Over ninety years ago, Clara Endicott Sears bought a gentleman’s farm on land that had once sheltered Bronson Alcott’s Utopian experiment in communal living known as Fruitlands.

Fruitlands lasted a mere seven months, but Sears helped rescue it from oblivion by turning the Alcott farmhouse into a house museum to celebrate the Transcendentalists’ vision. Between 1914 and 1945, Sears’museum, named after Alcott’s commune, grew to include Native American art and artifacts, a Shaker collection, and a Picture Gallery of American vernacular portraits and Hudson River School landscapes.

One of the first outdoor museums in America, at Fruitlands visitors discover the stories, experiments and ideals of the Alcotts, Shakers, utopians, artists and Native peoples. Fruitlands four galleries, singular collections, over 200 pastoral acres, trails and vistas stir the imagination.

An Inspiring Place — Fruitlands Today Fruitlands’ staff and board take great pride in preserving and sharing this rich cultural legacy. A national landmark and historic district, visitors come to Fruitlands to discover landscapes – real and imagined – the Shakers’ inventiveness and spirituality, the Transcendentalists’ idealism, the Native Americans’ identification with the soul of the land, and the Hudson River painters’ inspired visionary works.

Come and be inspired by treasures as small as an Inuit ivory figurine and as expansive as the views from Prospect Hill, which take in Mt. Monadnock to the north and Mt. Wachusett to the west. Behind every door and throughout our museums and trails – objects, ideas, and stories will inspire, instruct, and renew your engagement with the past and the present.