The Ramble is staged from the town-owned Endicott Estate. At the intersection of Boulivard and East Street, the race commences at 11:00 AM with the ring of a gong. The runners proceed down East Street to the intersection of High Street, where the route turns left through Dedham Square. The Ramble course then turns left on Court Street past the pink granite of Saint Paul’s Church where world acclaimed poet Anne Sexton had her funeral. Many of the town’s early settlers are interned in the burial grounds behind the church.
Runners turn right onto Highland Street where they will confront the first steep grade that we call Earwickers Hill. At the crest, they will turn right down Lowder Street and past Ursuline Academy to right and around Wampatuck and out to Lowder Street again.
Turn right onto High Street and you run past the Great Common, which served as the early settlement’s militia training ground and where President James Monroe once reviewed a troop muster.
Here, High Street becomes Bridge Street and then it’s a straight downhill jaunt over the Charles River past the old pumping station. The runners turn left onto the campus road of the prestigous Noble & Greenough School and they will run along the rolling playing fields beside the river.
The runners turn right onto Pine Street and then onto Ames Street., bringing them past the Powder House, which sits on the great rock on the right and was built to store ammunition during the King Philip Indian uprising in 1664.
Crossing the river again, the runners turn left onto High Street, by the Norfolk County Courthouse, where, in 1921, the world’s attention focused on the murder trial of anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti and which was called “the trial of the twentieth century”. High Street takes runners through the town square and under Route One. They will turn right onto East Street to the finish.
The 6 mile mark is just past the oldest surviving framehouse in America, the Fairbanks House, built in 1636.
The finish line awaits you in front of the Estate.
