Concord is unique in three periods of history. Incorporated in 1635, the town was the first Massachusetts settlement away from the tidewater on a non-navigable river. On April 19, 1775, it was the scene of the first battle of the War for Independence -- the American Revolution. During the middle of the nineteenth century, a period aptly called "The Flowering of New England," Concord was home to some of the greatest minds in America. RalphWaldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and his daughter Louisa May Alcott, lived, talked, and wrote in Concord. Because of them, visitors, both literary and transcendental, flocked to this town which became an American Athens.

Settled: Incorporated 1635
Population: 15,551

Area: 26 square miles