Old North Bridge - Nearby Sites

Nearby Sites

Among the natural areas near North Bridge are Egg Rock 0.5 miles southwest (upstream) at the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers, where they form the Concord River. Just 0.7 miles downstream from the bridge is a portion of the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, an outstanding New England birdwatching location with a trail. Punkatasset Hill is northwest of the bridge and is where the colonial militias watched the British forces at the bridge. The hill is adjacent to Estabrook Woods, a wild tract of more than 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) of woodland, hills, ledge, and swamp that used to be visited by Henry David Thoreau.

A mansion was built over looking the bridge in 1911 by Stedman Buttrick, a great great grandson of Major John Buttrick who led the colonial forces to the bridge when they were fired upon by the British. In 1962 the National Park Service bought the mansion, its once extensive flower garden and surrounding land from the Buttrick family. It uses the building for a visitor center and administrative offices. Although the gardens created and cared for by Stedman Buttrick and his son Stedman have suffered since their purchase by the Park Service they were once grand enough to have been featured in a 15 page article in the May 1959 issue of National Geographic magazine.

The Old Manse, Emerson's ancestral home and later residence of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, is immediately adjacent to the North Bridge.

On the east side of Monument Street, where the pedestrian crosswalk from the parking lot goes to the allée leading to the bridge, is chiseled in blocks a line from Emerson's address at the 1875 dedication of French's Minuteman statue alluding to how the local resistance to the King's troops had far-reaching effects: "The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground, / but the light of it fills the horizon."