On July 4, 1845, Henry Thoreau retreated to a tiny hut by Walden Pond, 15 miles west of Boston. Here, for two years, he exercised his choice “not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth century.” The resulting book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, appeared in 1854. Only a few hundred copies sold, and the obscure, 44-year-old Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862.

Since then, Thoreau’s testament to self-reliance, deliberate living, and transcendental awareness has become an American classic. At the same time, the modest body of water upon which he sought solitude has morphed into a cultural icon, one of our country’s most famous and abused sacred spaces.

In Walden Pond, W. Barksdale Maynard — who teaches architectural history at Johns Hopkins and the University of Delaware — contemplates the 62-acre kettle hole in all its guises. Here we have Walden as literary mecca, environmental landmark, and cause celebre. Here we also have the pond as litter-strewn bathing beach, political volleyball, and object of parochial infighting.

Conservation has always been an issue at the pond. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s motives were entirely ecological when, in 1844, he purchased the small slice of waterfront upon which Thoreau would one day build. The Fitchburg Railway had just cut tracks through the woods beside Walden. A local tradesman had set up a sawmill not far from the pond, there to convert ancient chestnuts into ties for the train tracks.

Despite Emerson’s best effort, the real abuse of Walden was yet to come. During the latter 19th century, the proprietors of the Fitchburg Railroad built an excursion park by the pond: concessions, swings, baseball fields. This park closed in 1902, but in 1913 the town of Concord hired lifeguards and began offering swimming lessons. A large bathhouse went up in 1917. Ultimately, during the last decade of the 20th century, the crowded swimming hole lay ringed by ever-tighter circles of sprawl, abutted by the town landfill, and threatened with still more development.

Such was the situation when rocker Don Henley formed the Walden Woods Project, a well-funded effort to protect Thoreau’s terrain from further desecration. Henley’s successful struggles against several would-be developers — among them Mort Zuckerman, who sought to build a massive office complex on Brister’s Hill, near Thoreau’s bean field — generated headlines worldwide. Recently, Henley’s organization has been instrumental in funding reclamation of the landfill.

Near the end of his narrative, Maynard quotes Concord resident and avid Thoreauvian Tom Blanding, who describes the pond as a symbol and indicator of where we are culturally. Pilgrims go away disappointed by Walden’s domestication: the crowds, the bathhouse, the trucks rumbling loudly down Route 126 in plain sight of birdwatchers and hikers. “But if Walden is disappointing,” says Blanding, “that is because Walden is true. It shows where our society stands in relation to nature.”

Edward J. Renehan, Jr.

Renehan’s books include The Secret Six, The Lion’s Pride, The Kennedys at War, and John Burroughs: An American Naturalist.