For many generations, the relatively modest rise of land known as Mount David has drawn people to its summit for a breathtaking view of the surrounding city. The hill’s rugged ledge and scraggly trees are much the same today as they were more than 100 years ago, although the residential streets on three sides and the Bates College campus to the east have changed greatly over time.

Rose D. Nealley recalled the area in a 1938 article written for the Lewiston Journal. She described the land as “a mountain by courtesy,” but its height offered area people views of the “silver ribbon of the Androscoggin,” Mount Gile in Auburn, the Hebron hills, and on a clear day, the White Mountains. She also wrote of wild red columbine, gray squirrels “nearly as tame as kittens” and “the lovely fairy-like towers” of the new Saints Peter and Paul Church.

In the early 1800s, Lewiston’s Main Street was a wagon trail that passed several large farms. Among them was the property of Amos Davis, whose farmhouse stood at the corner of Main and Whipple streets. It was “a substantial, stately mansion,” Nealley wrote. The farm’s barns and cattle sheds stood on the opposite side of the road, and orchards flourished a bit to the north where Frye Street now runs near the base of Mount David.

Amos Davis’ farm once extended from his house to Jepson’s Brook near Russell Street and from College Street to the river. Davis had four children. It was for David, the youngest, that he named the mountain.

David’s Mountain, as it was called in the early days, was a pasture for sheep and horses.

Nealley wrote that “somewhere at the end of Frye Street near Main there was a huge potato hole capable of containing as many as one hundred bushels of potatoes at one time. When there were no potatoes in it, the sheep would huddle there to sleep.”

A house was said to have been built by a Roland Patterson halfway up Mount David. It burned, and by the early 1900s few people remembered it and only a few foundation stones remain.

At the summit, a cairn was built to support a map of landmarks under glass for the benefit of hikers. Vandals and weather eventually ruined the original map. The garnets that once studded the ledges have also disappeared in the hands of gem collectors.

Nealley’s account follows several branches of the Davis family through the birth of two daughters of David Davis and the subsequent mountain ownership by the Wakefield heirs.

They bequeathed the mountain to Bates College. That institution has done much for preservation of the wonderful height of land, which figures prominently in Bates College lore.

Only a dozen years ago, Mount David was the location of a remarkable event. The Bates College Robinson Players staged their annual Shakespeare production in the open air on Mount David. That year, it was “Macbeth.”

An article in The Bates Student Icon in 1996 quoted the director, Bates senior Gregory Arata, as saying the site was geologically reminiscent of the play’s highland setting.

“It’s Scotland up at the top; it’s brilliant, with the rocks and moss and sticks. It’s both beautiful, yet a wasteland – a barren plain of nothing.”

Gregory Stoddard, one of the actors, said, “the environment is the set.” He said the play would be “eerie, scary and bloody,” ending appropriately at sunset.

In distinct contrast to generations of tranquil nature hikes and family picnics, the action reverberated off the rock all around the audience, who hiked up the hill and sat on blankets on two days in May for the unique show.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].