The Ledge Salem Tried to Forget

You're standing on Pope Street, at the foot of what Salem has always called Gallows Hill. It doesn't look like much: a quiet residential neighborhood, houses close on every side, about a mile from downtown. In front of you is a curved wall of granite set against a rocky slope. Look at the names cut into that stone. There are nineteen of them, and for more than 300 years, nobody could say for certain that this was where they died.

In 1692, Salem hanged nineteen people for witchcraft. Fourteen were women and five were men. The first was Bridget Bishop, a woman from Salem Town who had already outlived two husbands and had a reputation her neighbors gossiped about. She was hanged on June 10. Eighteen more followed her over that summer and early fall.

Then Salem did something very human. It looked away. Within a few years, the trials had become a shame the town wanted behind it. Maps of Salem from around 1700 mark Gallows Hill, but not a single spot on it where anyone was put to death. The memory didn't vanish. It just lost its address. For generations, people assumed the hangings happened up at the summit, and the summit is where the legend settled.

In 1921, a local historian named Sidney Perley went back to the old records and came to a different conclusion. He thought the executions happened lower down, near the base of the hill, on a rocky outcrop called Proctor's Ledge. Perley was convincing enough that the City of Salem bought part of the ledge. But a historian's hunch is not proof, and the question stayed open.

The answer came in January 2016. A team from the University of Virginia, called the Gallows Hill Project, combined historical records with modern research and confirmed it: Perley had been right. This ledge, the one in front of you, was the place. A year later, in 2017, the city dedicated this memorial.

So here's the odd truth of where you're standing. Some of the most famous executions in American history happened in what is now, more or less, a neighborhood with backyards.

And the reckoning has been just as slow as the remembering. Massachusetts started reversing convictions in 1711, then cleared more victims in 1957 and again in 2001. The last convicted Salem witch, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., wasn't officially exonerated until 2022. That's 329 years after she was found guilty. Before you go, read a few of those names on the wall out loud to yourself. For a long time, almost nobody here did.

When you're ready, walk north on Pope Street, turn right onto Boston Street, left onto Federal, then right onto Monroe Street. It's about seventeen minutes to the Witch House, home of a judge who helped send people to this ledge.