American Frontier Soundscapes

Rehearing the Old West

Abstract

Our journey starts on the East Coast in the mid-1800s. Henry David Thoreau’s cabin was nestled among the Concord, Massachusetts’ woods less than one quarter mile away from the Fitchburg Railroad stop. The train crossed near the southern tip of the pond, and its morning arrival was often cloaked by its own billowing clouds of smoke and the woods that stood between society and Thoreau (1884: “Solitude”)...