Our Rivers
The Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord rivers
Like much of New England’s landscape, the current path of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord rivers traces back to the receding glaciers of 15,000 years ago. Large glacial lakes are now watersheds where a growing suburban and urban population depends on the water resources, landscape, and wildlife for their quality of life and livelihoods. These three rivers form the SuAsCo watershed, a tributary to the Merrimack River watershed that flows to the Atlantic Ocean.
Just look, and you will find surprisingly remote and unspoiled sections of each river, their serene beauty providing a respite from the rush of contemporary life.
Famous poets and authors have shared our rivers’ beauty and charm
Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turn aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for a mile above its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist and short story writer
Thoreau read Wordsworth, Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and you got national parks. It took a century for this to happen, for artistic values to percolate down to where honoring the relation of people's imagination to the land, or beauty, or to wild things, was issued in legislation.
Robert Hass, poet laureate of the United States
If it's life you're after—real life, the history of life, the ebb of life, the flow of life—the river is the place.
Robert Thorson, award-winning author, scientist, and journalist
The life in us is like the waters in a river.
Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher
One of Indian summer’s most perfect days, Is dreamily dying in golden haze; Fair Assabet blushes in rosy bliss, Reflecting the sun’s warm good-night kiss.
George Bradford Bartlett, Author 1876–79
Wild & Scenic Designation
Congress designated 29 miles of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord rivers as Wild and Scenic in 1999. The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created in 1968 to preserve rivers with outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, or cultural values. Currently, this system protects the water quality and free-flowing condition of 228 rivers for present and future generations.
Sudbury River
The Sudbury River is a 33-mile-long tributary of the Concord River in eastern Massachusetts, on the western edge of MetroWest Boston. Its headwaters are in the Cedar Swamp in Westborough. From there, it meanders northeast with a gentle flow through mill towns, the city of Framingham, and Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge to its confluence with the Assabet River in Concord. Reservoirs on the Sudbury River once supplied water to the City of Boston.
READ MORE
Assabet River
The Assabet River is a 34.4-mile-long tributary to the Concord River in eastern Massachusetts just west of the Sudbury River. It starts at a 150-foot higher elevation than the Sudbury River at the Assabet Reservoir in Westborough. It then flows northeast through orchards and mill towns, past the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, and merges with the Sudbury River at Egg Rock in Concord.
READ MORE
Concord River
The Concord River is a 16.3-mile-long river in Massachusetts that originates at the confluence of the Sudbury and Assabet rivers in Concord and flows northward to join the Merrimack River in the city of Lowell. One of the most notable small rivers in U.S. history, it flows through Minute Man National Historical Park, where the “shot heard round the world” across North Bridge signaled the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Notable poets and trailblazers lived on its banks, including Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne. Sections in Lowell have a steep drop with whitewater conditions.
READ MORE
River Maps
Recreational guides for Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord rivers are available as a series of single-river maps and as an interactive online map
RIVER MAPSThreats
Centuries of strain on our rivers jeopardize water quality and flow, threatening our communities, wildlife, and water supply
LEARN MORERiver Facts
Discover the hidden stories of our rivers and why they’re vital to our communities and environment!
READ ABOUT OUR RIVERSWild & Scenic
In 1999, Congress honored 29 miles of our rivers as "Wild and Scenic," pledging to preserve their natural beauty for generations
LEARN WHY THAT DESIGNATION MATTERSWildlife
Protecting river wildlife preserves our ecosystem and ensures a vibrant future for all
LEARN ABOUT SuAsCo WILDLIFE