Map of Acton, Massachusetts in 2026

Acton grew up as five villages, and this map takes in all of them. Main Street, Massachusetts Avenue, Great Road, Central Street, Arlington Street and Canterbury Hill Road are printed by name, and so are Nagog Pond, Fort Pond, Barkers Pond, the Assabet River Reservoir and Annursnac Hill, Faulkner Hill, Flagg Hill and Canterbury Hill. Click here to purchase a print of this map for your wall.

Acton is in Middlesex County, about 21 miles west-northwest of Boston.

KNOWOL made this map in 2026 from public survey data and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded terrain comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data. The land itself took its shape when the last glaciers retreated about ten thousand years ago, and Acton has nine drumlins, hills made of glacial till, and kettle ponds such as Grassy Pond and Wills Hole. The roads and the town line come from the Census Bureau. Acton had 24,021 people in April 2020.

Grazing land for Concord

Native people lived here for a very long time; the town page cites evidence of settlements going back 7,000 years, along the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord rivers. When Concord was founded as the first inland town of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, its bounds took in all of Acton, and Concord’s settlers used this land to graze their animals. The first homestead inside today’s town line went up in 1639. The Town of Acton’s recorded history dates European settlement to 1680 in the state’s list of settlement dates, and Acton was incorporated as a town in 1735, on July 3. Town meetings have met every year since then, and their records are kept at the Acton Memorial Library. The town remains part of Middlesex County today.

The oldest colonial building still standing in Acton is the Faulkner House in South Acton, which the town page dates to 1707. It was built for Ephraim Jones, who founded a textile business and mills there in 1702, and it served as a garrison house during Queen Anne’s War. The Faulkner family bought the house and mills in 1742 and kept them for six generations, running a fulling mill for woolen cloth across the road. A short walk away, Jones Tavern at 128 Main Street was built in 1732 as a home for Samuel Jones Jr. and had become a tavern and store by 1750; it’s believed to be the first store in Acton. Local residents saved it from demolition in 1964, and both buildings are now kept by Iron Work Farm in Acton, a nonprofit.

Captain Isaac Davis

On the night of April 18, 1775, Dr. Samuel Prescott brought the alarm to Acton, and at the Faulkner House, Major Francis Faulkner fired three shots to call out the militia. Acton’s company of minutemen was led by Isaac Davis, a gunsmith born in West Acton, who had outfitted nearly every man with a bayonet and a cartridge box and trained them on a shooting range behind his house. The next morning at the North Bridge in Concord, his company was chosen to lead the advance, which his biography credits to the bayonets. Captain Davis was heard to say, “I haven’t a man who is afraid to go.” He and Private Abner Hosmer of Acton were killed in the exchange of fire, and Davis was the first American officer to die in the Revolutionary War. Acton remembers him with the Isaac Davis Monument on the Acton Town Common, and his biography says he inspired Daniel Chester French’s Minute Man statue at the Old North Bridge. People in Acton put the day this way: “the battle of Lexington, fought in Concord, by men of Acton.”

Mills, rails and villages

By the middle of the 1800s Acton was a center for making barrels, with a powder mill, three gristmills and four sawmills. The American Powder Mills made gunpowder along the Assabet River from 1835 to 1940. The Fitchburg Railroad reached town on October 1, 1844, routed through South and West Acton to serve the mills, and South Acton became a busy rail center. That’s how the villages got their names: Acton Center has been the civic center since the Revolution, while the town page says the other four took their names from their railroad stations. In 1890 the Memorial Library was completed on Main Street, the gift of William Allan Wilde, as a memorial to Acton’s Civil War soldiers.

Finding the villages

Start with the Village of Nagog Woods in North Acton, a housing development off Route 2A large enough to have its own ZIP code. Nagog Pond, in the north of town, forms Acton’s border with Littleton and supplies drinking water to Concord, and homes along Great Road draw their water from the mains that carry it there. Canterbury Hill is part of a group of four conservation areas in North Acton, more than 600 acres together, crossed by Acton’s piece of the Bay Circuit Trail. Then look outward toward North Acton, Damons Mills Westvale, East Acton, Kelly Corner and South Acton. Follow Massachusetts Avenue, Main Street, Great Road, Canterbury Hill Road, Central Street or Arlington Street across town. Fort Pond, Barkers Pond, Annursnac Hill, Faulkner Hill, Flagg Hill and the Assabet River Reservoir are all printed on the map. In South Acton, the Assabet River Rail Trail starts at the train station and runs toward Maynard.

This Acton map makes an attractive addition to your office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the town whose minutemen led the march to the North Bridge. It’s made for people who call Acton home, from Nagog Pond to South Acton. KNOWOL created it in 2026, and it’s printed on museum quality archival paper. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Acton, Massachusetts map.

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Sources

• Acton, Massachusetts, Wikipedia
• Isaac Davis (soldier), Wikipedia
• Faulkner House (Acton, Massachusetts), Wikipedia
• Jones Tavern, Wikipedia
• Acton Memorial Library, Wikipedia
• Assabet River Rail Trail, Wikipedia
• City and Town Incorporation and Settlement Dates, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (archived copy)