Milton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States and an affluent suburb of Boston. The population was 28,630 at the 2020 census. Milton is the birthplace of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and architect Buckminster Fuller. Milton was ranked by Money as the 2nd, 7th, 8th, and 17th best place to live in the United States in 2011, 2009, 2019, 2021, and 2022 respectively.

Milton is located in the relatively hilly area between the Neponset River and Blue Hills, bounded by Brush Hill to the west, Milton Hill to the east, Blue Hills to the south and the Neponset River to the north. It is also bordered by Boston’s Dorchester and Mattapan neighborhoods to the north and its Hyde Park neighborhood to the west; Quincy to the southeast; Randolph to the south, and Canton to the west.

The area now known as Milton was inhabited for tens of thousands of years prior to European colonization. The Paleoamerican archaeological site Fowl Meadows lies within the bounds of present day Milton, with charcoal remains dated to 10,210±60 years before present in 1994, later calibrated to 12,140 years before present.

At the time of European exploration and settlement in the early 1600s, the area was inhabited by the Neponset tribe of the Massachusett, an Algonquian people, who referred to the area that would become Milton as ‘Unquatiquisset,’ meaning ‘Lower Falls’, denoting the place where the rapids of the Neponset River meet Massachusetts Bay.

During the spring and summer, the Neponset would settle at the coastal salt marshes of the Neponset River and Squantum, living off the plentiful supply of seafood and coastal sustenance. In the fall and winter, they would migrate inland to the Blue Hills to hunt game in the thickly forested hills. Though they migrated according to the local seasons and climate, they also practiced agriculture, cultivating squash, pumpkins, Northern flint corn, tobacco, and various native fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, chestnuts, and acorns. To navigate the many rivers of eastern Massachusetts, they used the abundant trees from the vast forests to make dugout canoes.

Massachusett, the indigenous name for the Great Blue Hill, was the largest of the cluster of hills along the southern coast of Massachusetts Bay. As the second-highest elevation in all of Eastern America directly on the Atlantic coast, it possessed a sacred status in the religion of the Massachusett people. Beyond being a sacred site, the various hills were mined extensively by the indigenous inhabitants due to the abundance of a type of rare stone formed by the volcanic eruption of Massachusett 200 million years ago that was highly favorable for stone tools. These tools were traded among the indigenous people of the Northeast due to the rarity of the stone. This also indicates that the trade networks of the indigenous Northeast were far more expansive than previously thought.

At the time of the first European contact, the Neponset tribe was led by the sachem Chickatawbut, who died along with many other Neponset in a large virgin soil epidemic of the introduced European disease smallpox in November 1633 and was succeeded by his brother Cutshamekin.