The Old Coast Road: From Boston to Plymouth

The Old Coast Road is a living document of American memory, an invitation to walk where history happened. Agnes Rothery traces the ancient path that connected Boston to Plymouth, revealing a road that began as an Indigenous trail through the wilderness and transformed into the spine of New England civilization. She walks the route with an antiquarian's eye and a poet's feeling for landscape, pausing at the places where Pilgrims first stumbled ashore, where Revolutionary soldiers marched, where centuries of lives left their mark on stone walls and Meeting House steps. This is not mere chronicle but something closer to pilgrimage: Rothery understands that roads carry the weight of all who traveled them, and her journey becomes a meditation on how a nation remembers its origins. She introduces the figures who built, burned, and rebuilt this corridor of commerce and conflict, weaving together the personal and the political into a rich tapestry of regional identity. For anyone who has ever stood on a New England road and wondered whose feet first wore the path, this book offers answers that linger long after the last page.