Walden Pond’s makeover: Renovations bring accessibility to Thoreau’s haven

The main beach area at Walden Pond in Concord will be closed for the summer for a $6.1 million renovation aimed at improving visitor safety and accessibility while curtailing environmental contamination.

The pond, made famous by Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden; or, Life in the Woods,” hosts about 600,000 visitors each year. Yet, the area’s lack of accessible bathrooms meant that visitors would use the pond as a natural toilet.

The nutrients in human waste fuel floating microscopic algae, which if left unchecked, could harm the natural weeds in the pond, destabilizing the historic site and making it unsafe to swim in. Curt Stager, a professor of natural sciences at Paul Smith’s College in New York, who spends every August measuring the temperature and oxygen levels at Walden, said the partial closure of the beach and fewer visitors can be a short-term fix to its environmental problems.

“We risk loving that pond to death, but at the same time we are more aware of how we can harm it,” Stager said.

Walden Pond is a well-known summer vacation spot largely because of its closeness to Downtown Boston, making it an ideal location for swimming, paddle boarding and trout fishing. While it is very different from the tranquil setting in Thoreau’s 1854 book, young families, groups of teenagers and retirees frequently crowd the small shore, hoping to absorb some vitamin D.

The pond won’t be completely inaccessible this summer: visitors can still enjoy Red Cross Beach an unguarded swimming area.

For the renovation, the two-story bathhouse from 1947 will be replaced by a one-story “net-zero” structure, with three added family restrooms.

There will also be native plantings added to the pond’s east bank to improve erosion, according to Nathaniel Tipton, DCR project manager. Walden Pond has struggled with changing water levels and heavy foot traffic from nearby hiking trails for years. During the renovations, 190 trees and 7,000 shrubs, plants and herbaceous plugs will be planted for runoff control. DCR also plans to use some of the cut-down pine and red oak wood to construct the site.

Along with mitigating erosion, Tipton said that the replanting will protect the slope between the bathhouse and the nearby boat ramp. These efforts will help preserve the pond, since storm waters carrying pollutants will be absorbed by the ground before reaching the water.

“The purpose of this project is to create an accessible and sustainable facility that people of all abilities will be able to use for years to come,” a DCR spokesperson said.

Frank Formica, 64, from Woburn, laid on top of a thin towel on the rocky shore of Red Cross Beach on Wednesday after a long sunny swim in Walden Pond. Wearing a Neoprene shirt, he overlooked the water with a bright blue cane and a shiny red mobility bike by his side.

Formica, who is handicapped and has been going to Walden since the ‘70s, knows the struggles of walking down the sloped path to the beach area all too well. He has been diagnosed with cancer four times, and has a severe spinal injury. He is happy with the renovations, which should improve disability and emergency service access.

“This pond has healing qualities,” Formica said.

Lorena Lorenzo, from Hanscom Air Force Base, said that she is happy with the modernization of the beach access.

“I’m always inside a building,” said Lorenzo, who is a registered nurse and was looking for a mommy-daughter date with her young daughter. “I just like to be connecting to nature.”

David Backer, who visits the pond with his wife and granddaughter, said he is looking forward to the renovations, and that the pond should stay as open and accessible as possible. Backer ran the summer Environmental Science Program in Newton for 18 years, and would encourage teenagers to visit Walden.

“A lot of the kids were indoor kids. A lot of screen time. And so they had to be kind of coerced to get into the program. But by the end of the program, they were already talking about coming back, because they understood and they appreciated the outdoors,” Backer said.

Despite the loud excavators and fencing, visitors from all over New England will continue to search for their own version of tranquility at Walden, even if this summer is a little noisier than usual.