Concord [key]. 1 city (2020 pop. 125,410), Contra Costa co., W central Calif.; settled c.1852, inc. 1906. An eastern suburb in the San Francisco Bay area, it has electronics and petroleum-refining industries. A nearby U.S. naval ammunition depot was the site of the devastating Port Chicago explosion of July, 1944.
2 Town (2020 pop. 18,491), Middlesex co., E Mass., a high-income suburb of Boston, on the Concord River; inc. 1635. Electronic, metal, and wood products are made there. The site of the Revolutionary battle of Concord on Apr. 19, 1775 (see Lexington and Concord, battles of), is marked by Daniel Chester French's bronze Minuteman. Concord has many old houses, some opened as memorials to noted occupants—Emerson, the Alcotts, Hawthorne, and Thoreau—who made the town an important intellectual and literary center (see transcendentalism) in the quarter century preceding the Civil War. An antiquarian museum and the Old Manse, built in 1769 by Emerson's grandfather and made famous by Hawthorne, and the place where Ephraim Bull developed the Concord grape are there. Walden Pond, the site of Thoreau's two-year sojourn in the woods, which is described in his Walden (1854), is in Walden Pond State Park.
See W. B. Maynard, Walden Pond: A History (2004).
3 City (2020 pop. 44,019), state capital and seat of Merrimack co., S central N.H., on the Merrimack River; settled 1725–27, inc. as Rumford, Mass., in 1733 (Count Rumford later took his title from this name) and as Concord, N.H., in 1765. Famous for its granite, the city also has printing, millworking, and insurance industries and plants making electronic, metal, dairy, and clay products. It became the state capital in 1808, and its growth was further aided by the building of the Middlesex Canal in 1815. St. Paul's school (preparatory) and the house of Franklin Pierce (a museum) are in Concord. Mary Baker Eddy was born a few miles away, at Bow.
4 City (2020 pop. 105,240), seat of Cabarrus co., central N.C., near the edge of the Piedmont; settled 1796, inc. 1837. In a livestock and grain producing area, it is also a cotton textile center. Other manufactures include plastics, building materials, paper and food products, and optical fibers. Gold discovered nearby in 1799 started the North Carolina gold rush. Concord is the seat of Barber-Scotia College. Lowe's (formerly Charlotte) Motor Speedway, a stock-car track, is there.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. Political Geography
