Even if you posit the top of Mt. Washington rather than a peak in the as-yet undiscovered (by northern Europeans) Rockies, the difference remains unchanged in more or less every essential way.
And actually, "town square" isn't defined at all, de facto or de jure. In the USA, there's essentially no standing right to speak in a public place. You can't be stopped based on what you say, but you can routinely be stopped from speaking at all.
This is, perversely, one of the things that makes London's Hyde Park Corner so unique: there is an accepted policy (not law) that you can't be stopped from speaking there unless engaged in incitement. This fallacy of "the public square" is just that - a fallacy. Since independence (and certainly before it), there was no freedom to speak in a public space without being blessed by some authority.
It was only the printing press that was really "free speech" , in the sense that you could print anything and make it available and the 1st amendment could not prevent access to it.
And btw, "kicked your teeth in" as a description of that thread exchange seems like a great reason to avoid further interaction with you. ghaff was supporting my POV, and spoonjim's comment was downvoted (and incidentally wrong). Even if they had both disagreed with me and presented a cogent argument supporting their positions, "kicking teeth in" is a particularly violent metaphor that I prefer to see left unused.