History of Acton, Massachusetts
Encyclopedia
Acton, Massachusetts
is a small town west of Boston in an area that has records of human habitation which stretch back 7000 years. Acton citizens had a significant role in the battle of Battle of Lexington and Concord, the prelude to the American Revolution. Acton's history reflects the major events that were occurring in Massachusetts, New England, the United States, and the world.
Before the English colonists settled in this area, the Massachuset tribe of the Algonquins lived in eastern Massachusetts. The group who lived in the Acton area were members of the Pawtucket
people. They practiced swidden agriculture
where they would use a field for several years until soil fertility dropped and then move to another field.
Around 1615, an epidemic killed almost 90% of the Native Americans in eastern Massachusetts. The description of the symptoms lead current historians to believe that this disease was viral hepatitis
introduced by European traders and sailors. The epidemic had such a huge impact because the native residents had no resistance to European diseases. A smallpox
epidemic swept through in 1633 and further devastated the region.
In the mid-17th century, colonists began a program of converting Native Americans to Christianity. The converted Indians were settled into towns which were known as 'Praying Indian Towns'. One of these towns (Nashobah) was located on the land around Fort Pond from Nagog Pond around both sides south to Fort Pond Hill. The eastern part of Nashobah straddles the town line between Acton and Littleton. http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/praying.html Nashobah was also known as Newtown resulting in the present-day confusion of Newtown Road Acton and Newtown Road Littleton, both of which lead to the north slope of Fort Pond Hill.
When King Philip's War
(1675–1676) broke out, the Praying Indians were considered with suspicion by the colonists. In October, 1675, the General Council in Boston ordered that all Praying Indians be removed from their towns and taken to Deer Island in Boston Harbor. They were released in 1677 when King Philip's War was over.
Residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were required to attend Sunday Services and to support through taxation the colony's official religion: Congregationalism. With travel along colonial roads difficult, the Sunday attendance requirement became a burden for the residents of what would become Acton. These residents petitioned the Colony's legislature, the General Court, for the right to have their own meeting house (aka Church) and hire their own minister. With the approval of the General Court, Acton was incorporated as an independent town on July 3, 1735. Acton has held Annual Town Meetings since 1735 and the records of those Town Meetings are held at Acton's Memorial Library (http://www.actonmemoriallibrary.org/histcoll.htm).
At the beginning of the American Revolutionary War
, on April 19, 1775, a company of minutemen from Acton responded to the call to arms initiated by Paul Revere
(who rode with other riders, William Dawes
and Samuel Prescott
, with Prescott the only one of the three who was able reach Acton itself) and fought at the North Bridge in Concord as part of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The Acton minutemen were led by Captain Isaac Davis. When a company was needed to lead the advance on the bridge which was defended by the British regulars, Captain Davis was heard to reply, "I haven't a man who is afraid to go."
The colonists advanced on the bridge; the men from Acton in the front lines, since they were the onn;y company completely outfitted with bayonettes, and in the exchange of musket
fire that followed, Captain Isaac Davis and Private James Hayward were killed and Abner Hosmer, also of Acton, was mortally wounded. Thus Isaac Davis was the first officer to die in the American Revolutionary War.
Each year on Patriot's Day (the 3rd Monday in April), the Acton Minutemen lead a march from Acton Center to the Old North Bridge in Concord. This route is known as the 'Isaac Davis Trail
' and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
. Since the 1960s, The Scouters of the Isaac Davis Trail have organized an annual Patriot's Day campout and march on the Isaac Davis Trail.
