Punkatasett Hill Photo Album

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Punkatasset Hill photo album

One spring morning, Concord's Musketaquid Arts Festival opened with a dawn gathering at Hutchins Pond, at the foot of Punkatasset Hill near Monument Street, Concord. People walked to the gathering along the old Two Rod Road.

A flute played and scholar Thomas Blanding read from Thoreau's journals about the passing of the seasons.

Behind us, running under the old road, we could hear the shallow millrace on Sawmill Brook.

Thoreau had written about a similar race just upstream, at his father's pencil mill, where Estabrook's cedars were cut:
"Where the rapids commence, at the outlet of the pond, the water is singularly creased as it rushes to the fall--like braided hair as the poet has it. I did not see any inequalities in the rock it rushed over which could make it so plaited" (April 21, 1852).

The 1906 view from the top. Punkatasset used to be more open, with spacious views. Thoreau, Emerson, Channing, and their friends could see the "far blue hills" on the western horizon. These were small New England mountains (e.g., Wachusett, Monadnock and others) which led their poetic imaginations outward. There is the suggestion of Monadnock in the center-left horizon. Click here for larger image (36K).

This photograph is the only early photo of overall Easterbrooks country. It shows its apparently wooded condition at about 1906, when Herbert Gleason took it ["The Mountains from Ponkawtasset," reproduced from from Journals , 1906 ed.]. Other Gleason photographs in Estabrook, though, show it contained then a mix of old pastures, sprout lands, woods, and berry patches growing back to the forest that now exists.

Looking to the northeast, before 1906, Gleason took this "View of Ball's Hill and Flood Plain from Punkatasset Hill." (from Journals, 1906 edition). It shows the broad farmland, some now preserved as the Hutchins farm. The Concord River is in its spring flood. The serpentine line of trees marks its channel, with the Great Meadows (now a National Wildlife Refuge) flooded beyond. The village of Bedford is in the distance and Monument Street is in the left foreground.

For larger image, click here. This pastoral scene is quite different from the uninhabited Estabrook Country shown in the previous picture, a landscape which Emerson once called, "The savage, fertile, houseless land."

Punkatasset Hill in the Revolutionary War. Early on April 19, 1775, it was to the slopes of Punkatasset that the outnumbered militia and minutemen from the early-responding towns (e.g., Concord, Lincoln, etc.) retreated before the advancing Regulars. There the minutemen awaited reinforcements, such as those from now-Carlisle that came down the old Estabrook road. As the photo shows, they could see the North Bridge and other parts of the town, across the more open countryside. When sufficient forces had arrived, they formed up in ranks and moved to a position above the North Bridge. So it could be said that the first in-ranks advance by the to-be American army came from Punkatasset out of the Easterbrook country. Click for other images.

The Punkatasset house and great elm of Minot Pratt, Thoreau's friend

First, click for a legible version of Thoreau's wonderful description of this oak-type elm. Thoreau often passed by this eighty-five-foot American Elm in Minot Pratt's dooryard as he entered Estabrook Country. This elm also sheltered the corn-huskings and gatherings attended by Louisa May Alcott and her friends and the picnics of transcendentalists. The house (now Robb's) still exists at the foot of Punkatasset. (From a photograph ca. 1890, probably by Ralph Holden, now the cover of The Seasons in Estabrook Country.) The quotation is from Thoreau's Journal of Jan. 4, 1853, at the end of a cold day surveying in Estabrook.

The Birches at Minot Pratt's

The birches. While boarding in 1846 at Minot Pratt's, the young Geoge William Curtis wrote to a friend, "It is very pleasant here at Minot's. The family are still, the household goes smoothly on, and we live in a house 150 years old under a tree of apparently almost equal age, and looking across a green meadow to a clump of pines and birches beyond. The scenery in Concord is gentle but pleasant. I have become attached to it as a taciturn friend who has no splendid burst of passion but wears always a soft smile."

Minot Pratt's house still stands at the foot of Punkatasset Hill, on Monument Street (now Robb's), as do these remnants of the birch grove mentioned in Curtis's letter. The woods behind are the Estabrook Woods and Punkatasset looms at the right. Click for larger image .

Minot Pratt's Spring

In 1982, Ray Angelo rediscovered Minot Pratt's spring. Pratt was an amateur botanist and planted many usual species in natural settings, such as at this spring. According to local legend, Pratt was honored by a visit from the famous Harvard botanist Asa Gray and took him to visit his prize spring. In 1999, Ray returned (below) to the spring with botanist Richard Eaton's children and found unusual species, the descendents of Pratt's efforts; thus, Ray believes this to be the "Asa Gray Spring" of local legend. (Click for a wider image.) It is a wonderful, secret spot.

Thoreau had described the spring as "Perhaps the most natural well of them all..., filling an oblong cavity between upright rocks." By intervening with a bulldozer in 1982, Ray prevented the spring's destruction, but it has been disturbed since 1982: compare the 1999 photo with another 1982 photo [click here] (taken by Ray's 1982 companions, the Hines)--the flat rock that bridged the spring's outflow in 1982 seems to have been displaced. It is not clear whether this spring is on protected land.

White pine grove near Punkatasset.

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	One spring morning, Concord's Musketaquid Arts Festival opened with a dawn gathering at Hutchins Pond, at the foot of Punkatasset Hill near Monument Street, Concord. People walked to the gathering along the old Two Rod Road.
	A flute played and scholar Thomas Blanding read from Thoreau's journals about the passing of the seasons.
	Behind us, running under the old road, we could hear the shallow millrace on Sawmill Brook.
Thoreau had written about a similar race just upstream, at his father's pencil mill, where Estabrook's cedars were cut: "Where the rapids commence, at the outlet of the pond, the water is singularly creased as it rushes to the fall--like braided hair as the poet has it. I did not see any inequalities in the rock it rushed over which could make it so plaited" (April 21, 1852).