The Monoliths is a 116-acre protected landscape in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, known for dramatic glacial erratic boulders and terrain that vividly shows how glaciers shaped coastal New England. As ice moved over a resistant hill, it smoothed the north side and left the south side steep and broken, creating a compact display of glaciation. Its best-known features include Big Rock, a thirty-foot-tall erratic in a shrub swamp, and Little Rock, a balanced granite monolith along a one-mile loop trail. Long associated with Louis Agassiz’s glacier theory, the site was protected beginning in 1957 and renamed in 2022.

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Essex, Massachusetts · USA