Welcome to the Park of the Week Newsletter for April 4, 2024. This week’s park protects the site where one of the most beloved nature-writers of the 19th century built his cabin in the woods.
Walden Pond State Reservation
Location
Concord, Massachusetts, United States
Claim to fame
Walden Pond is famous as the place where Henry David Thoreau was inspired to write his classic work Walden. In 1845, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau’s friend and mentor, allowed Thoreau use of a parcel of wooded land within walking distance of Concord. The land contained a pond called Walden, and Thoreau spent two years here, constructing a one-room cabin, gardening, taking long, slow walks, and writing about his fascination with nature and simple living.
Thoreau later wrote a book about his time living by Walden Pond, a book that has inspired generations of nature-lovers. Unlike his writing though, his cabin and beloved woods did not endure. The cabin was sold, moved, and eventually torn down. Much of Walden Woods was logged, though the forest has today regrown.
Reason to visit
Walden Pond State Reservation is 462 acres (187 hectares) of protected recreational space only 20 miles from Boston. Visitors can hike, swim, canoe, fish (the pond is stocked with numerous fish species), and cross-country ski. The park is popular with both outdoor enthusiasts and fans of Thoreau.
A one-mile (1.6 km) out and back accessible trail beginning at the park visitor center leads through Walden Woods and past the site of Thoreau’s original cabin. Today the cabin site is marked with piles of stones. There is also a replica version of Thoreau’s cabin as well as interpretive programs and exhibits that help visitors step back in time to the mid-1800s.
Wild Fact
Walden Pond is actually not a pond but a kettle hole, created by a fragment of ice abandoned by a retreating glacier over 12,000 years ago. The pond is 103 feet (31 meters) deep and has no streams feeding in or out of it. Water flows through it via an aquifer system.
Bonus wild fact: Thoreau planted 400 white pines near his cabin, most of which were leveled during a hurricane in 1938. The stumps of these pines can still be found near the original cabin site today, giving visitors a tangible connection to the man who once lived and wrote in this timeless place.
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