Henry David Thoreau’s sojourn at Walden started a long tradition of people coming to the pond and its surrounding woods for recreation and inspiration. The emergence of Walden as a public park was in keeping with the belief that nature is meant to be enjoyed by people.
"I think that each town should have a park…a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation," he wrote in a 1859 journal entry lamenting the deforestation that had taken .place around Walden. "All Walden wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst."
In the latter part of the 19th century, numerous projects were undertaken to make Walden Pond a public destination for recreation. The Fitchburg Railroad, which had laid tracks past Walden the year before Thoreau took up residence there, built an excursion park on the shore at Ice Fort Cove in 1866. The facilities were mainly used for fund-raisers, festivals and groups. The park included concessions, swings, bathhouses, boats, baseball diamond, a hall for dining, dancing and public speaking and a cinder track for runners and bicyclists. The park burned down in 1902 and was never rebuilt.
The automobile brought increasing numbers of visitors to Walden Pond. The Town of Concord began offering swimming lessons in 1913 and bathhouses were built in 1917. Summer visitation had risen to 2,000 visitors a day even before the bathhouses were built.
In 1922, the Emerson, Forbes and Heywood families granted approximately 80 acres surrounding the pond to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with the stipulation of "preserving the Walden of Emerson and Thoreau, its shores and nearby woodlands for the public who wish to enjoy the pond, the woods and nature, including bathing, boating, fishing and picnicking."
Middlesex County was given the responsibility for management of the reservation. In the summer of 1935, some 485,000 people visited Walden Pond, with Sunday crowds numbering as high as 25,000 visitors.
In 1965, the National Park Service designated Walden Pond as a Registered National Historic Landmark.
Nature and Science
By the time the Commonwealth acquired the property in 1922, much of Walden’s forest had been cut down. The woods have since grown back so that the vegetation resembles the hard and soft wood mix of Thoreau’s day and includes mostly berry bushes, sumac, pitch pine, hickory and oak. Above Thoreau’s house site are stumps of some of the 400 white pines planted by Thoreau and leveled by the great hurricane of 1938.
The wildlife of Thoreau’s time can still be found. Gray squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits are common. Skunks, raccoons and red foxes are active at night, but can occasionally be seen shortly before sunset or after sunrise. Kingfishers, blackbirds, chickadees and red-tailed hawks can often be seen flying among the trees or over the water. In the spring and fall, migratory ducks and geese pass overhead and land in nearby marshes for food and rest. As noted by Thoreau, the pond “is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not very abundant, are its chief boast.” The pickerel disappeared around the turn of the century and the pond is now stocked annually. In addition, sunfish, perch and smallmouth bass compete for crayfish.
A variety of wildlife thrive today, including coyote and deer as well as porcupine, beaver, gray squirrel, red squirrel, chipmunks, turkey, woodpeckers (downy and hairy), red-tailed hawk, Canada goose, wood duck, mallard, black-capped chickadee, American robin, eastern phoebe, blue jays and cardinals.
Numerous fish swim the depths of Walden Pond. They include: Rainbow trout, brown trout, brook trout, small mouth and large mouth bass, bluegill, pumpkinseed, rainbow smelt, koy, catfish and yellow perch. The pond is stocked by Mass Wildlife in the spring and in the fall of the year.
Amphibians and reptiles make their home in Wyman and Heywood’s Meadow. These include: bullfrogs, gray treefrog, leopard frog, American toad, Woodhouse’s toad, painted turtle, snapping turtle, garter snake, northern water snake and eastern ribbon snake.
Walden Pond is a kettle hole, a deep pond formed about 15,000 years ago when the last glacier to cover New England slowly melted away. As it did, a large block of ice broke off into glacial Lake Sudbury from the retreating glacier. The ice block eventually was surrounded by sediments ranging from fine sand to coarse gravel deposited by streams flowing from the glacier. As the block melted, it left behind an indentation that eventually filled with water.
Walden Pond potentially is threatened by environmental stresses common to urban lakes: a municipal landfill, septic leachate, high visitor-use rates, acid and other contaminants from atmospheric deposition, and invasion of exotic species. Walden Pond retains clear, undegraded water because of conservation efforts that protect the shore and woods surrounding the lake.
Large numbers of swimmers, estimated at 220,000 per summer, are not a new circumstance for Walden Pond. In 1935, the Concord Herald reported that summer Sunday afternoon crowds reached 25,000, and that total summer attendance was 485,000. During his weekend measurements in 1939, Edward Deevey of Yale University counted “nearly 1,000 bathers.”
Management of water quality at the Walden Pond State Reservation focuses upon maintaining the transparency of the surface water so that the deep-growing Nitella can continue its role in maintaining water clarity.
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