Help Reduce Air Traffic over Walden Woods and Walden Pond

For seventeen years, the Walden Woods Project has led a successful, internationally-supported initiative to protect the historic and ecologically sensitive land that inspired Henry David Thoreau.  While our work has focused on preventing inappropriate commercial development that would dissolve the fabric of this internationally-revered landscape, we now turn our attention to a new and formidable threat.
 

Hanscom Field, a large general aviation airport located only a mile from Walden Woods, is operated by Massport, a state authority.  Historically, the airport has served only general aviation traffic.  It abuts Minuteman National Historic Park.  The only access to the airport is via Battle Road within the National Park—the road used by the Minutemen during the Revolutionary War.  Other historic sites, such as the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are very close to Hanscom.
 

A large percentage of flights arriving and departing Hanscom fly directly over the Thoreau Institute, Walden Woods, and Walden Pond.  Scholars using the Institute’s library are forced to tolerate the roar of airplanes passing overhead.  Education programs at the Institute are frequently interrupted by aircraft noise.  The 600,000 people who visit Walden Pond and Walden Woods each year to escape from the noise of the city, to walk on the pastoral trails that Thoreau walked, to experience the beauty of the setting that inspired such extraordinary nature writing, are now exposed to the same noise they sought to escape.  The situation will only get worse if additional flights are permitted.

LINKS

Massport - Hanscom field

Minuteman National Historic Park

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