The towns of Acton and Concord were also instrumental in the development of the modern day pencil industry. Concordian William Munroe is credited with being the first to manufacture wooden pencils in the United States in 1812. Acton resident Ebenezer Wood found Munroe's manufacturing methods painstakingly slow and set out to automate the process at his mill on in North Acton, along the old Davis Road
. Wood became the first to use a circular saw to speed the cutting and a gluing process that could make 144 pencils at once. His process improvements created pencils in either hexagonal or octagonal shapes. These shapes have become standard. Wood never patented his invention and shared his improvements with others, including Eberhardt Faber of New York. Faber became the country's leading manufacturer of pencils. In the latter half of the century, industry continued to grow in Acton with the establishment of a cigar factory and a piano stool factory
In 1843, the railroad came to Acton. The Fitchburg Railroad
was routed through South and West Acton so that it could serve the mills. South Acton became a busy commerce center with the construction of the Marlborough Branch Railroad. The branch ran from South Acton through Maynard, Stow and Hudson to reach its terminus in the city of Marlborough. The increased traffic led to further commercial development in the area, such as the establishment of the Tuttle Store and the construction of Exchange Hall. The Tuttle Store was a precursor to modern day department stores.
In addition to the Fitchburg Railroad, two other railroads bisected Acton: the Framingham and Lowell and the Nashua, Acton & Boston. The Framingham and Lowell was part of the Northern Division of the Old Colony Railroad which eventually became a subsidiary of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Rail Road (a.k.a. The New Haven Railroad). The Nashua, Acton & Boston ran from Concord Junction (aka West Concord) to Nashua, through Westford and Dunstable. These two railroads shared a double track right-of-way that runs along Nashoba Brook to North Acton where they diverged at the North Acton Station, which was located at the intersection of Main St. and Ledgerock Way. The Framingham and Lowell right-of-way is now known as the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail and is various stages of completion.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. In response, Acton Town Meeting passed a set of resolutions condemning the Act. The governor of Massachusetts, John C. Andrew, urged all towns to prepare their militia units for the threatening war. On April 12, 1861 the Civil War Began.
In addition, the Acton reservists were among the troops at Fort Sumter when it was fired upon.
In 1874, the population of the town was almost 1700. The town established its first newspaper The Acton Patriot and the residents of West Acton formed the first library The Citizen's Library. In 1890, the Memorial Library was completed and given to the town by William A. Wilde as a memorial to the Acton soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
In 1912, after prolonged debate, a Water District was established which provided water initially to the West Acton and South Acton villages. At this time, each of the five villages had its own fire department. On July 22, 1913, there was a very serious fire in West Acton. It destroyed houses, barns, businesses and factories. The whole village might have burned if not for the newly installed water system. After the fire, Town Meeting voted to establish a town-wide volunteer fire department.
Acton had excellent roads due to a contribution from a former Acton resident - Alvin Nothrop. He had grown up in Acton before moving to Washington D.C. and becoming a successful merchant. He donated money to the town of Acton to purchase a stone crusher for improving local roads. Because of this contribution, Acton had water-bound macadam
highways long before its neighbors. With the advent of the Automobile, the railroads serving East and North Acton fell into decline. The Nashua and Acton was completely abandoned in the mid 1920s while passenger service ceased on the Framingham and Lowell in the 1930 with the last vestiges of service on the line occurring to North Acton lumberyards in the early 1990s. This line too, has been formally abandoned.
The Board of Health was instituted in 1901 and its first task was to administer the smallpox vaccine
to the children in the local schools.
Each village in Acton had its own grade school but the town struggled with how to provide a high school education for its students. For most of the early 20th century (until 1925), Acton students were sent to Concord's high school. In 1925, Acton population was large enough to sustain its own high school, which was built on Massachusetts Avenue (rt 111) near the intersection of Main Street (rt 27). The building, which still stands, was converted into use as an elementary school and currently sits vacant waiting conversion into residential housing.
The last half of the 20th century saw enormous growth and change in Acton. In 1950, the town had a population of 3,500 which grew to 17,000 by 1974. This was largely caused by the growth in industry in suburban areas - facilitated by the construction of Route 128. Acton did not attract a large number of industrial cites because of the limited water supply.
Instead, Acton became a bedroom community. Acton's farmland began to turn into housing developments. In 1954, the Town established a Planning Board which developed regulations regarding the development of subdivisions. The first large subdivision was Indian Village (built on the southern slope of Fort Pond Hill - bisected by Route 2 in 1952 - and the adjacent flatland) in West Acton in 1955. Other notable subdivisions include Patriots Hill, Minuteman Ridge, Flagg Hill, The Arbors, and most recently, Robins Mill Pond.
