Place History

Crisp, cool air breezes steadily through the bare branches of some young birch trees. You can hear the creak of their bodies as they sway; you quietly stab a foil object and release it into your bag. Their leaves have already fallen with the arrival of November. The sun just begins to peak above the horizon, shedding light on the small parcel of land. The local wildlife has yet to awaken and begin their busy days preparing for winter. Bedrock juts from the ground and out towards the street, forming a small cliffside ridden with brush and weeds. Four tooth moss, native to these parts of New England, clings onto the bedrock. The moss grows densely atop the cliff’s peak, where one can easily see the sycamore trees growing across the street. Despite the jutted and rocky terrain of the hilltop, the young birch trees are anchored firmly into the soil along the ridge, acting as a natural barrier for the subdivision residing beyond them. You close your eyes as you lean against a birch, taking a break from your work.

The road that stifles this area leads to the suburb from a nearby Walgreens. The natural colors of the area, brown, green, and gray, are interrupted by the artificial colors that lie along the wooded floor. As with many roads, litter is scattered nearby, disturbing the earth as much as it disturbs the eye. Carelessness for nature is, regrettably so, common in today’s world. There is too often a lack of significance to people regarding the earth surrounding them, but it seems especially so for this forgotten and broken piece of land. The significance, the history, the purpose that this land held, was forgotten long ago. It is now a simple comfort blanket for the suburb beyond it. A car drives around the corner and the gust of its motion kicks up a crumpled, white, paper bag. The bag drifts a bit before settling on a rock.

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The land has a history of disturbance and abuse, though it has evolved over time. The box houses beyond the trees were constructed in the last few decades, allowing the road around the acre of land to be more utilized. The increase of access led to the increase in agitation, unfortunately, but pollution is only one horror that the site has endured.

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What is now an exposed bedrock cliff was once a green, grassy hillside. In the 1870s, the land was blown up to build railroad tracks on the base of the ridge. It was a time of industrialization, and this land was not able to elude it. The planks of metal were laid, hammered, and finalized. Soon, engines roared through the nearby town and thundered past the ridge, shaking the earth and trees as it traveled past. The tracks were utilized for decades until the railway was deconstructed, leaving it at its current state of broken, protruding rock. Despite the immense force that the trains required the earth to withstand, this is, again, not the most horrific time in the land’s history.

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In fact, the site’s most truly horrific history can hardly be traced back to this spot. Only the most diligent researchers and fact checkers have been to this area and were aware of its history. Others have settled for a more commercial and satisfying resort. This land’s past is so gruesome that no one wanted to remember its significance or location, so it was never exactly recorded. The history itself is well known, but since the actual location was never labeled; the so-called “Gallows Hill” is now misremembered to be in a different area of Salem, Massachusetts.

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The seventeenth century was a difficult one for Essex County, Massachusetts. The British had been in a war with the French; the local Native Americans were retaliating and raiding villages; a pandemic of smallpox had spread throughout the towns. It was not too far off from what America looks like today with our indifferences between parties, distrust in other countries, and the obvious COVID-19 pandemic. Citizens had become paranoid and tensions ran high. Many people stopped trusting their neighbors. It came to a climax in the early summer of 1692, when two young girls were found ill and convulsing, to which the doctor who saw them contributed their symptoms to bewitchment. The young girls blamed their house slave, the local homeless girl, and an old maid. The slave, who was sure to be condemned given her race, plead guilty and agreed to be an informer as to get a less severe sentence. The slave claimed the three were not the only witches cursing the people of Salem Village, and throughout the summer, nearly thirty more people were found guilty of witchcraft. These allegations were not based on tangible evidence, but rather on a lot of assumptions. If the doctor had researched further, he may have found that the citizens found convulsing were actually sick from expired rye bread. Still, almost twenty women were hanged for their alleged crimes. These sentences were upheld on Gallows Hill.

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Villagers traveled across the bridge out of Salem Town and steered left to travel up the hill. Carts carrying the offenders were pushed along the path. The weight of the cargo left imprints in the soil that eventually eroded away from the path but could not quite evade the memories of those who watched. The brush lining the path witnessed the cries of the innocent and waved in the breeze as the town trudged by. At the top of the hill, all of Salem Town could be seen. The man-made buildings, plots of farmland, and dirt roads were visible at the top of Gallows Hill. The soft grass embraced the ill-fated as they were dumped out of the cart. This was the last benevolent contact shared between the victims and nature. Their last glimpse of life before their heads were bagged included the view of Salem Town, of the place and people that stole their future from them. It was also of the trees, though, and the sun, because as inhumane and cruelly the women were treated, the earth and nature never forsake them. The tree on that grassy, vibrant hill brought to life by nature was the one enslaved to hold the ropes that took the lives of those innocent women. The trap beneath their feet dropped, and their last breaths were taken soon afterwards. Although that could have been enough, it was not all that the accused women endured at that site. After they were unloaded from the noose, their bodies were thrown off the hill and into one of the many surrounding crevasses. As they contacted the rough terrain during their plummet, their bones broke, and their bodies were bruised. When they reached the bottom, they rested in the comfort of distance from their executioners and the closure of their suffering.

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The soil, brush, bedrock, and trees kept some bodies company, while other bodies were collected by their loved ones. The bodies were laid in unmarked graves. Slowly, the site of their death became the site of their decay, and they returned their energy to the earth in which they were created. They became the grass that grew the next spring, the birch that sprouted and stood for a century, and the moss that spread across the rocks. The lives lost at this land ended so gruesomely, but yet nature found a way for their death to not be in vain.