Thoreau writes in his journal:
A man came to our house at noon and got something to eat, who set out this morning to go from Waltham to Noah Wheeler’s in Nine Acre Corner. He got as far as Lee’s Bridge on the side of Lincoln, or within three quarters of a mile of Wheeler’s, and could not get over the river on account of the freshet; so he came round through Concord village,—he might have come over the railroad a little nearer,—and I directed him over the railroad bridge, the first by which he could cross dry-shod down the stream, and up-stream he would have been obliged to go to Saxonville.