Driving Acton's growth was its available land and access to the high tech that was expanding in office parks along Rt 128/I95 in the 1960s through 1980s and then along Interstate 495 in late 1980s till present. Digital Equipment Corporation
's establishment in the Maynard Mills made Acton an attractive place live and drove development of the apartment buildings and condominiums in town. Between 1965 and 1975, all the truck farms along 2A were replaced by shopping centers and apartment buildings. Nagog Office Park (1974) further hastened the development of the Rt 2A corridor as a retail and office building location.
The population in the town doubled between 1950 and 1960 (from 3500 to 7000). It doubled again in the next decade.
In 1953, new schools were constructed to accommodate the growth in the student population. In 1957, Acton and Boxborough created a regional school district for grades 7 -12 (Littleton pulled out of the planned regional district halfway through the planning process). The Merriam School was constructed in 1958. Other schools quickly followed (Douglas (1966), Gates (1968), and Conant (1971)). In 1967 a building was constructed for the Junior High. In 1973 a huge addition was added to this building and it became the high school (the junior high moved to the old high school building).
The Blanchard foundation gave the town the money to construct Blanchard Auditorium which was used to hold Town Meeting in addition to providing a gymnasium for the schools.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, conservation also became a driving factor in the development of the town. A desire to protect existing open-space combined with the need for additional recreation areas led the town to acquire and set aside over 1650 acres (6.7 km²) for conservation purposes. This included the development of the North Acton Recreation Area (NARA) in the late 1990s. NARA provided the town with its first outdoor beach and swim area as well as a significant space for playing fields and an outdoor amphitheater.
Acton, Massachusetts
Acton is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States about twenty-one miles west-northwest of Boston along Route 2 west of Concord and about ten miles southwest of Lowell. The population was 21,924 at the 2010 census...
is a small town west of Boston in an area that has records of human habitation which stretch back 7000 years. Acton citizens had a significant role in the battle of Battle of Lexington and Concord, the prelude to the American Revolution. Acton's history reflects the major events that were occurring in Massachusetts, New England, the United States, and the world.
Early settlement
The rivers that run through Acton were used by Native Americans as part of their annual migration patterns thousands of years ago. A Native American archaeological site was discovered in Acton in 1999 which produced evidence of habitation dating back 7000 years. This site has been named the Pine Hawk site and is one of the oldest archaeological sites in New England (http://www.actonmemoriallibrary.org/pinehawk/home.html).Before the English colonists settled in this area, the Massachuset tribe of the Algonquins lived in eastern Massachusetts. The group who lived in the Acton area were members of the Pawtucket
Pennacook
The Pennacook, also known by the names Merrimack and Pawtucket, were a North American people that primarily inhabited the Merrimack River valley of present-day New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as well as portions of southern Maine...
people. They practiced swidden agriculture
Slash and burn
Slash-and-burn is an agricultural technique which involves cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields. It is subsistence agriculture that typically uses little technology or other tools. It is typically part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock...
where they would use a field for several years until soil fertility dropped and then move to another field.
Around 1615, an epidemic killed almost 90% of the Native Americans in eastern Massachusetts. The description of the symptoms lead current historians to believe that this disease was viral hepatitis
Viral hepatitis
Viral hepatitis is liver inflammation due to a viral infection. It may present in acute or chronic forms. The most common causes of viral hepatitis are the five unrelated hepatotropic viruses Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis D, and Hepatitis E...
introduced by European traders and sailors. The epidemic had such a huge impact because the native residents had no resistance to European diseases. A smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
epidemic swept through in 1633 and further devastated the region.
