Lexington and Concord- 250th Anniversary- Saturday, April 19th, 2025

 

Here's some highlights-

• Set alarms to get up at 3:AM (after getting in last night after 11:00)
• Got to Lexington at about 4:00 AM- Signs were very poor.  There were lots of "No Parking" signs, but no directions about where parking should be.  We ended up parking in a nearby Walgreens.
•  At 4:00, the entire perimeter of the re-enactment was already surrounded by people six or more rows deep.  Very hard to see the re-enactment, but we saw what we could.  A very good narrator helped make up for what we couldn't see.
• After the battle (at dawn), explored Lexington a little.  Got t-shirt and pin and Lexingon Visitor Center.   Pictures by the Minuteman statue.
• Found  a bus to take us to Concord.  The bus were a confused jumble (to put it nicely).  There was way more confusion in the bus lines than there needed to be.
• Got to the Concord Museum, which includes an "April 19th Gallery," with many artifacts that were at the battle or related to it.
• Tried to find a bus to the Old North Bridge and couldn't.  Had to walk through the entire length of the town to get there, while the big Patriot's Day parade was going on.
• Toured around the Old North Bridge area and had a great conversation about the day with a National Park ranger on the bridge itself.
• Couldn't find a bus back to Concord or Lexington, so we had to walk through the town again.  That gave Scott a chance to buy a Concord t-shirt, anyway.
• Finally found a bus to get us back to Lexington and our car.  Went back to the hotel room.  It about 3:00 when we got back, so that's about what we were figuring when we were planning the day.  We'll spend the rest of the day at or near the hotel.
• All-in-all, it was a great day, and we were glad we made it here.

 Added later:

    The website for Lexington 250 said that people should plan on arriving between 3:30 and 4:00.  We caught what sleep we could and both of our phones went off at 3:00.  We shook ourselves up and were out the door.  Finding parking was very hard.  Scott had looked for parking information previously, but wasn't able to find any.  We figured we would see signs to places where they had satellite parking lots and shuttles.  We did not see them.  We ended up parking in a Walgreen's lot, where we knew we probably shouldn't be, but we didn't know what else to do.  We walked to the Battle Green and were there by four.  It was already more than six people deep all around the perimeter of the green, making it very difficult to see.  We were near where the television station (Channel 10, Boston's NBC affiliate) had set up with a large Jumbo-tron screen.  We didn't really want to come all this way to watch the event on a screen, so we pushed forward to see what we could see.  Scott found it difficult to orient himself to where he was standing.  He could see the large flagpole but since it was dark, he had no idea where the Minuteman statue was.  We usually see the statue first when we've visited in the past.  Finally when the dawn started to brighten the sky and the narration started, he was able to see the Minuteman's back and suddenly had the map in his mind snap into place.  We were facing south.  Buckhorn Tavern, an important building that still stands today, was to our right and the British would be arriving on the field from that direction- the east, our right.

     During the battle, even though we could only see glimpses of the action, the narration was very good.  The scene was set at the women and children tried to leave the town.  Mounted riders were sent out to inform the colonial forces about the impending arrival of the British soldiers.  The Minutemen called their role and each reenactor spoke the name of one of the men on the field that day.  Brian and Scott were slightly separated by the crowd.  Brian said some of his best views came from when a guy in front of him held up his phone to take videos over the top of people and Brian could see the phone's screen.  Scott couldn't see much of the colonial line at all, but had a good view of the British forces as they began to arrive.  The battle was about as close to a one-to-one recreation of the day as was practically possible.  There were supposed to be 400 British at the original battle with 300 more arriving, and Scott believes that they easily had those numbers.  And even though they had arrived from many reenacting units from the US and Britain, their uniforms and drill looked great.  Brian, of course, was appreciating hearing the story of the drummer, William Diamond, who sounded the assembly to call the colonials together to face the oncoming British.  The officers wore microphones, so we could hear them plainly.  The British officer gave the order for the colonials to disperse and return to their homes.  The colonists stood fast.  In the tense seconds that followed someone fired a shot.  No one knows who and each side would later claim that it was the other.  In today's re-enactment, I think the shot came from out of Buckhorn Tavern.  Wherever it came from, the British started firing, and eight colonials were killed and more were wounded.  

     The crowd of spectators began dispersing as the battle reenactment ended.  We made our way to the end of the green to get pictures by the Minuteman statue and managed to get into the Lexington Visitors Center.  Scott bought a Lexington 250 shirt and pin there.  While we were there, Brian heard the announcement that the shuttle buses to Concord leave from "Park and Clarke," which turned out the be the corner of Park Avenue and Clarke Street.  We used the phone to get back to Walgreens and then made it our way to the other side of Lexington to catch that bus. 

     The shuttle bus situation was confusing at best.  It did not seem like the coordinators at Lexington and Concord or any of the surrounding towns were cooperating as well as they should have.  Lexington had some school buses running as shuttles.  Concord had a separate system.  Then there were neighboring towns like Carlisle that seemed to have their own buses coming and going.  There should have been a master map of routes, with stops marked like subway stops.   Just waiting among the crowds gathering to try to get onto a bus was hard and frustrating.  At one point in the day, in Concord, the crowds were pushing to get onto a bus in a way that was almost scary.  It wouldn't have taken much for someone to get seriously hurt.  We were trying to get on that bus, but it wasn't even the right one, and we had to get off and go somewhere else. 

