About Walden Pond

Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts is really more of a lake than a pond. It is 1/2 mile long and a little less than 1/2 mile wide. It covers about 62 acres and it's 105 feet deep. The water is clean. No streams flow into the pond, and there is no development around it, just trees. The level of the pond is the level of the water table so it doesn't change much. Walden was formed by an enormous glacier more than 10,000 years ago. When the glacier melted, it left a steep-sided basin or "kettle hole". This was the same glacier that dug out the Great Lakes.

Right now Walden Pond looks like a big, frozen field. There is a frozen swamp next to it. Around the pond you can find gray squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, raccoons, skunks and red foxes. Minnows, crayfish, frogs, sunfish, perch and smallmouth bass live in the pond. It is also stocked with rainbow trout so people can fish here.

Walden Pond is famous because of Henry David Thoreau's book, Walden, written about his two year stay in a small cabin next to the pond. He wanted to live simply on his own and close to nature. He measured the depth of the pond by putting a rock at the end of a string and dropping the string to the bottom of the pond.