Washington Monument State Park, Maryland
Near Harpers Ferry, Maryland
On the morning of July fourth, eighteen twenty-seven, residents of Boonsboro, Maryland, gathered in their town square, then climbed South Mountain with stones to build a monument to George Washington. They raised it to about fifteen feet that single day and brought it to about thirty feet later that year. It is a simple milk-bottle shape of rough fieldstone, but it beat the famous marble obelisk in Washington, D.
C., by more than two decades, making it the first completed monument dedicated to the memory of America's first president. A white marble slab inside reads: Erected in memory of Washington, July fourth, eighteen twenty-seven, by the citizens of Boonsboro.
The tower and surrounding ridge are now Washington Monument State Park, sitting directly on the Appalachian Trail.
