America’s Stonehenge

This latest adventure takes my daughter and myself to America’s Stonehenge in the town of Salem located in the Merrimack Valley Region of New Hampshire. We had some time in the middle of the week to do some exploring and this seemed like it might be an interesting and slightly mysterious outing!

America’s Stonehenge is easily accessed in Salem off Route 111 and Haverhill Rd. The site is centrally located between Boston, Ma and Portsmouth, NH. I hope you enjoy the post and video below as I look to add another adventure from New Hampshire’s Merrimack Valley Region.

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Unsolved Mysteries and Friendly Alpacas: My Day at America’s Stonehenge

You don’t need a passport or time machine to explore one of New Hampshire’s archaeological mysteries! Formerly known as “Mystery Hill”, this place is a head scratching mix of ancient history and astronomical wizardry!

What is America’s Stonehenge?

That is the millon-dollar question. The site is a sprawling maze of man-made stone chambers, massive walls, and strange rock formations. Scientists have dated the site to more than 4000 years ago. Dating human activity back that far is a great frame of reference for contemplating the possibilities of the site.

The fun part is that nobody can seem to agree on who actually built the incredible stone structures scattered throughout the site.

• Native Americans: many artifacts and the remains of a wigwam prove Indigenous peoples actively utilized and lived on this land for centuries
• Ancient European Travelers: Some researchers argue the stones resemble Western European megaliths, sparking theories that Irish monks, Phoenicians, or ancient Greeks crossed the Atlantic centuries before Columbus.
• The 1930’s Plot Twist: In 1937, a man named William Goodwin bought the land and was convinced it was an Irish monastery, He famously moved and restored many of the stones to fit his theory, leaving modern archaeologists with a giant puzzle of what is truly ancient and what was altered.

Walking Through a Giant Astronomical Clock

One of the coolest features of the park is the astronomical viewing platform. The ancient creators arranged these heavy stones to align perfectly with solar and lunar events.

If you stand in the center during the summer or winter solstices and equinoxes, the sun rises and sets directly over specific stone markers. One of the more amazing details is the revelation that if you draw a straight line through the Summer Solstice Sunrise Stone, it aligns with the Stonehenge in England!

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Highlights from the Trail

The hike up to the main site is a short but rocky climb through the trees. Here are a few things you absolutely shouldn’t miss:

• The Sacrificial Table: This massive, 4.5-ton stone slab features a deep groove carved around the edge. Was it used for some ancient sacrificial ceremony or simply used by colonial farmers to press cider or make soap? I think a few hairs on the back of my neck stood up when we first came upon it. 
• The Stone Chambers: Whomever built these impressive structures, you can’t help but wonder how they were able to arrange and move the stones into such deliberate patterns and structures. 

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I hope you enjoyed this post and video from America’s Stonehenge in Salem, New Hampshire.

For another treat from the Merrimack Valley Region, check out my post on Derry, New Hampshire.

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This post was created in collaboration between the author and the AI Tool Google Gemini.

Until the next post: “Live Free and Explore!”