Below you the Concord River slides beneath a small wooden bridge, quiet now but forever marked as the place where, on April 19, 1775, the American Revolution turned from protest into war. After the confrontation on Lexington Green, the British column marched to Concord and began searching for the military stores the patriots had hidden. As they searched, militia companies from Concord and surrounding towns — more than four hundred men — assembled on the hill above this bridge and watched smoke rising from the town below where the British had set fire to military equipment.
Believing the British were burning the town, the militia commander ordered an advance across the bridge. The British regulars guarding it fired first; the militia returned fire, killing two soldiers and wounding nine more. It was the first time colonial militia had stood their ground and fired on the British Army.
The British retreated; by afternoon, thousands of militia were pouring in from across the countryside, and the running battle back to Boston killed 73 British soldiers and wounded 174 more. Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn, written for the dedication of the battle monument in 1836, gave the shot heard round the world its name. Cross the replica bridge and read the monument.