Thirty-eight rural towns—often called “hilltowns”—occupy the Highlands' 1,100 square miles. An exceedingly rural place, the Highlands region comprises nearly 14 percent of the Commonwealth's total landmass yet less than one percent of its population. A long history of land conservation has permanently protected more than 25 percent of the land as open space. Colonial settlement patterns can be seen in the stone walls and meandering country roads that connect farms, forests, villages, and towns, while the area boasts some of the largest unbroken tracts of forestland in southern New England.

Observing the Highlands region as it rises steadfastly from the Connecticut River to meet the Berkshire ridge to the west, it may be difficult to imagine that this was once a land of cataclysmic geological changes. Five hundred million years ago, the waters of a great inland sea covered the region, which was largely flat. Over the course of ages, a dramatic geotectonic event took place—colliding continental plates thrust the sea floor upwards, eventually creating a range of mountains rising more than four miles above sea level. Three successive cycles of glaciation created the rounded peaks we know today as the Berkshires. These eroded roots of an ancient range are the oldest mountains in the western hemisphere.

While encroaching and retreating glaciers sculpted the land, they also left sediments on valley floors, which created pockets of soils that were conducive to the formation of wetlands and bogs. From these bogs, vegetation began to populate the formerly desolate landscape. Trees, such as spruce, then pine and birch, sprang up, followed later by oak and maple hardwoods. As vegetation began to temper the region's climate, animals from neighboring areas moved in, and not long after, the first human inhabitants arrived. These Paleoindians moved about in small family groups, hunting caribou and deer, and foraging for wild fruits and berries across the tundra, swamps, and scrub pinelands that then covered southern New England. One of the region's most unique features—the pitch-pine scrub oak communities of Mounts Tekoa and Shatterack in the southern Highlands town of Russell—is a geologic throwback to that distant period. Outwash from the last glacier left thick deposits of sand and gravel, providing the geological foundation for this globally rare habitat. Today, these uncommon natural communities are home to a host of rare species.

As the Highlands climate became milder, the Native American hunters and gatherers that occupied the region established agricultural communities along the valleys using farming techniques introduced, probably, from Central America. Eventually, the Mohican tribe settled along the banks of the Housatonic, “the place beyond the mountains,” while the Pocumtucks, a confederacy of several smaller tribes, came to occupy the valley of the “long river,” the Connecticut. Both tribes cultivated corn, squash, beans, and melon. Both fished and hunted seasonally in the surrounding hills and boiled sap for maple syrup in the spring.

In the early 1600s, when the first Europeans arrived, Native Americans had been living for some 13,000 years in what would become Massachusetts. Contact proved deadly for the indigenous peoples. Diseases contracted from early waves of European trappers and traders devastated the Indians, who had little or no immunity to European diseases. By the time the first settlements in western Massachusetts were being established in the late 1630s, it is estimated that the original population of Native Americans had dwindled from 150,000 to 20,000 in all of New England. Many historians believe that, had it not been for smallpox and other European diseases, the English would never have gained a foothold in New England.

As English immigrants moved into lands occupied by remaining Natives, English farming practices—fenced fields and free ranging livestock—disrupted Native agriculture and hunting. European agricultural practices also created a constant need for more land. Thus colonists negotiated a series of settlements with local tribes for control of the fertile farmlands along the Deerfield, Westfield, and Farmington rivers. In this way, as well as through armed conflict, Natives were gradually displaced, some moving northward into New France (Canada).

In the early 1700s, the farming communities of western Massachusetts found themselves at the forefront of an international clash of empires. As Queen Anne's War raged in Europe, New France sought to protect its underpopulated colonies by launching raids against New England frontier towns. Natives joined these raids for a variety of reasons—some through political pressure, others in the spirit of mourning wars in which captives were brought back for ransom or to replace lost tribe members. Attacks continued on Massachusetts valley towns throughout the French and Indian Wars, limiting settlements there and in the Highlands. With the Treaty of Paris in 1763, settlement increased rapidly. Between 1760 and 1790, the European population of western Massachusetts grew from 500 to nearly 30,000 inhabitants.

