Issue Date: December 28, 2008

America's hidden history

Headed to the usual tourist spots like Mount Rushmore and St. Augustine? Don't miss these often overlooked landmarks just down the road.

With a historic inauguration upon us, it's a good time to think about taking trips to historic hot spots. Gettysburg, Philadelphia and Mount Vernon are all crowd-pleasers, but there are many other interesting sites that don't always attract throngs. Some are in national parks, some off the beaten path and some in the shadow of more familiar landmarks -- literally, just a few miles away. Here are a handful of places from America's hidden history, involving tales that your textbooks might have left out:

Headed to Mount Rushmore?
It is, after all, one of America's most recognizable landmarks. But visitors to that famed man-made monument can then ride through Black Hills country to Bear Butte, a designated "national natural landmark" near Sturgis, S.D. Rising starkly from the plains, this volcanic rock is sacred to many Native American groups and is said to be the place where Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse made pilgrimages. Although protected, Bear Butte is at the center of a controversy between local developers and those who want to preserve the surrounding area.

Headed to Boston?
Beantown tops New England's list of historic stops, yet don't forget Haverhill, Mass. The town features one of the first permanent statues erected to honor a woman in America: a murderous Massachusetts mother who was one of America's most famous women. Hannah Duston was captured by Abenaki Indians in 1697 and, after a long march, she and two other captives managed to kill and scalp the Indian family holding them -- six of them children. Duston made her way home and became a legend in her time. The statue in her honor -- scalps in one hand, hatchet in the other -- was erected in Haverhill in 1874. (The scalps are gone now, but the dispute over the spelling of her last name rages on. Some historians argue that it should be Dustin.)

Headed to St. Augustine?
While tourists flock to this Florida town to visit the first permanent European settlement in America, fewer visitors find their way to Fort Matanzas, about 14 miles south. Its name comes from the Spanish word for "slaughters." The fort is near the site of a mass execution of shipwrecked Frenchmen in the fall of 1565, killed because they were Protestants. Victims of a religious war, they were America's true first pilgrims, having come here in search of a place to worship 56 years before the Mayflower sailed.

Headed to Independence Hall?
A few blocks from this famous place in Philadelphia, a plaque at Walnut and Third streets marks the site of Fort Wilson, named for a little-known founding father. Scottish-born James Wilson came to America in 1765 and became a successful attorney. He was a leader in the independence movement and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. But during the American Revolution, militiamen angry about food shortages and price gouging attacked Wilson and other city leaders in Wilson's Philadelphia home. During the "Fort Wilson Riot," five men died before Wilson and his colleagues were rescued by Continental Army troops. As a framer of the Constitution, Wilson is credited with creating the system of "electors" to choose a president but also was the first and only Supreme Court justice to be jailed.

Headed to Saratoga Battlefield?
Saratoga National Historical Park in New York hosts a statue of the boot of Benedict Arnold, where he led a charge in one of American history's most important victories and was wounded in the leg not long before he became America's most notorious traitor. Nearby is Fort Ticonderoga, towering over Lake Champlain. It was here in May 1775 that Arnold helped capture the British fort, securing the cannons that later chased the British army from Boston. Arnold's role in this crucial attack, however, was deliberately "airbrushed" out of most history books.

Kenneth C. Davis is the author of "America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation," which expands on these and other stories.