Colonial Acton
The first colonial settlement in this area was Concord which was incorporated in 1635. Concord, which was the first inland settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, encompassing the present day towns of Acton, Lincoln, and Carlisle. Concord sits at the junction where the Assabet and Sudbury rivers combine to form the Concord River. Concord farmers used the land which is now Acton as grazing fields for their animals. The first permanent residents of Acton settled the area in 1639; siting their residences among the pastures that ran along the Nashoba Brook flood plain. They were farmers who needed to be closer to the grazing fields for their animals. They called this section of town Concord Village.In the mid-17th century, colonists began a program of converting Native Americans to Christianity. The converted Indians were settled into towns which were known as 'Praying Indian Towns'. One of these towns (Nashobah) was located on the land around Fort Pond from Nagog Pond around both sides south to Fort Pond Hill. The eastern part of Nashobah straddles the town line between Acton and Littleton. http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/praying.html Nashobah was also known as Newtown resulting in the present-day confusion of Newtown Road Acton and Newtown Road Littleton, both of which lead to the north slope of Fort Pond Hill.
When King Philip's War
King Philip's War
King Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–76. The war is named after the main leader of the...
(1675–1676) broke out, the Praying Indians were considered with suspicion by the colonists. In October, 1675, the General Council in Boston ordered that all Praying Indians be removed from their towns and taken to Deer Island in Boston Harbor. They were released in 1677 when King Philip's War was over.
Residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were required to attend Sunday Services and to support through taxation the colony's official religion: Congregationalism. With travel along colonial roads difficult, the Sunday attendance requirement became a burden for the residents of what would become Acton. These residents petitioned the Colony's legislature, the General Court, for the right to have their own meeting house (aka Church) and hire their own minister. With the approval of the General Court, Acton was incorporated as an independent town on July 3, 1735. Acton has held Annual Town Meetings since 1735 and the records of those Town Meetings are held at Acton's Memorial Library (http://www.actonmemoriallibrary.org/histcoll.htm).
American Revolution
In the period before the outbreak of hostilities with Great Britain that eventually led to the American Revolution, the relations between colonists and Great Britain grew increasingly strained. In May 1774, the British Parliament passed a law which made it illegal for colonists to hold Town Meetings and to legislate their own affairs. In defiance of this law, the Town of Acton held a series of Town Meetings where they elected a representative to the illegal Provincial Congress and began to raise a local militia unit. The Town of Acton sent a list of grievances to King George III on October 3, 1774. The anniversary of this day is celebrated in Acton as Crown Resistance DayAmerican Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
, on April 19, 1775, a company of minutemen from Acton responded to the call to arms initiated by Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
(who rode with other riders, William Dawes
William Dawes
William Dawes, Jr. was one of several men and a woman who alerted colonial minutemen of the approach of British army troops prior to the Battle of Lexington and Concord at the outset of the American Revolution....
and Samuel Prescott
Samuel Prescott
Samuel Prescott was a Massachusetts Patriot during the American Revolutionary War. He is best remembered for his role in the "midnight ride" to warn the townspeople of Concord of the impending British army move to capture military stores kept there at the beginning of the American Revolution...
, with Prescott the only one of the three who was able reach Acton itself) and fought at the North Bridge in Concord as part of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The Acton minutemen were led by Captain Isaac Davis. When a company was needed to lead the advance on the bridge which was defended by the British regulars, Captain Davis was heard to reply, "I haven't a man who is afraid to go."
The colonists advanced on the bridge; the men from Acton in the front lines, since they were the onn;y company completely outfitted with bayonettes, and in the exchange of musket
Musket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded, smooth bore long gun, fired from the shoulder. Muskets were designed for use by infantry. A soldier armed with a musket had the designation musketman or musketeer....
fire that followed, Captain Isaac Davis and Private James Hayward were killed and Abner Hosmer, also of Acton, was mortally wounded. Thus Isaac Davis was the first officer to die in the American Revolutionary War.
Each year on Patriot's Day (the 3rd Monday in April), the Acton Minutemen lead a march from Acton Center to the Old North Bridge in Concord. This route is known as the 'Isaac Davis Trail
Isaac Davis Trail
Isaac Davis Trail or "Acton's Trail" is an historic seven-mile trail running east-west between the towns of Acton and Concord, Massachusetts.The trail was significant in 1775 when it was used by Captain Isaac Davis and the Acton Minutemen to march on Concord during the battles of Lexington and...
' and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
. Since the 1960s, The Scouters of the Isaac Davis Trail have organized an annual Patriot's Day campout and march on the Isaac Davis Trail.
