Washington Monument State Park preserves a mountaintop stone tower near Boonsboro that became the first completed monument dedicated to George Washington. Local citizens began building it on July 4, 1827, and finished it later that year, years before the more famous Washington memorials. Though later damaged by weather and vandalism, the tower served as a Union signal station during the Civil War and figured in Owen Brown’s flight across South Mountain after Harpers Ferry in 1859. Restored unsuccessfully in 1882 and rebuilt in its present form by the Civilian Conservation Corps after the state acquired the site, it now anchors a historic park on the Appalachian Trail.

Boonsboro, Maryland · USA