Historic Powder Houses of New England

In the turbulent history of colonial New England, more than two hundred powder houses were built to store gunpowder, guns and armaments. Even the spark from a metal shoe nail could ignite their contents, so they often sat in remote sections of town. These volatile storehouses played a vital role in earning and preserving American independence. It was, after all, to a powder house in Concord, Massachusetts, that the British army marched in April 1775 to seize colonists' gunpowder. The British wer