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A brief description of the Estabrook Woods
The Estabrook Woods is about 1200 acres of woodland, hills, ledge, and swamp two miles north of Concord village, in both Concord and Carlisle, Massachusetts. The tract is also known by its older name, the Estabrook Country, or by the name given it by Henry Thoreau, the Easterbrooks country.
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The modern Estabrook Woods is not a public park. Its core is Harvard's ecology study area. The woods are mostly privately owned (e.g., by Harvard, Middlesex School, or land trusts; or under conservation restrictions). Some is owned by the towns and by land trusts. Public access is permitted on most (not all) for study, sauntering, and low-impact traditional uses. Please respect research areas and privacy and leave the country better than you found it. As E.O. Wilson says of Estabrook Country, "It is a place not just of soil and rock and trees but also of the mind."
Few people know of the uninhabited Estabrook Country, and many who visit do not visit again because the place is not charismatic. Now modestly wooded and intimate, it is not as starkly beautiful as it was in Thoreau's day. Not being famous has protected it. Still often empty and with a beauty that must be teased out, Estabrook is not hard to get lost in, not hard to be surprised in. Though it was not wilderness even in Thoreau's time, it was his first-named "great wild tract." It became the final resting-place of his Walden house. It is split down its middle by the old Estabrook road, down which Minutemen hurried to join the Concord fight at the North Bridge; it is the only undeveloped Minuteman route.
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Nearby, at the south end of the Estabrook road, is the Minuteman National Historical Park and the North Bridge itself, the start of the American Revolutionary War. |
Nearby to the east are the Concord River and the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Rocky, rough and swampy, Estabrook Country is different from the sandy Walden Woods, and people over the centuries have used and perceived it differently: Emerson called it "the savage fertile houseless land," but his daughter called it "dear Easterbrook."
As the Woods has been bypassed by development for two hundred years, its remarkable historic, natural, and literary history is still accessible. It has been under the observation of naturalists (including Thoreau, Wm. Brewster, R. Heber Howe, Ludlow Griscom, Richard Eaton, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and others) since the 1830s. It contains seventeenth- century colonial and pre-colonial sites and the only undeveloped Minuteman route (the old Estabrook road). It is rich in literary tradition: Henry Thoreau wrote 60,000 words about his Easterbrooks country; Emerson was a frequent walker there, and Ellery Channing wrote poetry about its wilds.
The 670-acre core of the Estabrook Woods (which abuts the proposed but unfortunate Middlesex School development) is owned by Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). It was created by the inspiration of the renowned biologist Ernst Mayr, then the Museum's director. Harvard's name for its part of the woods is the Concord Field Station. Many research projects have been conducted in the Woods, including the post-doctoral research of the current Arnold Arboretum director. Both Ernst Mayr and a Middlesex-graduate educator have written about their educational visions for the Estabrook Woods. Harvard's purchase of the core was made possible by a citizen and community effort in the 1960s, which raised $670,000 from individuals and foundations and was co-chaired by the long-time headmaster of Middlesex School, Monk Terry. Total grants for the Field Station and associated laboratory in Bedford was $32 million.
In the 1960s, the project was hailed
nationwide as an outstanding example of cooperative private
stewardship, demonstrating that public ownership was not always needed to
protect land. Many people believe that at that time Middlesex School shared
that vision and undertook to preserve its portion of Estabrook Woods. (A more
complete discussion of Ernst Mayr's vision and the events of the 1960s is in
the Preservation History page.) (The
photo is of a glacial erratic boulder on the Esker Trail, near Thoreau's
"Boulder Field.")
Since the 1960s, an additional 400 acres in the Woods have been protected (in fee or conservation restriction) by the towns of Concord and Carlisle, state Self-Help Funds ($294,000), or land conservation trusts. Acquisitions continue, including a recent $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service for a conservation restriction in Estabrook. Also, the state acquired agricultural preservation restrictions on adjacent farmland ($1.25 million). Estabrook once served as pastures for these farms, which now link Estabrook Woods to the Concord River, the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, and the Minuteman National Historical Park. This forms a memorable corridor of mixed habitat and traditional landscape.
Thus, in the last 30 years, more than $4.5 million of public and charitable funds have been spent (plus extensive donations of land) to preserve Estabrook Woods and the immediately adjacent land. Furthermore, in 1993, Estabrook Woods was honored with the designation of a "Forest Legacy Area" by the US Secretary of Agriculture on the nomination of the Mass. Department of Environmental Management. Finally and most significantly, January, 1997, after 30 years of citizen effort, Harvard's MCZ permanently protected its 670 acre core as an ecology research site. At that time, EOEA's Secretary Coxe said, "This is a step of permanence," the Secretary said. "This agreement . . . lends itself well to guaranteeing the natural resources and ecosystem base without fear of being disturbed in the future. This is a visionary concept. This extraordinary laboratory, rich in diversity of plants and animals, intact and close to one of Americas largest cities, will be preserved forever."
In October, 2001, Massachusetts in its BioMap designated the Estabrook Woods as one of the state's "Core Habitats," the preservation of which are needed to protect biodiversity. It is a fitting tribute to, and affirmation of, the century of observation and conservation that has occurred on this wild tract.
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