Washington Walked Here

From Dave Brigham:

It's always better to get out and walk. Seems obvious, no? Driving is faster, sure, but you miss so much. People sometimes ask me, "How do you find all these places to write about and take pictures of?" All you gotta do, I say, is walk around a bit.

After driving through the intersection of Main Street/Rte. 20, Weston Street/Rte. 117 and South Street in Waltham, Mass., numerous times, I found myself focusing on two stone monuments on the grounds of the former Banks School. So one day when I had a few minutes, I parked in the school lot and walked up to see what these big slabs are all about.

This one commemorates the so-called Henry Knox Trail, the path that the general took in late 1775/early 1776 from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to Boston to deliver 59 cannons to Gen. George Washington. Other markers along the trail are located in New York towns and cities including Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, Schuylerville and Albany, and Massachusetts towns and cities including Palmer, Marlborough, Framingham and Cambridge.

Here's a detail from the marker.

This marker is for the George Washington Memorial Highway.

The highway -- aka Route 20 -- was created in 1932 to celebrate the bicentennial of Washington's birth, and the route that he took on his way to Boston to assume command of the Continental Army. "There were parades from Agawam to Cambridge," at the time, according to Bryan Farr, founder of The Historic U.S. Route 20 Association, quoted in the MetroWest Daily News in June 2014. "They had a guy dressed up like Washington ride a horse along the route. The streets were lined with people."

The state, however, declined to officially name Route 20 after Washington.

Here's a detail of the marker.

You never know what you'll learn when you go for a little jaunt.