Saturday’s Flash Hike took us to Lanesborough, Constitution Hill, a BNRC property. We climbed the summit to the Oak tree and plaque then continued westward past an old stonewall then hiked the woods road whose surface was once hardened by chunks of slag glass, which are still visible. Slag glass is a byproduct of iron production that was used as fill on old roads. There is also a field trail here which we didn’t get to.

In 1788, a Lanesboro farmer named Jonathan Smith was chosen to represent his town at the convention in Boston that would decide whether Massachusetts should ratify the proposed new US Constitution. At the convention he made a persuasive argument in favor of it as a way to prevent outbreaks of violence like Shays’ Rebellion in Western Massachusetts. The bonfire he had organized atop “Bald Headed Hill” alerted residents of Lanesboro and surrounding towns that his view had prevailed and Massachusetts had ratified the Constitution.

The hill is no longer bald, and was renamed “Constitution Hill” by Smith. A plaque marks the bonfire site, near an oak that was planted in 1921 to replace an oak that was the solitary sentinel on the hill in Smith’s day. Historic photos credit Jim Moore.

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