1767 Milestones

The 1767 Milestones are historic milestones located along the route of the Upper Boston Post Road between the cities of Boston and Springfield in Massachusetts. The 40 surviving milestones were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.^[1]

The first stone was erected by Paul Dudley, one of the prominent citizens of early 18th century Massachusetts, in Roxbury, which was at the time a separate community. Roxbury was located at the end of the Boston Neck, a narrow isthmus separating the mainland from the Shawmut Peninsula, where Boston was located. Travelers going by land from Boston to other areas had to travel over the neck and through Roxbury to reach their destinations. The Roxbury junction where Dudley placed the first stone was where several routes branched, heading south and west across New England.

Dudley erected several stones along the road from Boston to Cambridge which wound its way from Beacon Hill along what is now Washington Street through the Dudley Square area to what is now Huntington Avenue, then along Harvard Street through Brookline Village, Coolidge Corner, and Allston crossing into Cambridge at the Great Bridge, where modern JFK Street in Cambridge becomes North Harvard Street in Allston. The stones that Mr. Dudley erected have the initial PD on them, usually at the bottom of the stone.^[2] The most chatty of these milestones (not part of this collection), is inscribed P Dudley rather than PD, and is located on the corner of Centre and South Streets in Jamaica Plain.

References

See also

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Boston, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Brookline, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Middlesex County, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Worcester County, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Hampden County, Massachusetts