From the heights of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the bards surely look down upon their Concord with pride. The little hamlet, where the nation’s spark of independence was lit on April 19, 1775, brought forth a second uprising in the mid-nineteenth century. With the publication of “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836, Concord launched a revolution of philosophy and literature that made Concord the center of political, literary, and social zeitgeist for over a century.
The Emerson family has been welcoming tourists since the mid-nineteenth century, when writer and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson personally greeted visitors in his study. Emerson’s house, at the Lexington Road and Cambridge Turnpike intersection, was convenient to the Boston stagecoach and remains today only a short walk away from the railroad depot.