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Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Is Walden Pond a tourist attraction?

BOSTON Globe online article July 2024

Park statistics show that nearly 600,000 people visit

the National Historic Landmark every year since 1962.

Torrential rains that hit in spring and early summer in 

2023 and 2024 submerged the beach right up to the

pond's stone retaining wall.  Between Memorial Day and

Labor Day, Walden's beach is typically teeming, Coney

Island-style, with visitors.

Walden and the nearby Minute Man National Historical

Site are on the National Trust for Historical Preservation's

list of 11 most endangered sites.  It is threatened by an

expansion of Hanscom Field Airport, which could

significantly increase the private jet traffic, leading to

increased noise, vehicular traffic, along with negative 

environmental and climate impacts.  Walden Pond is a

462 - acre park established in 1970s is more forested in

2024 than it was in 1854.  Its famously crystalline waters

are stocked with trout and contain trophy bass. . .

Erosion has become such a problem, wire fencing now

keeps hikers from straying off the main road leading to

around the pond.

Walden's great depth - 102 feet is keeping it keep at bay

the 2 centuries' worth of nutrient-rich sediment now locked

on its bottom . . . Climate change is going to complicate

everything that's happening there; the pond is at risk.

bostonglobe.com/2024/07/22/magazine/at-walden-pond-tensions-can-overtake-tranquility

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