Milton is full of history. From the Revolutionary days, when the cannonading at Bunker Hill shook the foundations of the houses, but not the nerves of the Milton ladies, down to the year 1919, when the Fourth Liberty Loan of $2,955,250 was subscribed from a population of 9000, all the various vicissitudes of peace and war have been sustained on the high level that one might expect from men and women nobly nurtured by the strength of the hills.
How much of its success Milton attributes to its location—for one joins, indeed, a distinguished fellowship when one builds upon a hill, or on several hills, as Roman as well as Bostonian history testifies—can only be guessed by its tribute in the form of the Blue Hills Reservation. This State recreation park and forest reserve of about four thousand acres—a labyrinth of idyllic footpaths and leafy trails, of twisting drives and walks that open out upon superb vistas, is now the property of the people of Massachusetts. The granite quarry man—far more interested in the value of the stone that underlay the wooded slopes than in Ruskin's theory of its purifying effect upon the inhabitants—had already obtained a footing here, when, under the able leadership of Charles Francis Adams, the whole region was taken over by the State in 1894.
As you pass through the Reservation—and if you are taking even the most cursory glimpse of Milton you must include some portion of this park—you will pass the open space where in the early days, when Milton country life was modeled upon English country life more closely than now, Malcolm Forbes raced upon his private track the horses he himself had bred. The race-track with its judges' stands is still there, but there are no more horse-races, although the Forbes family still holds a conspicuous place in all the social as well as the philanthropic enterprises of the countryside. You may see, too, a solitary figure with a scientist's stoop, or a tutor with a group of boys, making a first-hand study of a region which is full of interest to the geologist.
Circling thus around the base of the Great Blue Hill and irresistibly drawn closer and closer to it as by a magnet, one is impelled to make the ascent to the top—an easy ascent with its destination clearly marked by the Rotch Meteorological Observatory erected in 1884 by the late A. Lawrence Rotch of Milton, who bequeathed funds for its maintenance. It is now connected with Harvard University.
Once at the top the eye is overwhelmed by a circuit of more than a hundred and fifty miles! It is almost too immense at first—almost as barren as an empty expanse of rolling green sea. But as the eye grows accustomed to the stretching distances, objects both near and far begin to appear. And soon, if the day is clear, buildings may be identified in more than one hundred and twenty-five villages. We are six hundred and thirty-five feet above the sea, on the highest coastland from Agamenticus, near York, Maine, to the Rio Grande, and the panorama thus unrolled is truly magnificent. Facing northerly we can easily distinguish Cambridge, Somerville, and Malden, and far beyond the hills of Andover and Georgetown. A little to the east, Boston with its gilded dome; then the harbor with its islands, headlands, and fortifications. Beyond that are distinctly visible various points on the North Shore, as far as Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester. Forty miles to the northeast appear the twin lighthouses on Thatcher's Island, seeming, from here, to be standing, not on the land, but out in the ocean. Nearer and more distinct is Boston Light—a sentinel at the entrance to the harbor, while beyond it stretches Massachusetts Bay. Turning nearly east the eye, passing over Chickatawbut Hill—three miles off and second in height of the Blue Hills—follows the beautiful curve of Nantasket Beach, and the pointing finger of Minot's Light. Facing nearly south, the long ridge of Manomet Hill in Plymouth, thirty-three miles away, stands clear against the sky, while twenty-six miles away, in Duxbury, one sees the Myles Standish Monument. Directly south rises the smoke of the city of Fall River; to the westerly, Woonsocket, and continuing to the west, Mount Wachusett in Princeton. Far to the right of Wachusett, nearly over the dome of the Dedham Courthouse, rounds up Watatic in Ashburnham, and northwest a dozen peaks of southern New Hampshire. At the right of Watatic and far beyond it is the Grand Monadnock in Jaffrey, 3170 feet above the sea and sixty-seven and a half miles away. On the right of Grand Monadnock is a group of nearer summits: Mount Kidder, exactly northwest; Spofford and Temple Mountains; then appears the remarkable Pack-Monadnock, near Peterboro, with its two equal summits. The next group to the right is in Lyndeboro. At the right of Lyndeboro, and nearly over the Readville railroad stations, is Joe English Hill, and to complete the round, nearly north-northwest are the summits of the Uncanoonuc Mountains, fifty-nine miles away.
This, then, is the Great Blue Hill of Milton. Those who are familiar with the State of Massachusetts—and New England—can stand here and pick out a hundred distinguishing landmarks, and those who have never been here before may find an unparalleled opportunity to see the whole region at one sweep of the eye.
From the point of view of topography the summit of Great Blue Hill is the place to reach. But for the sense of mysterious beauty, for snatches of pictures one will never forget, the little vistas which open on the upward or the downward trail, framed by hanging boughs or encircled by a half frame of stone and hillside—these are, perhaps, more lovely. The hill itself, seen from a distance, floating lightly like a vast blue ball against a vaster sky, is dreamily suggestive in a way which the actual view, superb as it is, is not. One remembers Stevenson's observation, that sometimes to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. So let us come down, for, after all, "Love is of the valley." Down again to the old town of Milton. We have not half begun to wander over it: not half begun to hear the pleasant stories it has to tell. When one is as old as this—for Milton was discovered by a band from Plymouth who came up the Neponset River in 1621—one has many tales to tell.
Of all the towns along the South Shore there are few whose feet are so firmly emplanted in the economic history of the past and present as is Milton. That peculiar odor of sweetness which drifts to us with a turn of the wind, comes from a chocolate mill whose trade-mark of a neat-handed maid with her little tray is known all over the civilized world. And those mills stand upon the site of the first grist mill in New England to be run by water power. This was in 1634, and one likes to picture the sturdy colonists trailing into town, their packs upon their backs, like children in kindergarten games, to have their grain ground. Israel Stoughton was the name of the man who established this first mill—a name perpetuated in the near-by town of Stoughton.
All ground is historic ground in Milton. That rollicking group of schoolboys yonder belongs to an academy, which, handsome and flourishing as it is to-day, was founded as long ago as 1787. That seems long ago, but there was a school in Milton before that: a school held in the first meeting-house. Nothing is left of this quaint structure but a small bronze bas-relief, set against a stone wall, near its original site. This early church and early school was a log cabin with a thatched roof and latticed windows, if one may believe the relief, but men of brains and character were taught there lessons which stood them and the colony in good stead. One fancies the students' roving eyes may have occasionally strayed down the Indian trail directly opposite the old site—a trail which, although now attained to the proud rank of a lane, Churchill's Lane, still invites one down its tangled green way along the gray stone wall. Yes, every step of ground has its tradition here. Yonder railroad track marks the spot where the very first tie in the country was laid, and laid for no less significant purpose than to facilitate the carrying of granite blocks for Bunker Hill Monument from their quarry to the harbor.
Granite from the hills—the hills which swim forever against the sky and march forever above the distant horizon. Again we are drawn back to the irresistible magnet of those mighty monitors. Yes, wherever one goes in Milton, either on foot to-day or back through the chapters of three centuries ago, the Blue Hills dominate every event, and the Great Blue Hill floats above them all.