Outside Of The City: Quincy Quarries — Break From The Routine

New series alert!

Being a Massachusetts native, I gotta have a travel guide for my own city! I am going to break it down into a couple of various posts from things to do, restaurants and nightlife in Boston, but also around New England. I have plenty of ideas of blog posts- so stayed tuned for some Massachusetts and New England content!

First up for outside of the city- The Quincy Quarries Reservation!

In Quincy, Massachusetts just 11 miles south of Boston is the Quincy Quarries Reservation. I was unaware this existed at all until my roommate who lived in Quincy for a couple of years had mentioned it. For those who don’t know what quarries are- (maybe you do and I’m the only one who didn’t actually know what it was until my smart roommate told me) it is a place where stone or other materials get extracted from.

After doing some research, I realized that the Quincy Quarries have a deep history that some of my ancestors have a part in! This is where America’s large scale granite quarrying industry was born and it is credited to be the first railroad in the United States. One of the biggest projects to come from these quarries is the The Bunker Hill Memorial. Back in the 1800’s, it was built using granite that came from the Quincy Quarries. Soloman Willard was the head architect of the design of the monument and we are distantly related! We share an ancestor dating back to the 1600’s. His great-grandfather was Simon Willard who was an early Massachusetts settler, fur trader, colonial militia leader, legislator, and judge while Simon Willard is my 10th great grandfather. Anytime my family would drive through Quincy, we would always point out the signs that said “Willard Street” little did we know that it was named after the Soloman Willard this entire time. Thank you to ancestory.com for giving me information I never knew about. It was very surreal knowing that almost 200 years later I would be exploring this area and writing a blog post about it when my lineage had walked the same steps.

Below is the Bunker Hill Monument-

The quarries are currently not active anymore and is now an area for tagging, rock climbing, hiking and spending some time outdoors. It is such a unique place and we spent most of our time just reading all of the graffiti on the rocks. Some of the graffiti art support the human rights movements such as BLM but then also have “legalize ranch” which made us laugh out loud.

If you are looking for a place to get outside of the city that is out of the box and not conventional tourist thing a do- this is the place for you!

Here is the address to the Quincy Quarries Reservation:

Ricciuti Drive Quincy, Massachusetts, 02169 United States