    Anyway, this first bus took us to the Concord Museum.  It was not one of the places that we had on our "must do" lists, but we were there and decided to go in.  We were glad we did.  It was has an amazing collection.  There were many artifacts there from that April 19th day, 250 years ago, including guns and powder horns.  The Minutemen at Concord were given the order to put fresh flints in their guns and the old flints that they discarded were found and are on display.  There's an entire room called the April 19th Gallery on the second floor that is dedicated to the events of that day, so it was a great stop for us.  The clock from the Buckhorn Tavern is there and can be heard to chime with the same sounds that the Minutemen heard that morning.  We watched a six minute animated map presentation and were impressed with it.  Scott heard a docent saying that "all the middle school teachers want this to use," so he had to go ask what it was.  It was a QR code that links to an online version of this same map.  Scott was excited to get it too.  The map includes the rides of Paul Revere and Williams Dawes and others, the fight at Lexington and the fight at Concord at the Old North Bridge.  But one of the points that it really drives home is that the fight at the bridge was really only the opening of the much large fight that happened that day.  Most of the British several hundred casualties on the British side came from their retreat from Concord to Boston.  The militia from the surrounding countryside converged on them as they were marching back, firing at them from behind rocks and trees.  This part of the battle is now called "Battle Road."  The bridge may be the iconic spot, but the real fighting and suffering was on this road.    

     There was a lot more to see at the museum.  Concord is justifiably famous for its literary community which included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and others and there are some fascinating artifacts in this museum's collections from them but Scott and Brian both agreed that it was hard to read the displays because they were both running on so little sleep.  Over the course of the morning, they often laughed at how their entire perception of time had been thrown off.  "What is it now, like 4 or 5:00?"  "No, it's only 10:00 AM!" "What?!?"  That sort of thing happened all day long.   It was late enough for an early lunch though, so we got something to eat at the food trucks by the museum.

     Anyway, we were done at the museum and wanted to get to the Old North Bridge.  The bus thing wasn't working for us, so we decided to try to walk to it, on the other side of town.  The Patriots Day parade was going as we made our way through town, and we walked past it for most of the way.  It gave us something to look at but we also had to work our way through the crowds.   We saw the Naval Academy band and the band from University of Massachusetts Minutemen marching band.

     Protests against Trump were happening all across the United States this weekend.  We didn't know that specifically, but we were noticing the large number of signs that people had this weekend.  Most of them were playing on the day's theme of "No Kings!"   "Sic Semper Tyrannis" and things like that.  Some of them were pretty creative, like one that said "1775- No to redcoats.  2025- No to red hats."   There were lawn signs out that said, "In America, the Law is King," a quote from Thomas Paine.  Rachel Maddow noted that someone was projecting a slogan onto that Old North Church that said, "One if by land, Two if by D.C." 

     The stop at the Old North Bridge was worth it.  It is the iconic spot where the Minutemen had been assembling all morning since before the battle of Lexington.  They fought the British here and started their painful retreat back to Boston.  We had a great time having a leisurely chat with a NPS ranger on the bridge itself.  He set the stage for us, and was a great guy to talk to.   It was about noon (though it felt more like six or seven).  He chatted with him for a while.  He usually works at Saratoga, but they brought in a lot of extra help for today.   He clarified which way things happened at the bridge.  The British were coming from the south where the town of Concord was, and came to the west side of the bridge.  The Patriots fought them there at about 9 AM.  The British had come to Concord because they were looking for weapons and supplies that the militia was stockpiling.  Scott said he knew that's what they were looking for, but asked if they ever found any of them.  The ranger said, they found some but not all.  Since this wasn't the first time that the British had made a raid like this and it wasn't exactly a secret, a lot of their weapons had been moved, but the British were able to capture some things including some tents and even wooden plates and spoons, implying that the militia was preparing for a long campaign, not just the quick battles of April 19.

 

    There was a NPS visitor's center that we stopped at here, and we were hoping to get a bus back to somewhere, but that didn't happen and we ended up walking back.  The parade was over by this point.   At Wright's Tavern, near the center of town, we found the tent selling Concord 250 merchandise, so Scott got a t-shirt here too.   There was a beer garden set up adjacent to the tavern that had promoted itself with the tagline, "Drink a Sam Adams where Sam Adams drank," but we were both ready to leave.  We continued walking to the Concord Museum and worked to get on to a bus that would take us back to Lexington (we hoped).  There were lots of little incidents on that ride that we won't go into here.  Suffice it to say that we got back to Lexington and than had to walk across town to get to where our car was at the Walgreens.  By now, Lexington's parade was in full swing, so we had to work against those crowds as well.  We made it to the car and back to our hotel.  We blasted the air conditioning because the day had become quite warm.  We turned on the TV and the Lexington parade was still going so we watched the end of that from the comfort of the room. 

     There was a lot going on this weekend and we left with a few regrets of things we just weren't able to see.  Our bus from Concord to Lexington passed the reenactment of the "Battle Road," but after our experience with the crowds in Lexington this morning we decided not to try that at all.  Maybe the crowds wouldn't have been as much of an issue because we could see them seated on a hillside, but it was still pretty late in the day-- at least it felt like that to us.  There was another drone show scheduled this evening in Concord, but even though last night's was very impressive, we knew that we weren't going to make it to 8:30 for that.  We relaxed in the hotel room and than went to an upscale restaurant across from our hotel in the evening.  We were glad we did the weekend, though.  The park ranger on the Concord bridge asked "Where else would you rather be?"  We had asked ourselves that same phrase many times today.  (Scott later used Google Maps to estimate that we walked more than five miles today.)