August 3, 2008

August 3, 2008

The Boston area has a dozen national park sites reflecting the huge amount of history that occurred here. The last few days we covered the Industrial Revolution; today we are moving to the American Revolution. We start at Lexington and Concord with the Minuteman National Historic Park. In 1775, Boston was the hotbed of dissent (e.g. Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party) causing the British to station an army in the city and close the port. In retaliation the colonists started stockpiling guns and ammunition. On April 19, 1775, the British marched from Boston intent on capturing this cache of arms in Concord. Spies discovered the plan and Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride to alert the militia. The “minutemen” militia confronted the redcoats, shots broke out, and the Revolution was on.

The park mostly consists of the old road that connected Lexington and Concord. We stop at the Visitor Center for the movie, then follow the route stopping at wayside exhibits along the way. It was anticlimactic: I guess because I had too high expectations for the park. One unexpected highlight was a tour of The Wayside, a house that once was the childhood home of Louisa May Alcott (Little Women) and later Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter). It turns out Concord in the mid 1800’s was the hub of American literary power. Other local authors were Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walden Pond is just a mile away. Now I have some motivation to read some of those early American classics.