In August of 1850, a grand excursion took Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, William Cullen Bryant, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Horatio Alger, and a mysterious guest, on a picnic to Monument Mountain in the Berkshires. They group climbed to the peak and enjoyed the day. Later, one guest began to collect all information about the party and events, however banal and mundane, for the Massachusetts Literary Society. Though the participants resisted, one day became a central focus in American literary history.