Cumberland, Italy
Diamond Hill is a large hill on Diamond Hill Road in Cumberland, Rhode Island, which contains a town park and former ski area. The summit is 481 feet above sea level. On a clear day, the Boston skyline and Mount Wachusett are visible. Diamond Hill is a massive outcropping of white quartz with a vert
ical drop of 350 feet. The hill was named in colonial times and takes its name "from its sparkling and shining appearance." In the colonial era, the Whipple family (the children of John Whipple, Sr.) first settled near Diamond Hill, and during King Philip's War in the 1670s, several skirmishes occurred nearby, including Nine Men's Misery, the memorial of which is now on the grounds of the nearby Cumberland Monastery. In 1877 the Diamond Hill Granite Company founded a granite quarry northwest of Diamond Hill and copper was also mined near the hill. In 1935 "Philip Allen, C. Faulkner Kendall, and Henry Munroe Rogers offered 235 acres of land on the hill to the State of Rhode Island" and ski trails were cut shortly thereafter. In the twentieth century, the hill contained two small ski areas, Ski Valley (operating from 1939 to 1981) and Diamond Hill Reservation (operating from the mid-1960s to...
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