Inside Hapgood Wright Town Forest, a conservation area in Concord, Massachusetts, you've reached Fairyland Pond. This popular spot is notable for its old-growth forest and for its ties to the town’s literary past: the area appears in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their contemporaries. The name “Fairyland” probably dates to the 1850s and is said to come from Emerson’s children and their playmates, among them Louisa May Alcott, who lived nearby.
What you see now is an artificial pond created in the late 19th century when a dam was constructed; the dam’s drainage culvert was rebuilt in 2011. The water that feeds the pond begins about 500 feet to the south at Brister’s Spring, named for Brister Freeman, a freed slave whom Thoreau mistakenly identified as “Scipio” or “Sippio” Brister. The site of Brister’s house is marked as part of the Drinking Gourd Project, which commemorates Concord’s role in the abolitionist movement, and the whole place was considered significant by Emerson.
Notice the dam's culvert, rebuilt in 2011, and Brister's Spring where the pond's water begins, named for Brister Freeman.