In the years between the end of the French and Indian Wars and the start of the Revolution, Massachusetts, now a Royal Colony, divided the land between the Housatonic and Connecticut rivers into four plantations, which were then auctioned off to the highest bidders. The first towns along the Massachusetts frontier were subsistence farming communities, each with its village green and meetinghouse, which were preconditions of becoming incorporated. While valley residents enjoyed the rich alluvial soils of the river basins, hilltown settlers often found soils that were too rocky for the cultivation of wheat crops, yet ideal for livestock, especially sheep and cattle.

The Highlands economy grew rapidly after the Revolutionary War. Commerce moved farther up into the hills as settlers began to tap the Highlands' two most abundant resources: its waterways and its timber. Saw- and gristmills were set up at the heads of many waterways. The population ballooned as people moved into the Highlands to find jobs working as laborers or machinists in the mills.

In the first half of the 19th century, economic activity and farming expanded as they became more profitable. The abundant supply of forested acres fed riverside paper mills. Remaining trees on the hillsides were cut for charcoal, which was exported to fuel iron industries and, later, to fire the steam engines of the Greenfield and Troy railroad. A history of Cummington provides this overview of one hilltown's industrial base: “By 1830…twenty looms were working in four woolen mills, and sixteen in the East Village Cotton Factory. Four tanneries were turning out leather, there were ten sawmills and about as many other factories.” Ashfield was a center of the peppermint industry. In 1825, several hundred acres were under cultivation, yielding up to 40 pounds of oil per acre at a value of $8 per pound. In Shelburne, Linus Yale made the first Yale locks in 1851.

But the opening of the Erie Canal dealt a hard blow to the Highlands economy. The canal made the shipping of goods to the American interior faster and cheaper, stimulating the growth and financial development of New York and cities of the Midwest, and Highlands farmers and manufacturers were hard-pressed to compete. One by one, farms and industries closed down, while young farmers and laborers moved westward to stake their claim on more level, less rocky soils or to find jobs in newly opened and bustling factories in the Midwest.

To stem the loss of population and link the area to the outside world, state legislators decided to excavate a tunnel through the Hoosac Range. Construction on the Hoosac Tunnel started in earnest in 1851 outside of the towns of Florida and North Adams and was finished in 1874. Construction was long, costly, and dangerous—hundreds of lives were lost—but the tunnel itself allowed for the testing of engineering techniques and methods, the most famous of which is the first commercial use of nitroglycerine. When finished, it was the longest bore in the world, at 4.75 miles.

In the last half of the 19th century, the depletion of the area's timber resources combined with continuing westward migration caused the Highlands' economy to collapse. Between 1850 and 1900, the population throughout the region plummeted, leaving behind deserted farmlands and factories. This exodus had a profound effect on the land. As farmers left behind large tracts of open space, forests began to recover. At the midpoint of the 19th century, three-quarters of the Highlands' trees had been stripped for pastureland, charcoal production, or railroad fuel. Within a century, that ratio was inverted, and today, the region is over three-quarters wooded. Soon, the Highlands boasted cleaner streams and thicker woods than when farms and industries first came to occupy its hills.

While the Highlands' remoteness had created a hindrance to industry, that same trait, along with the region's breathtaking views and clean mountain air, lured artists and writers to the area. In 1865, William Cullen Bryant, conservationist, poet and the publisher, bought his childhood home in Cummington. He spent summers there for the rest of his life. In 1922, Katherine Frazier founded a music school in the town. Then known as the Playhouse in the Hills, it incorporated as the Cummington School of the Arts in 1930 and was to become one of America's most important summer arts programs. In 1939, along with writer Harry Duncan and students of the school, Frazier inaugurated the Cummington Press, which would go on to publish many first editions, including the works of Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Robert Penn Warren, and Marianne Moore. In 1942, the southern Highlands town of Becket became the home of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Founded by Ted Shawn and his wife Ruth St. Denis, it is America's oldest dance festival and a National Historic Landmark.

