Mill Brook (Massachusetts)

In 1635, English settlers established a village beside lower Mill Brook, with a dam, pond and mill being built the following year at the Milldam.^[2][3]

On the afternoon of April 19, 1775, during the first hours of the American Revolutionary War, it was on a bridge over Elm Brook at Meriam's Corner that British regulars were fired upon for the first time by colonial militia during their retreat from Concord to Boston.^[4] The bridge is now part of Lexington Road.

The Middlesex Central Railroad built a station and laid railroad tracks beside the brook in 1871 and 1872.^[3]

Route 2 was constructed across the highest headwaters, separating the brook from the lower section.^[3]

Between 1964 and 1990, the State of Massachusetts stocked the brook with brook trout.^[3]

Mill Brook Way was established on the old railroad bed in 1975.^[3]

In 1977, Richard T. T. Forman described the brook as "one of the most degraded streams in Concord", with channelization, wetland drainage and the scarcity of fish all being contributing factors.^[5]

Henry David Thoreau mentioned Mill Brook in Journal (1855):^[1]

I walk along the Mill Brook below Emerson's, looking into it for some life. Perhaps what moves us in winter is reminiscence of a far-off summer. How we leap by the side of open brooks! What beauty in the running brooks! What life! What society! The cold is merely superficial; it is the summer still at the core, far, far within.

Poet William Ellery Channing wrote The Mill Brook:^[6]

I like the maples on my side,

Dead leaves, the darling trout; Laconic rocks (they sometime put me out) And moon or stars that ramble with my tide;

The polished air, I think I could abide.