat

1907

At 103 Haverhill Road in Salem, New Hampshire, a tangle of stone walls, chambers, and a slab dubbed the 'Sacrificial Table' sprawls across about thirty acres of pine-covered hill. Boosters call it America's Stonehenge and claim a pre-Columbian European origin, but that is widely regarded as pseudoarchaeology. The site appears in print as early as the 1907 'History of Salem' as 'Jonathan Pattee's Cave,' a 19th-century farmstead. Radiocarbon charcoal shows people were on the land roughly 4,000 years ago, but archaeologists (including David Starbuck) attribute most of the visible structures to colonial-era farm use plus reconstruction by owner William Goodwin, who bought the place in 1937. The 'mystery' is real mostly because the rebuilding muddied the record. Named America's Stonehenge by the Stone family, who bought it in 1956.

9.7 mi away

The Witch City That Outgrew Its Ghosts RoadyGoat

Salem carries the heaviest name in early American history: the 1692 witch trials. Here's the honest version, because the legend gets it wrong: about twenty people were executed, but none were burned at the stake. Nineteen were hanged, and one stubborn man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death under stones for refusing to enter a plea. The town that prosecuted those trials later produced the writer who wrestled with that guilt: Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem in 1804, author of 'The Scarlet Letter' and 'The House of the Seven Gables' (the latter inspired by a real gabled mansion still standing here). Salem leaned into its dark fame and became one of America's great Halloween destinations, packing its streets every October. And quietly anchoring it all is the Peabody Essex Museum, rooted in a sea captains' society from 1799, often called the oldest continuously operating museum in the country.

18.7 mi away

Lowell National Historical Park

1823

Lowell's textile mills, powered by canal systems on the Merrimack River, launched the American Industrial Revolution in the 1820s.

8.7 mi away

Robert Frost Farm

1900

Robert Frost lived and farmed here from 1900 to 1911, writing many of his most famous poems including 'Mending Wall' and 'After Apple-Picking.'

13.4 mi away

Alan Shepard Birthplace - East Derry

1923

Alan Shepard was born in East Derry in 1923 and became the first American in space on May 5, 1961, aboard Freedom 7.

13.6 mi away

Lexington Battle Green

1775

Site where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired on April 19, 1775, when British regulars confronted colonial militia.

18.1 mi away

Old North Bridge - Concord

1775

Site where colonial militia fired on British regulars on April 19, 1775, in what Emerson called 'the shot heard round the world.'

19.1 mi away

Salem Witch Trials Memorial

1692

Between 1692 and 1693, more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft in Salem; twenty were executed and five died in jail.

19.1 mi away

Things to Do in Lawrence

Everything Near Lawrence

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