With the rise of automobile tourism, people from all walks of life began traveling to the Highlands region for recreation. In 1910, Jacob's Ladder Trail (Route 20) was constructed. Running 33 miles from Russell to Lee, it was the first highway built specifically for the automobile and attracted adventurous motorists from far and wide. For a time, the roadway was famed as part of the Yellowstone Trail, a continent-spanning highway linking Boston and Oregon. In 1914, the Mohawk Trail (Route 2) was opened, and its vistas and hairpin turns were an instant hit with motorists. Today, Jacob's Ladder and the Mohawk Trail are the region's two officially designated scenic byways, valued both for their beauty and their origins as primary routes for Native Americans between the Connecticut and Hudson River Valleys.

The expansion and upgrading of roads such as Routes 2 and 20 signaled the shift to a recreational and vacationing economy that took place in the first half of the twentieth century. Today, dairy farms, orchards, cottage industries, maple sugaring operations, and market gardens do business side-by-side with bed and breakfast inns, whitewater rafting outfitters, and ski resorts, as recreation and tourism continue to be staples of the Highlands economy. Cultural tourism has its niche as well, with Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the Miniature Theatre of Chester, and Worthington's annual Sevenar's Concerts attracting dance, theater, and music lovers from throughout the New England-New York region.

While improved transportation has enabled the growth of some sectors of the region's economy, it has also brought a sharp rise in the Highlands population. In the past 30 years, the population has nearly doubled, and the amount of developed land has increased dramatically as people with jobs in surrounding cities buy land in the Highland to build country homes. It took a generation for the natural communities of the Highlands to rebound from the wave of unrestrained development that gripped the state in the 19th century. Today, residents, as well as visitors, share a common goal: to cultivate economic growth, while protecting the integrity and character of the Highlands ecological community and human landscapes. A variety of approaches has been taken throughout the region to ensure that residential and commercial growth take place in a thoughtful manner. Conserving Highlands resources and protecting its landscapes—from working farms and forests to watersheds and wildlife habitats—is an ongoing endeavor.

From Steep Slopes to Kettle Bogs

A glance at a topographical map provides an instant lesson in the contrasts between the northern and southern portions of the Highlands. In the northern half of the Highlands, deeply corrugated hillsides are abundant. Here, nutrient rich soils accumulate on steep, downward slopes of calcium-rich rock formations. These soils, in turn, foster the growth of forests dominated by northern hardwoods that provide habitat to ferns, ovenbirds, wood turtles, bear, and coyote. In these upper altitudes of the Highlands, along the southernmost tip of the Green Mountains, spruce-fir swamps can be found in one of their few locations in Massachusetts. Peru, at 2,295 feet above sea level, is the highest village in Massachusetts.

In contrast, the Highlands' southern half stands at a lower altitude with gently rolling hills and u-shaped valleys. This area of the Highlands is more favorable to species that prefer milder climates. The southern Highlands region also contains a large number of water bodies. Kettle bogs carved out during the last period of glaciation harbor many species that have learned to thrive without the richness of forest soils. Sphagnum moss and fringed orchids have made their home in these rare natural communities and have flourished for the past 10,000 years. Vernal pools and calcareous wetland communities dot the landscape, providing space for amphibians with no other known suitable breeding habitat.

An old-growth forest is one with little or no human disturbance, with trees approximately 200 years or older. The Highlands region boasts some of the state's largest tracts of such forests, including the Mohawk Trail State Forest in Florida and Charlemont. Although harsh growing conditions have kept this forest's ancient white ash, sugar maple, white pine, hemlock, yellow birch, and beech from reaching giant proportions, the forest provides habitats for many kinds of wildlife and a view of what natural old forests may have been like.

Highlanders in History