The Pilgrims' first burial ground, where a 1735 storm washed bones into the harbor
Carver Street, Plymouth, MA 02360
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Open public ground overlooking Plymouth Harbor and Plymouth Rock; no admission fee.
Access
Limited Access
A grassy rise of about 30 feet at the water's edge, with sloping paths and steps from Water Street
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1620 · First Pilgrim burial ground · Starving Time of 1620-1621 · National Historic Landmark
Cole's Hill is a rise of about thirty feet at the edge of Plymouth Harbor, directly above the site of Plymouth Rock. It was the first cemetery used by the Mayflower Pilgrims after their arrival in 1620. The site is a National Historic Landmark, designated in 1960.
The burials here date to the colony's first and hardest winter, the period later called the 'starving time.' Of the 102 passengers who arrived on the Mayflower, roughly half died between the winter of 1620 and the spring of 1621 from cold, disease, and malnutrition. The survivors buried the dead on Cole's Hill in unmarked graves. Tradition holds that the graves were leveled and left unmarked deliberately, so that the local Wampanoag would not learn how few of the newcomers remained alive.
The hill kept its secret for over a century. In a storm in 1735, a torrent of rainwater pouring down Middle Street cut a ravine through Cole's Hill and washed human bones down into the harbor. Over the following decades, more remains surfaced as the ground was disturbed.
In 1920 the General Society of Mayflower Descendants erected a granite sarcophagus at the southern end of the hill to hold the bones recovered from the site in the 18th and 19th centuries, believed to be those of the Mayflower dead. The hill remains an open public ground and a fixture on Plymouth's walking and ghost tours.
Sources
Cole's Hill's reputation as a haunted place rests on its history rather than on any single dramatic incident. The hill holds the unmarked, deliberately concealed graves of roughly half the Mayflower colony, and for more than a century those remains lay just under the surface until storms and construction brought bones to light. That long record of disturbed and recovered dead is what tour operators and local accounts point to when they describe the site.
Ghost-tour guides and visitors report a sense of being watched on the hill after dark, and some describe faint voices near the 1920 granite sarcophagus that now holds the recovered bones. The crypt is the focus of these accounts because it gathered together remains that had been scattered and re-disturbed across two centuries.
The reports are anecdotal and tied to the somber facts of the place. There is no claim of a named ghost or a specific event beyond the mass deaths of the starving time. Cole's Hill appears on Plymouth ghost-tour routes alongside nearby Burial Hill and the 1749 Court House, and most accounts treat it less as a haunting in the theatrical sense than as a site whose history makes visitors uneasy.
Notable Entities
Walk the open hill above Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims buried their dead during the winter of 1620-1621. The granite sarcophagus at the southern end holds remains recovered from the hill, and the site is a regular stop on Plymouth walking and ghost tours. Free and open to the public.
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