Alamance County citizens began efforts in 1879 to mark the site of the Battle of Alamance, when on July 4 Rev. D. A. Long urged local residents to form an association to erect a monument. On May 29, 1880, after a three-mile procession from the Alamance County Courthouse in Graham, a crowd of 3,000 to 4,000 watched its unveiling. Its inscription called the Battle of Alamance the "first battle of the American Revolution," reflecting the community’s desire to place one of its most important events in a broader national historical context, even though many Regulators remained loyal to Great Britain during the Revolution. Built of granite from a county quarry, the monument stood at the corner of modern day NC. Highway and Clapp Mill road until it was moved to its current location around 1952. Alamance Battlefield officially opened as a state historic site on May 16, 1961, the 190th anniversary of the battle. Organizers also presented Reverend Long with a Regulator Bell, said to have been used by the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance and called "the first Liberty Bell in America"; it was later exhibited at the Tennessee Centennial in 1896 and the Jamestown Exposition in 1907, and is now at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.