Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Minute Man National Historical Park
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1966. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The main road from Lexington to Concord, called in early times " the Bay-road,'* passed through the northerly part of Lincoln and by Captain Smith's house. Probably he was the first to receive intelligence that the royal forces were in motion.”
History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (1880). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1966 · category: District · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.66000935- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
HE town of Lincoln is a collection of hills in the heart of Middlesex County. Its centre is about thirteen and one half miles west-northwest from the state house, and its territory is bounded nortli by Bedford, easterly by Lexington and Waltham, southerly by Weston and Wayland, and northwesterly by Concord. Its greatest length is upwards of five, and its greatest breadth about three and one half, miles, and it embraces about eight thousand five hundred acres. The hill on which the meetinghouse stands is four hundred and seventy feet above high-water mark at Boston, and though there are other hills of greater altitude, it is believed to be the highest land in the county whereon men have built themselves habitations. From the summit of this hill, in fine weather, the prospect extends from the seminary buildings in Andover to the churches in Hopkinton, and from Bunker Hill Monument to the New Hampshire hills.
Sandy Pond, a beautiful sheet of water, lies on the western side of the town, and a fine tract of arable land extends from the centre of Lincoln to the borders of Wayland, the quality of which was well known to the Indians, and they repeatedly petitioned to have a town on the easterly shore of Sandy Pond, or the westerly side of Beaver Swamp. The southwestern border of the town is washed for more than a mile by the sluggish waters of Concord River. Brooks which are tributaries to the Concord, Charles, and Shawshiiic rise and flow out, but not a tubful of water comes into the town from any source except the rains and dews of heaven. Two of these brooks acquire sufficient force and volume before leaving the town to furnish water-power for saw and grist mills, and a small mill for sawing marble taken from a quarry near by existed here many years ago ; but the business was not remunerative. Tlie inhabitants of Lmcoln are occupied witli
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 38 fires within 5 miles of Minute Man National Historical Park between
1992 and 2020, burning about 26 acres in total. 1 started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
15
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
13
Railroad operations and maintenance
4
Recreation and ceremony
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Other causes
1
Natural
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,164 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Minute Man National Historical Park between 1898 and
1975: 509 Animalia, 365 Plantae, 267 Fungi, 8 Chromista, 6 Unrecorded, 5 Bacteria, 4 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A. B. Seymour, A. B. Seymour & M. D. Feigley and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
8 workings within 5 miles of Minute Man National Historical Park: 6 past producers, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Concord, the town this property stands in, in 36 storm reports between 1997 and 2024: 26 thunderstorm wind, 4 flood, 3 lightning, 1 hail.
The reports record 12 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A tornado developed within an area of showers and thunderstorms moving through southern New England. This tornado touched down near the Cambridge Turnpike and headed northeast. Most of the damage was concentrated in an area beginning near the intersection of Lexington Road and Alcott Road and continuing up to the neighborhood of Alcott and Independence Roads. Numerous trees were uprooted or had the tops sheared off. These subsequently blocked roads, damaged homes, and downed power lines, cutting off power to the neighborhood. In addition, utility poles were downed either from the wind or from the downed power lines. Thirty-nine houses in this area were damaged to some degree. Only one house suffered significant structural damage. The tornado continued for a short distance beyond this neighborhood before lifting. The historical home of Louisa May Alcott and her family was right next to the tornado path but was not damaged.
Trees, wires, and poles were downed throughout Concord, closing several roads, including: Elm Street, Crescent Street, MacArthur Road, and Ornac Road near Route 2.
Sudbury Road in Concord was flooded at Heath's Bridge. The Cambridge Turnpike was also flooded. In Framingham, the intersection of Routes 126 and 9 was flooded. A car was stranded in flood waters on Bent Road in Sudbury.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
168 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is reproduced in full on its own page, word for word and never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 66000935, 1 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
