Plymouth Rock became a symbol of the potential the Pilgrims saw in America when they arrived at Plymouth in December 1620, yet its own history combines change and permanence. Tradition holds that the Pilgrims stepped upon this rock, but neither William Bradford nor Edward Winslow mentioned a rock in their accounts, and it may instead have served as a landmark or as a base for a makeshift pier where the shallop from the Mayflower was moored. The rock was not identified as the Pilgrims’ landing place until 1741, when Thomas Faunce, a 95-year-old elder in the First Church who had known some of the original Pilgrims, said it was where the first arrivals made landfall as plans threatened to bury it for wharf construction. In 1774 the top half was removed at the start of the Revolution and taken by townspeople with 30 teams of oxen to Town Square as a monument to liberty, then moved again to Pilgrim Hall on Court Street on the Fourth of July, 1834. The neglected bottom half was trimmed in 1867 to fit a new Gothic style granite canopy, and in 1880 the top half was brought down from Pilgrim Hall and reunited with its base. For the 300th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival, the shoreline was reconfigured into a park setting and a new Neo-Classical Revival portico was built over the rock in 1921 by McKim, Mead and White with the Guastavino Company. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, the rock is far smaller than when the Pilgrims first saw it, but despite alteration and movement it remains a powerful icon for the Pilgrims’ landing and endurance.

Photo: Don Morfe

Photo: Don Morfe

Photo: Don Morfe

Photo: Don Morfe

Plymouth, Massachusetts · USA