Your walk has brought you to the oldest public park in the country. Boston Common was set aside as common land in 1634, four years after the city was founded, purchased from William Blackstone, the first European settler in the area, for thirty pounds. The fifty-acre park served from the beginning as common pasture — Boston residents grazed cattle here until 1830 — and as a military training ground where the colonial militia drilled, British troops camped during the occupation, and generations of soldiers have assembled before deployment ever since.
The elm trees in the center of the park were the site of public executions by hanging from the colonial period through 1817; the last person hanged here was a pirate. The park was also the site of anti-slavery meetings, Civil War recruiting rallies, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1965 speech to a crowd estimated at 22,000. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument at the park's summit, dedicated in 1877, commemorates Boston's Civil War dead.
The Frog Pond in the center, now a reflecting pool and skating rink, was once a natural spring and watering hole. Notice Tremont Street's shops and restaurants along the southern edge, the State House dome to the north, and Park Street Church to the east.