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Roused from their beds by Paul Revere and William Dawes, minutemen gathered in the darkness on Lexington Green in Massachusetts early on the morning of April 19, 1775. The riders had been sent to warn inhabitants of country towns within 20 miles of Boston that the British were sending an expeditionary force to find and destroy weapons caches the colonial militias had been building up in preparation for the inevitable battle with their British rulers.

Finally, as daylight was breaking, the Redcoats arrived. Shots rang out. Eight Americans fell. A few hours later, in nearby Concord, more shots were fired and two more Americans lay dead, but the British had lost a dozen.

Those shots fired in the small colonial towns were "heard 'round the world." The revolution to begin a country founded on the principles of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," had begun.

Fast forward to last year. The Rev. Gary Smith, senior minister at First Parish in Concord, was on the phone, applying for a corporate credit card for church expenses. The card company agent asked the usual questions: name, address, type of business. Then, "How long has this business been in operation?" the agent asked.

"Three hundred and sixty-three years," Smith replied.

Silence on the line.

"I'm gonna have to get my supervisor."

It's a typical Concord story. The congregation of First Parish in Concord was "gathered" in 1636, less than a generation after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

In America 2000, the past and the future march side by side in Lexington and Concord. But these New England towns take the past very seriously, in particular, the start of the American Revolution here 225 years ago.

Concord, founded in 1635, is now a charming town of 18,000 people; Lexington, founded in 1640, is now almost twice as large, with 30,000. But in 1775, they had 1,500 and 1,000 citizens respectively. Both were more than a century old when the first battles of the American Revolution were fought on their turf.

The anniversary of the battles is Patriots' Day, an official holiday in Massachusetts, and the reason for an annual reenactment of the small but momentous battles. At dawn, the Lexington Minute Men line up on Lexington Green just as they did over two centuries ago to await the Regulars. "British" troops, in scarlet uniforms, march down Massachusetts Avenue from Boston and line up facing the minute men on the green. Taunts are exchanged, muskets raised, shots ring out, the chill spring air is filled with gunsmoke and men fall "wounded" to the ground.

Barking orders, the "British" officers regroup their troops and march them off to Concord, where the Concord Minute Men, joined by companies from surrounding towns such as Acton, Bedford and Littleton, await them at the Old North Bridge.

To local residents, the events of April 19,1775, are as fresh in memory as though they had lived them. Just ask Clint Jackson, a former National Park ranger and the founder of the Duke of Gloucester's Fifth Regiment of Foot, a corps of British-colonial history re-enactors. Resplendent in the scarlet "lobsterback" uniform and gear which he made himself by hand, he is a volunteer historical interpreter at Concord's Old North Bridge on Sunday afternoons.

"I was a member of the Lexington Minute Men," he says, resting his authentically crafted muzzle loader on the tip of his perfectly polished black boot. "Then one Patriots' Day, during the re-enactment of the battle at Lexington Green, I saw the British troops marching toward us in perfect uniforms, with perfect military bearing. That was enough for me. I joined the 10th Regiment of Foot, but later decided to found my own unit, so I re-founded the Duke of Gloucester's 5th Regiment of Foot. We make our uniforms and equipment ourselves, and we work hard to make them as authentic as possible."

In 1875, at the centennial celebration of the battle at the North Bridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson hailed "the shot heard 'round the world" as Daniel Chester French unveiled his statue of "The Minute Man." One hand is on a plow, the other grips a flintlock. Poem and statue have become world-recognized symbols of the American Revolution.

Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and other Concord authors thrived in the town's spirit of freedom and principled resistance. In his lectures and writings, Emerson led the revolution which freed American culture from slavishly following European models.

Thoreau went even further, advocating a simple life in nature over the norms of polite society in town. The site of Thoreau's simple one-room cabin at the edge of Walden Pond, a three-mile, 40-minute walk from Concord's train depot, is now a place of pilgrimage for people interested in nature, ecology and a life rich in meaning, yet simple in substance.

If you walk (or drive) out to the pond in summer, take your bathing suit: Walden Pond is a state park with a public beach and picnic tables. A replica of Thoreau's cabin and a bronze statue of the author have been erected near the parking lot. The actual cabin site is a 15-minute walk away.

Louisa May Alcott wrote "Little Women" while living in Orchard House, the family home at 399 Lexington Road, a 10-minute walk southwest of Monument Square in Concord. She, Emerson, Thoreau and other lights of Concord's 19th-century literary flowering now lie on Authors' Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a 10-minute walk northwest of Monument Square.

At many town events and festivals, actors dressed in period clothes represent the town's historic heroes, military and literary. Bringing history to life through re-enactments is a local passion. Every fourth-grade class in Concord's public schools re-enacts a colonial town meeting in the Town House, debating the bounty on crows and the delicate issue of cattle pasturage on common land.