The 1800's: Industrialization and Civil War
After the Revolutionary War, Acton continued to grow in population. By the mid-19th century, Acton was an industrial center for the production of barrels (cooperage). There were also three grist mills and four saw mills in town. While several of these mills were sited on Fort Pond Brook in South Acton, several of them were sited on Nashoba Brook in the North and East Acton areas of town. The fulling mill at Mill Corner was one of the first large-scale manufacturers of woolen cloth in the country. In addition, gun power mills were located in the area which is now South Acton.The towns of Acton and Concord were also instrumental in the development of the modern day pencil industry. Concordian William Munroe is credited with being the first to manufacture wooden pencils in the United States in 1812. Acton resident Ebenezer Wood found Munroe's manufacturing methods painstakingly slow and set out to automate the process at his mill on in North Acton, along the old Davis Road
Nashoba Brook Pencil Factory Site
The Nashoba Brook Pencil Factory Site contains the ruins of a 19th century dam-powered pencil factory. This factory was one of several in Acton and Concord, Massachusetts at the time that brought important developments to pencil manufacturing. All that remain today of the factory are the ruins of...
. Wood became the first to use a circular saw to speed the cutting and a gluing process that could make 144 pencils at once. His process improvements created pencils in either hexagonal or octagonal shapes. These shapes have become standard. Wood never patented his invention and shared his improvements with others, including Eberhardt Faber of New York. Faber became the country's leading manufacturer of pencils. In the latter half of the century, industry continued to grow in Acton with the establishment of a cigar factory and a piano stool factory
In 1843, the railroad came to Acton. The Fitchburg Railroad
Fitchburg Railroad
The Fitchburg Railroad is a former railroad company, which built a railroad line across northern Massachusetts, USA, leading to and through the Hoosac Tunnel. The Fitchburg was leased to the Boston and Maine Railroad in 1900...
was routed through South and West Acton so that it could serve the mills. South Acton became a busy commerce center with the construction of the Marlborough Branch Railroad. The branch ran from South Acton through Maynard, Stow and Hudson to reach its terminus in the city of Marlborough. The increased traffic led to further commercial development in the area, such as the establishment of the Tuttle Store and the construction of Exchange Hall. The Tuttle Store was a precursor to modern day department stores.
In addition to the Fitchburg Railroad, two other railroads bisected Acton: the Framingham and Lowell and the Nashua, Acton & Boston. The Framingham and Lowell was part of the Northern Division of the Old Colony Railroad which eventually became a subsidiary of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Rail Road (a.k.a. The New Haven Railroad). The Nashua, Acton & Boston ran from Concord Junction (aka West Concord) to Nashua, through Westford and Dunstable. These two railroads shared a double track right-of-way that runs along Nashoba Brook to North Acton where they diverged at the North Acton Station, which was located at the intersection of Main St. and Ledgerock Way. The Framingham and Lowell right-of-way is now known as the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail and is various stages of completion.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. In response, Acton Town Meeting passed a set of resolutions condemning the Act. The governor of Massachusetts, John C. Andrew, urged all towns to prepare their militia units for the threatening war. On April 12, 1861 the Civil War Began.
"On April 15, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers. By 7:30 the next morning, Captain Tuttle with his entire command of 52 men reported to Lowell, fully equipped and ready for duty. Company E of Acton of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was to be the first company of the first regiment of the Union Army to arrive in Washington in response to the President's call."
In addition, the Acton reservists were among the troops at Fort Sumter when it was fired upon.
In 1874, the population of the town was almost 1700. The town established its first newspaper The Acton Patriot and the residents of West Acton formed the first library The Citizen's Library. In 1890, the Memorial Library was completed and given to the town by William A. Wilde as a memorial to the Acton soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
The 1900s: The Growth of Suburban Acton
At the beginning on the 20th century, Acton had approximately 2120 residents. The primary business of the town was agriculture. The 20th century saw substantial growth and change in the town.In 1912, after prolonged debate, a Water District was established which provided water initially to the West Acton and South Acton villages. At this time, each of the five villages had its own fire department. On July 22, 1913, there was a very serious fire in West Acton. It destroyed houses, barns, businesses and factories. The whole village might have burned if not for the newly installed water system. After the fire, Town Meeting voted to establish a town-wide volunteer fire department.
