Thoreau Country: Location Note

Mt. Wachusett (Princeton, Mass.)

Caption: A photo taken ca. 1900 showing the openness of the regional landscape near Mt. Wachusett. The photo was taken southeast of the mountain in Oakdale, a hamlet on the B&M between West Boylston and Sterling. Frank Bolles wrote ca. 1890, "Eastward and southward [of the mountain]... the land seemed flat. Most of it was free from forest, but every few miles a dark line or spot told of a grove of pines saved thus far from the destroying hand of this generation of timber thieves." (Bolles from Land of the Lingering Snow (1891). Photo from Mountains of New England, published by Boston and Maine Railroad, n.d. but other photo evidence indicates between 1892 and 1915.)

Caption: "View from Pine Hill over Walden Pond toward Mt. Wachusett," taken April 28, 1906. Wachusetts is at left center. Thoreau's landscape had distant views as a regular experience as people moved about the town. Walden Woods was truly a place of retirement. (Photo by Herbert W. Gleason; copy of image in 1906 edition of Thoreau's Journals.) Click here or on photo for larger image.

 [Prepared by S. Ells, 2/2002.
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