America's Stonehenge

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America's Stonehenge, once known as Mystery Hill, is the site of a number of large rocks and stone structures scattered around roughly 30 acres (120,000 m²) near the town of Salem, New Hampshire, in the northeast United States.

The site has become a popular tourist attraction, with particular appeal to believers in New Age systems. Among the several unverified speculations which have been put forward concerning the site's origins include claims that the site could be an astronomical observatory built by some unknown, pre-Columbian civilization.

They argue that some stones are encased in trees that may have sprouted before the arrival of the first colonists, point to similarities between the ruins and Phoenician architecture, and say that marks on some stones resemble some ancient writing systems of the Old World. The late Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard University did extensive work on the inscriptions at the site, which he claimed represented markings in Ogham, Phoenician and Iberian Punic scripts. He detailed his finds in his book America B.C.

On the other hand, artifacts found on the site lead many mainstream archaeologists to the conclusion that the stones were assembled for various reasons by local farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, a much-discussed "sacrifical stone" which contains grooves that some say channeled blood, closely resembles "lye-leaching stones" found on many old farms that were used to extract lye from wood ashes, the first step in the manufacture of soap.

The site's history is muddled partly because of the activities of one William Goodwin, an insurance agent who purchased the area surrounding the site in 1936. He became convinced that Mystery Hill was proof that Irish monks (the Culdees) had lived there long before Christopher Columbus, a concept he sought to publicize. He moved many of the stones around from their former positions to better support his idea, thus obliterating a good deal of the archaeological record. The site's current owners, the private company America's Stonehenge Foundation, say his activities are "one of the reasons the enigma of Mystery Hill is so deep".

The site's current name "America's Stonehenge" is of recent coinage, and is used for marketing purposes. There is no connection with Stonehenge in England.

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