Walden Pond - Not 100% Natural

Another notorious not quite 100% natural site is Walden Pond. If you go there today, it is actually a sylvan retreat, but back in Thoreau's day, it was something of an industrial complex:

• Ice Works - The Walden ice works was busy in the winter cutting ice from the lake, wrapping it in straw and shipping it as far as London. So much for ice skating.
• Railroad Works - Concord was one of the first railroad "bedroom" communities and the railroad construction camp was at Walden Pond while Thoreau was communing with nature. (It was the railroads that let the English "lake poets" get up to the Lake District in northern England, but only Tennyson ever wrote a poem admiring the railroads).
• Clay Works - Yup, some of the soil around Walden Pond was good clay, so there were guys digging holes, hauling mud, hitching up horses and so on.We are not exactly sure what gets done at a clay works, besides digging out clay, but this is clearly classified industrial.
• Prose Works - Besides growing beans, Thoreau also cranked out his prose here, when he wasn't designing better pencils.