Bunker Hill

Painting depicting colonial and British forces engaged in hand to hand fighting inside an earthen fort — "Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775" by Alonzo Chappel, 1859.
Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.

Visiting Bunker Hill

The Bunker Hill Monument, Lodge, and Museum are National Park Service sites.

Learn about the history of the site at the Bunker Hill Museum. Here, park staff are available to answer questions and there are restrooms open to the public. Additionally, explore views from the top of the monument through 360 degree Live Webcams. For more information to help you prepare for your visit to the park, see Know Before You Go.

Free admission

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The Bunker Hill Museum, the Lodge, and the base of the Monument are accessible.
No Accessibility

The top of Bunker Hill Monument is only accessible via 294 stairs in a tight spiral stairway. For safety, service animals cannot be accommodated inside the Monument.
**The elevator in the Bunker Hill Museum is currently out of service. We are working to get it fixed as soon as possible. If you have any questions or if you need access to the bathrooms in the Museum, please inform one of the on-site Rangers or call 617-242-5601.

"When the Arrows of death flew thick around me, I was preserv'd while others were suffer'd to fall a prey to our Cruel enemies..."

- Peter Brown to his Mother, June 25, 1775

On June 17, 1775, New England soldiers faced the British army for the first time in a pitched battle. Popularly known as "The Battle of Bunker Hill," bloody fighting took place throughout a hilly landscape of fenced pastures that were situated across the Charles River from Boston. Though the British forces claimed the field, the casualties inflicted by the Provincial solders from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were staggering. Of the some 2,400 British soldiers and Marines engaged, some 1,000 were wounded or killed.

50 years after the battle, the Marquis De Lafayette set the cornerstone of what would become a lasting monument and tribute to the memory of the Battle of Bunker Hill. The ambitious project to construct a 221-foot tall obelisk built entirely from quarried granite took over seventeen years to complete. Dedicated in 1843, the Monument stands prominently atop Breed's Hill. Marking the site where Provincial forces constructed an earthen fort, or "redoubt," prior to the battle, this site remains the focal point of the battle's memory.