Maynard came of age during the Industrial Revolution and had a unique, compact and walkable town center clustered around its iconic Mill founded in 1871, now a mixed-use office park called Mill & Main. The textile mill thrived by providing wool fabric for uniforms during the civil war, but declined at the beginning of this century. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) signed a lease in 1951, marking the beginning of the computer age on the east coast. DEC was known for its entrepreneurial management style and set the stage for developing the personal computer, workstations, and mainframes. At its height, the company had 11 billion dollars in revenue and over 120,000 employees. It employed more than half the residents in Maynard, and manufacturing, coding and programming became an ordinary skill set within the working-class population through the 1980s.
Maynard is a blue-collar mill town that prefers funkiness over fastidiousness—making mainframes and music. It was a music mecca in the 1970s with bars, performance venues and recording studios. Still today, computer programmers live next to musicians and micro brewers. Likewise, Hollywood movies have found the town receptive and easy as a film location. The famous car chase with Daniel Craig in “Knives Out” was filmed in our compact triangle of our Cultural District.
A large corner of Maynard is part of 2000-acre freshwater wetlands and oak and pine forest, the Assabet National Wildlife Refuge, home to thousands of migratory birds (not to mention all of the people there for hiking, fishing, biking, and skiing!).
The Assabet River Rail Trail is close to downtown and offers 12.5 miles of paved trail through woods and towns, perfect for biking and hiking.
Your last stop out of town is a must; the legendary Erikson’s Ice Cream stand. Since 1937 three generations have been winning awards for their fantastic ice cream.
Maynard: So much to discover.
