Summer Hill, a three hundred fifty-one-foot rise in Maynard overlooking the Assabet River, has long been a prominent local landmark. Known historically as Pompasitticut, a Native American name meaning “land of many hills,” it was associated with the surrounding region and with events during King Philip’s War, including a reported gathering there in 1676 before the attack on Sudbury. Later it served as common land and pasture within Stow, then as farmland owned by the Gibson and Maynard families. By the late nineteenth century it was valued for orchards, pasture, civic uses, and wide views, and conservation purchases in 1979 helped preserve it as a major open space.