Henry David Thoreau's Cabin at Walden Pond

You may have heard of Walden Pond…..

Henry David Thoreau, American transcendentalist writer, came here to get away from it all so he could focus on his writing.

Henry David Thoreau

He relocated to Concord, Massachusetts’ Walden Pond in 1845 “to live deliberately.”

“I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor…. My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger woods, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and a half dozen rods [100 feet] from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill.”

He built a little one-room house for himself in a clearing that had views of the lake. His vision was to experiment with “simple living” – to live off the land in solitude so he could write and hone his philosophies without human interference.

Thoreau lived here from 1845 – 1847.

He eventually published Walden, or Life in the Woods in 1854, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden is now regarded as a classic American literary work.

Thoreau moved on from Walden Pond and had other escapades before his untimely death in 1862 at the age of 44 from complications from tuberculosis.

The remote tiny cabin was deconstructed and forgotten in the years after he passed.

However, the location of Thoreau’s cabin was rediscovered by archaeologist Roland Robbins in 1945, nearly 100 years after Thoreau left Walden Pond.

In addition to the discovery of the original hearth stone, a number of artifacts from Thoreau’s stay were found, many of which are now housed at the Thoreau Institute.

Today you can visit both the original cabin site and a replica cabin nearby at Walden Pond.

The interior has been set up as Thoreau would have had it, according to his writings.

The replica cabin in Walden Pond State Reservation is located on Massachusetts Route 126 (Walden St. and Concord Rd.) in Concord, MA. The Visitors Center is located at 915 Walden St.