The Town of Lincoln was incorporated in 1754. Brooks Road was already in existence; the Brooks family were one of the first settlers of what is now north Lincoln.

Just 21 years later, in April of 1775, Lincoln found itself at the center of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. British soldiers, headquartered in Boston, learned that colonial militias were stockpiling weapons in Concord, and began a 20-mile march to Concord to confiscate them. Their march took them just a hundred yards or so from the current location of 41 Brooks Road.

Paul Revere, along with fellow patriots William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, rode out to warn the various town militias. Revere was arrested in Lincoln, a little more than a mile from here, but by then enough colonials had been warned to continue spreading the word. The British met a sizable force of colonial militias at the Old North Bridge, where the first shots of the revolution were fired -- in Ralph Waldo Emerson's words, "the shot heard round the world".

The British turned back, and began a long retreat through Concord, Lincoln, Lexington, and Arlington, being sniped at by colonial militias the entire way, including one major battle at the Lexington town green. The path of this retreat, along present-day Route 2A, is known as the "Battle Road". The fiercest fighting, other than the Battle of Lexington, took place at a turn in the Battle Road not far from here, now known as the "Bloody Angle" (see map below).

In the early 1800s, the land of 41 Brooks Road was part of a farm. The farmhouse of the farm, today called the Noah Brooks Tavern, is the yellow home around the corner on Route 2A. The land became an orchard, and continued to be an active orchard until well into the 20th century. In the photos below, you can see the farm in a pre-World War II aerial photo, and a GoogleMaps sattelite view of the same area today. Note the rows of apple trees in the black-and-white photo. 41 Brooks Road is circled in red on the newer map.

In 1960, the farmhouse and the land was owned by the Rogers family, who decided to subdivide the land and create seven house lots. But at that same time, development of Boston's suburbs was reaching the Lincoln area. Concerned that history was being lost, Congress formed the Minuteman National Historic Park to preserve the "Battle Road" and its surrounding landscapes and historic sites. As land was purchased to form the National Park, four of those lots were purchased by the Park Service and incorporated into the park. (Lots 4 through 7 on the subdivision plan below.) The remaining three lots were eventually built, including 41 Brooks Road. The cul-de-sac that would have served Lots 3 and 7 was never built; instead, Lot 3 (41 Brooks Road) was granted a perpetual easement through the National Park for a driveway.

Today, you can walk from here to visit much of the history of the birth of America. You can witness battle re-enactments during Patriots Day weekend in April, or see how revolutionary era people lived and worked during the National Park's Colonial Day weekend in October. And even today, although the land hasn't been an active orchard for about 50 years, there are still numerous living apple trees on the land of the old Brooks farm; when they bloom in May, they turn the entire landscape into a pinkish-white wonderland.