North Bridge Concord: The Shot Heard Round the World

This spot on the Concord River is where the American Revolution became a war. On April nineteenth, seventeen seventy-five, the same morning that fighting began at Lexington, a column of British regulars marched to this bridge to destroy colonial military stores. On the far bank, hundreds of Massachusetts militia had gathered.

When the British fired first and two militiamen fell, the colonists fired back. It was the first time American forces returned fire against the Crown in open battle. Ralph Waldo Emerson later called it the shot heard round the world in his Concord Hymn, written for the completion of the monument here.

The monument here was erected in eighteen thirty-six. The nearby Minute Man National Historical Park preserves the ground where those first volleys crossed the river and changed the course of history.