Only out-of-town visitors thought it extraordinary when, on a fine summer day a few years ago, a Victorian funeral cortege, with horse-drawn hearse followed by mourners in widow's weeds or top hat and tails, made its way with slow and measured step through Monument Square on the way to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Also here is the grave of Ephraim Bull, who developed the Concord grape. Promoted and marketed by Welch Foods, headquartered in Concord, Bull's useful innovation flavored billions of American peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, not to mention millions of bottles of grape juice.

A good deal of the beauty and charm of these towns comes from the carefully preserved open spaces. Land banks and town conservation funds bid aggressively on any large parcels of land which may come on the market. Their aim is to control development.

That control and long terms of ownership have kept Concord beautiful. The Old Manse, a large and well-preserved colonial house next to Old North Bridge, was built in 1769 by Rev. William Emerson. It stayed in the Emerson family for 169 years until it was given to the National Park Service in 1938. Besides numerous famous Emersons, it was home to novelist Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, who lived here from 1842 to 1845, just after their marriage.

Though only a half-hour's drive west of Boston, Lexington and Concord preserve working farms within their town borders. Wilson Farms in Lexington is packed every Saturday during the growing season with customers for the fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers grown in the surrounding fields.

In Concord, McGrath Farm, on Barrett's Mill Road, has been owned by only two families since the battle at the North Bridge. Janice McGrath, smiling behind the farmstand's cash register, states proudly that her husband Patrick's family bought the farm in 1910 from the Barrett family who owned the nearby grist mill and most of the land in the neighborhood since colonial times.

Pretty as they are, Lexington and Concord are not just farming or museum towns, according to the Rev. Jenny Rankin, who recently moved with her family to Concord to become assistant minister of First Parish in Concord.

"Before moving here, Concord for me was the American Revolution, Louisa May Alcott, Thoreau and Emerson," says Rankin, sitting in her sunny church office.

"After we moved in, the town overwhelmed us. Concord is rich. Everything looks as nice as in a magazine article. But it's no living museum. It's a real town with lots of talented, articulate people with a spirit of inquiry, intellectual vitality and concern for the world."

The town's wealth comes from the many residents who commute to the office towers of Boston's corporate giants such as Arthur D. Little, Sheraton Corp. and Fidelity Investments. Raytheon, America's No. 2 defense contractor, is headquartered in Lexington (remember the Minuteman missile?).

A growing number of highbrow think tanks, small high-tech companies and Internet-age consultancies are headquartered in the towns themselves amid the colonial houses and market-garden farms. Their founders prefer the towns' quiet, historic surroundings to the bustle of Boston or the Interstate anomie of Route 128.

The combination of history, beauty, open space, an easy pace of life and friendly people exerts an attraction far beyond the Boston area. The district called West Concord, across the railroad tracks and once considered downscale, has recently become a hotbed of gourmet food company startups. A typical example is Carolyn's Gourmet, founded by a local housewife and now managed by Hans van Putten, a Dutch immigrant. Van Putten and his English wife Tracey moved to Concord in 1995 at the command of the Gillette company, Hans' employer at the time. When he left Gillette to run a business on his own, Van Putten couldn't bring himself to leave Concord.

He took a few minutes off from roasting tangy pecans, the company's mainstay, to answer a few questions.

"Before we moved here, we looked at other Boston-area towns," he says. "None had the warmth and character of Concord. We liked it immediately. It reminded us of the charming small towns in Holland, Belgium and England.

"We knew nothing of Concord's history. All we knew of life in America was what we had seen in the movies and on television. We assumed that it would be full of guns, violence and crime. Instead we found a town where everyone is friendly, and most people happily forget to lock their doors when they go out.

"Sure, Concord is partly a living museum. Tourists come here from all over America and in fact all over the world to visit the historic places. The flood of tourists sometimes makes it hard for us to get service in some of the shops -- the shopkeepers don't recognize us as locals.

"One of the things that impressed us most is the way we've been accepted by local people and made friends. Some foreigners don't try to break into local society, and local society doesn't go out of its way to help integrate them. But here in Concord," he smiles, "we made warm friendships immediately. We really feel as though we belong here."

Turning back to his pecans, Van Putten smiles and says, "We recently returned from a trip to visit relatives in Holland. When I got back home to Concord I realized for the first time that Holland is no longer my home. Concord is."

Lexington and Concord have come full circle. Founded centuries ago by people fleeing the political, religious and commercial strictures of old Europe, they now attract new Europeans. They come for the charm, but stay for the towns' legacy of freedom and opportunity for which the minute men fought and died two and a quarter centuries ago.

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