Franklin Milestone 72
Warren, Worcester County, Massachusetts
Marker Inscription
72 Mile From Boston
The Story
This weathered stone is a colonial milestone, one of the plain markers that once counted off the distance along the great post roads radiating out of Boston. In the mid-1700s, as Benjamin Franklin reorganized the American postal service, riders and surveyors measured these routes and set stones like this one to tell travelers exactly how far they had come. Standing 72 miles out in the Worcester County countryside, it marked a full day's hard journey from the city for anyone on horseback or in a wagon.
Why it matters
Milestones like this one made travel and mail delivery reliable in early America, knitting scattered towns into a connected network long before railroads or highways. They are among the oldest surviving pieces of the nation's transportation infrastructure.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Benjamin Franklin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
1955 Flood High-Water Mark
Sturbridge, MA
In mid-August 1955, the remnants of back-to-back hurricanes — Connie and then Diane — dumped record-breaking rain on southern New England, and rivers like the Quinebaug that had long powered Sturbridge's mills exploded far over their banks. This mark records how high the floodwaters climbed on that catastrophic day, when whole downtowns, bridges, and factory districts across the region were submerged. The 1955 flood remains one of the worst natural disasters in New England's history, and communities set high-water marks like this one so no one would forget how far the water reached.
Lafayette's Tour
Sturbridge, MA
In 1824, a half-century after the Revolution he had helped win, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to America for a grand farewell tour and was greeted as a living link to the nation's founding. Traveling overland from Boston toward Hartford in early September, the aging general passed through Sturbridge, where townspeople escorted him to the Common and feted him at Porter's Stage House. Such welcomes—militia escorts, banquets, and cheering crowds at every town along the post road—were repeated in hundreds of communities during his thirteen-month journey through all twenty-four states.
William Francis Callahan Monument
Charlton, MA
William Francis Callahan spent his career building the roads and public works that reshaped mid-twentieth-century Massachusetts. As a longtime state public-works official and, from the early 1950s, chairman of the newly created Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, he drove the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike — the east–west superhighway that stitched the Commonwealth together during the postwar highway boom. This monument, standing along the very corridor he championed, honors the ambition and hard-driving persistence that turned an audacious highway plan into concrete and steel.
Beresik Square
Dudley, MA
Beresik Square honors Stephen E. Beresik, a young sailor from the mill town of Dudley, Massachusetts, who became the community's first resident killed in World War II. He died on August 9, 1942, aboard the heavy cruiser USS Quincy, which was sunk that night in the ferocious Battle of Savo Island off Guadalcanal — one of the U.S. Navy's costliest surface defeats of the Pacific war. Barely twenty-three, Beresik was among the hundreds lost when Japanese warships caught the Allied fleet by surprise in the war's early, uncertain months. His hometown answered that loss by naming a public square in his memory.