Acton had excellent roads due to a contribution from a former Acton resident - Alvin Nothrop. He had grown up in Acton before moving to Washington D.C. and becoming a successful merchant. He donated money to the town of Acton to purchase a stone crusher for improving local roads. Because of this contribution, Acton had water-bound macadam
Macadam
Macadam is a type of road construction pioneered by the Scotsman John Loudon McAdam in around 1820. The method simplified what had been considered state-of-the-art at that point...
highways long before its neighbors. With the advent of the Automobile, the railroads serving East and North Acton fell into decline. The Nashua and Acton was completely abandoned in the mid 1920s while passenger service ceased on the Framingham and Lowell in the 1930 with the last vestiges of service on the line occurring to North Acton lumberyards in the early 1990s. This line too, has been formally abandoned.
The Board of Health was instituted in 1901 and its first task was to administer the smallpox vaccine
Smallpox vaccine
The smallpox vaccine was the first successful vaccine to be developed. The process of vaccination was discovered by Edward Jenner in 1796, who acted upon his observation that milkmaids who caught the cowpox virus did not catch smallpox...
to the children in the local schools.
Each village in Acton had its own grade school but the town struggled with how to provide a high school education for its students. For most of the early 20th century (until 1925), Acton students were sent to Concord's high school. In 1925, Acton population was large enough to sustain its own high school, which was built on Massachusetts Avenue (rt 111) near the intersection of Main Street (rt 27). The building, which still stands, was converted into use as an elementary school and currently sits vacant waiting conversion into residential housing.
The last half of the 20th century saw enormous growth and change in Acton. In 1950, the town had a population of 3,500 which grew to 17,000 by 1974. This was largely caused by the growth in industry in suburban areas - facilitated by the construction of Route 128. Acton did not attract a large number of industrial cites because of the limited water supply.
Instead, Acton became a bedroom community. Acton's farmland began to turn into housing developments. In 1954, the Town established a Planning Board which developed regulations regarding the development of subdivisions. The first large subdivision was Indian Village (built on the southern slope of Fort Pond Hill - bisected by Route 2 in 1952 - and the adjacent flatland) in West Acton in 1955. Other notable subdivisions include Patriots Hill, Minuteman Ridge, Flagg Hill, The Arbors, and most recently, Robins Mill Pond.
Driving Acton's growth was its available land and access to the high tech that was expanding in office parks along Rt 128/I95 in the 1960s through 1980s and then along Interstate 495 in late 1980s till present. Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
's establishment in the Maynard Mills made Acton an attractive place live and drove development of the apartment buildings and condominiums in town. Between 1965 and 1975, all the truck farms along 2A were replaced by shopping centers and apartment buildings. Nagog Office Park (1974) further hastened the development of the Rt 2A corridor as a retail and office building location.
The population in the town doubled between 1950 and 1960 (from 3500 to 7000). It doubled again in the next decade.
In 1953, new schools were constructed to accommodate the growth in the student population. In 1957, Acton and Boxborough created a regional school district for grades 7 -12 (Littleton pulled out of the planned regional district halfway through the planning process). The Merriam School was constructed in 1958. Other schools quickly followed (Douglas (1966), Gates (1968), and Conant (1971)). In 1967 a building was constructed for the Junior High. In 1973 a huge addition was added to this building and it became the high school (the junior high moved to the old high school building).
The Blanchard foundation gave the town the money to construct Blanchard Auditorium which was used to hold Town Meeting in addition to providing a gymnasium for the schools.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, conservation also became a driving factor in the development of the town. A desire to protect existing open-space combined with the need for additional recreation areas led the town to acquire and set aside over 1650 acres (6.7 km²) for conservation purposes. This included the development of the North Acton Recreation Area (NARA) in the late 1990s. NARA provided the town with its first outdoor beach and swim area as well as a significant space for playing fields and an outdoor amphitheater.