Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Plymouth Rock
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1970. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Plymouth Rock is a boulder in Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States, which was claimed to have been at the site where the Mayflower Pilgrims landed to found Plymouth Colony in December 1620. The Pilgrims did not refer to Plymouth Rock in any of their writings; the first known written reference to the rock dates from 1715 when it was described in the town boundary records as "a great rock".”
Wikipedia article Plymouth Rock, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 93 National Register listings in Plymouth County · listed in 1970 · category: Object · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Plymouth County.
National Register reference number.70000680- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
In preparing the work the records of the town of Bridgewater, and of its several parishes and churches, have been the first and principal sources, whence the materials have been derived. The old Colony and Plymouth county records have furnished also valuable information. Judge Davis' improved edition of Morton's, New England Memorial, Farmer's Register, the Collections of the Mass. Hist. Society, and various local histories have also been advantageously consulted. But so many and so various have been the sources, both public and private, from which information and facts have been obtained, that it would be difficult, if recollected, to enumerate them. The loss of all the early records of Duxbury previous to 1G54, which are said to have been burnt, is greatly to be regretted, as it was the parent town of Bridgewater, the first home and residence in this country of most of our fathers and original settlers in this then Plantation. It may well be supposed those records would have furnished us with much valuable information. The Colony records of births and deaths previous to 1CI7 are also lost, some of the first leaves by time or accident having been destroyed, which to the antiquarian is a deprivation much to be deplored.
Bridgewater was originally a plantation granted to Duxbury. When the township of Marshfield became a separate and distinct corporation, Duxbury, from which Marshfield had been principally taken, applied to the Old Colony court, at Plymouth, for a grant of common land, or, as they expressed it, " an extension to the westward," as a compensation for the great loss of territory they had thus sustained. We find in the records the following order of court relating to it : -
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 304 fires within 5 miles of Plymouth Rock between
2006 and 2020, burning about 91 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 4 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
202
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
58
Misuse of fire by a minor
28
Arson/incendiarism
4
Recreation and ceremony
4
Natural
3
Smoking
3
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 2,455 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Plymouth Rock between 1816 and
1975: 1,784 Animalia, 405 Plantae, 186 Fungi, 59 Chromista, 14 Protozoa, 7 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by -- Russell, A., A. C. Mathieson and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of Plymouth Rock: 1 past producer, 1 producer.
1 still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Plymouth, the town this property stands in, in 43 storm reports between 1997 and 2023: 13 hail, 10 thunderstorm wind, 7 heavy rain, 4 flood.
The reports record 1 death. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Police reported a road flooded, with water half-way up the doors of a car. Street unspecified. Report relayed by amateur radio. The public reported 2.07 of rain with this localized storm.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,184 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
X Moved Origiral Site Plymouth Rock is situated at the foot of Cole's Hill on the edge of Plymouth Harbor where it is protected from the water by a granite seawall. In 1774, when an aitempt was made to move the Rock, it split nearly in half. One portion re- mained in the original location; the other portion was moved twice, until the two halves were brought together near the original site in 1880. McKim, Mead and White designed a classical canopy to be placed over the stone for the tercentennary celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims. This gray granite canopy, dedicated on November 29, 1921, is 34' x 18' and 25' high. Sixteen monolithic columns support its full entablature which is surmounted by a parapet. RECEIVED 121 191 APR 29 1971 LII NATIONAL REGISTE TVT SNOIDOAYI S -
Statement of significance
Plymouth Rock, a large granite boulder now incised with the date 1620, is the traditional symbol of the landing of the Pilgrims to found the first permanent English settlement in New England. The Rock was identified in 1741 by the 91-year old Elder Thomas Faunce, who said that some of the original Pilgrim settlers had pointed out this rock as the site on which they had come ashore. No mention of a specific landing plaoe is made in the official Pilgrim records; however, the value of the Plymouth Rock as a historic symbol over-rides the question of its authenticity as the landing place. In 1774, an attempt was made to move the Rock from the beach to the Plymouth town square for the annual celebration of "Forefather's Day, " honoring the first settlers.
The Rock split, breaking roughly in half. The free half was placed on the on the square where it remained for several decades; the in-place half was forgotten. The Pilgrim Society was formed in 1821 to honor "those intrepid men who first stepped on Plymouth Rock, " The Society on July 4, 1834, again moved the upper half of the Rock, from the town square to a position in frent of Pilgrim Hall, the Society's headquarters. The two halves of the Rock were brought together in 1880; they now rest at the foot of Cole's Hill under a canopy designed by McKim, Mead and White and presented to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the National Society of Colonial Dames. T9LI0 112 ATEITETE g 9.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 70000680, 15 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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