The Wheeler-Minot Farmhouse is set on a 20-acre (8.1 ha) property on the north side of Virginia Road in eastern Concord.

The house is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, five bays wide, with a side-gable roof, large central chimney, clapboard siding, and a fieldstone foundation.

Unlike other writers and thinkers associated with Concord—including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Louisa May Alcott—Henry David Thoreau was the only one born in the town.

Shortly after Thoreau's death in 1862, scholars, disciples, and tourists began to seek out the author's birthplace.

The site underwent an extensive restoration and is now a museum open to the public on weekends between May and October.