Walden Pond United States

Legendary

The site where Henry David Thoreau was inspired to write his famous work, Walden; or, Life In the Woods.

Photo by angela n.

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Henry David Thoreau built his whole house for $28.12½. He kept a list of every penny, from old boards to nails to the windows, which he bought secondhand.

The house was tiny, just 10 feet by 15 feet. Inside were a bed, a table, a little desk, and three chairs: "one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."

Thoreau built it beside Walden Pond, in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts. The land belonged to his friend and mentor, the famous writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who let him use it.

The pond itself is much older. More than 10,000 years ago, a giant glacier covered this land.

When the ice melted and pulled back, it left a huge chunk of ice buried in the ground. That chunk slowly melted too, leaving a deep hole that filled with water.

Scientists call this kind of pond a kettle hole. Walden is about 102 feet deep, and Thoreau himself measured it.

He moved into his cabin on July 4, 1845, when he was 27 years old. He wanted to see if he could live a simple life and get by with very little.

He grew beans and other vegetables, took long walks in the woods, and wrote about the plants and animals around him. He wasn't completely alone, though. His family lived about two miles away and often brought him baked treats.

Thoreau stayed for two years, two months, and two days, leaving on September 6, 1847. He filled notebooks the whole time.

Those notes became a book. In 1854, he published Walden; or, Life in the Woods, explaining why he went to the woods and what he learned.

It's now one of the most famous books in American history. People still read it to think about nature and what really matters in life.

For almost a hundred years after he left, nobody knew exactly where the cabin had stood. In 1945, a man spent months digging and finally found the stone foundation of the chimney.

Visit the replica of Thoreau's cabin near the visitor center and see just how small his house was. Follow the trail around the pond to the real cabin site, marked by granite posts and a pile of stones that visitors add to. In summer, go for a swim at the beach in the same water Thoreau swam in.

Sources: Mass.gov (Walden Pond State Reservation), Wikipedia (Walden Pond), and EBSCO Research.