6 historic trailblazers who left their mark on the Berkshires

You may already be following in their footsteps (or tire tracks)

BY BERNARD A. DREW

Add a dimension to autumn leaf peeping this year by tracing routes traveled by intriguing folks of the past — by foot, by canoe or by automobile.

You already know some of Berkshire County’s historical travelers: Elizabeth Freeman on her freedom quest in Sheffield; Henry David Thoreau on his nature pilgrimage on Greylock; Benton MacKaye pacing the Appalachian trail and Arlo Guthrie motoring the Garbage Trail. But there are others.

This handful of legacy suggestions covers the breadth of the Berkshires. Ponder them at the breakfast table, muse about them while driving to work or shopping for groceries, or seek them out on an afternoon meander through the colorful countryside.

1758: GEN. AMHERST BUILDS A WAR ROAD

ROUTE 23: Blandford to Alford

British Gen. Jeffery Amherst and his troops, fresh from defeating the French at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, traipsed through South Berkshire in late 1758. The fighters were on their way from Boston to Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) during the North American campaign in the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), which pitted Britain and Prussia against Austria and France.

Route 23, from Blandford to Great Barrington, more or less follows the war road reshaped by Maj. James Clephane’s 200 “Hatchet Men,” who hacked and shoveled to widen, straighten and flatten a Native American path to military standards sufficient for supply wagons. It was the largest troop movement ever through the Berkshires.

Amherst’s army, some 4,000 strong and including Simon Fraser of Lavat’s kilted 78th Regiment of Foot (Scottish Highlanders), camped for a day near Green River in Great Barrington in order to entertain Stockbridge Mohicans, two of whom petitioned to re-enlist with the famed Roger’s Rangers. The campsite is now a cornfield. The British ultimately took Quebec and won control of North America.

In 1776: American Gen. Henry Knox and a fleet of ox-drawn sledges navigated the trail’s reverse to deliver cannon, cohorns and mortars from Ticonderoga to Patriot forces to impress the British army to give up Boston — and ultimately North America.

1781: MOTHER ANN LEE ON A MISSION

Watervliet, N.Y., to Mount Washington

Mother Ann Lee, founder of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, made a mission tour of three New England states beginning in May 1781. Her pretzel-looped trip lasted two years.

She beelined from Watervliet, N.Y., to Benjamin Osborn’s homestead in Mount Washington, passing Bash-Bish cascade as she climbed from Copake Falls. Most of the mountaintop community had broken away from Robert Livingston’s Hudson River patroonship in New York state. Lee, who stayed with Osborn for 10 days, reported she was “joyously received.”

The Mother Ann Lee Cottage, as the Osborn house was often called, survived on West Street in Mount Washington State Forest until 2019, when it was destroyed by fire.

On heading back to Watervliet in 1783, Lee traveled through Cheshire and Pittsfield and made a side trip to Great Barrington to comfort adherents who had been imprisoned there. (Great Barrington was the county seat and county lockup until 1792.) The men were ultimately released with a fine.

A probable map of Mother Ann Lee’s route may be seen at the Shaker Museum’s website, shakermusem.us.

1883: PADDLING ON THE HOUSATONIC RIVER

Pittsfield South

Boston attorney Henry Parker Fellows, author of the 1884 “Boating Trips on New England Rivers,” described how after a meal at the American House in Pittsfield, he and a companion launched a skiff from below the Pomeroy Woolen Mill on West Housatonic Street, getting a late afternoon start. They encountered an unexpected barrier: “a brand new wire fence which extended directly across our path and looked like a very troublesome obstacle, as the wires were full of sharp projections. Driving to it, however, stern foremost, my passenger lifted the lowest strand over his head … I carried the thorny burden precariously over my own, and we passed under without a scratch.”

They made it to Lenox Station as dark set in. The Boston Evening Transcript in 1884 hailed Fellows’ book as showing “the excursionist need not necessarily betake himself to the wilds of Maine or to the forest vastnesses of the Adirondacks in search of picturesque scenery or isolation from the hurly-burly of business life.” Many recreationists have canoed the same distance in the decades since.

1893: TORCHLIT PARADES FOLLOWED PATHS THROUGH ANCIENT HEMLOCKS

Ice Glen, Stockbridge

Ice Glen in Stockbridge is a wondrous natural landmark, recently inducted into the national Old-Growth Forest Network. The path through the ancient hemlocks and pines has been a popular destination since the time of early Americans.

David Dudley Field Jr. owned the crevice in the late 19th century. Then living at Laurel Cottage on Main Street (where the tennis court is today in Stockbridge village), Field built a footbridge across the Housatonic River and created a bridle path to the summit above Ice Glen. He encouraged autumn torchlit parades, which were held frequently until the 1930s, sometimes on Halloween. Field gave the 43-acre mountain gash to the town in 1891. He was widely greeted in September 1893 as he reviewed a line of costumed hikers.

Today, Ice Glen is maintained by the Laurel Hill Association and may be reached from a small parking area at the end of Park Street — traversing the ledges in daylight is recommended over the use of candlelight.

Field instigated the famous 1850 hike to Monument Mountain that brought together scribes Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Peeskawso Peak, the destination at the top of the climb, affords a broad Berkshire view. The trailhead is on Route 7 south of Stockbridge. The Trustees of Reservations maintain those mountain trails.

1905: GLIDDEN AUTO TOUR STOPS AT ASPINWALL HOTEL

Aspinwall Hotel ruins, Kennedy Park, Lenox

Telephone pioneer Charles Jasper Glidden was an early automobilist. He donated the Glidden Touring Trophy to the National Reliability Run, an automobile endurance competition run by AAA. The reliability runs, which became known as the Glidden Tours, ran from 1904 to 1913.

In its second year, the first to be named for Glidden, drivers and mechanics overnighted at the Aspinwall Hotel in Lenox in July 21-22 — among them Ransom E. Olds (Oldsmobile), Percy O. Pierce (Pierce Great-Arrow), J.D. Maxwell (Maxwell-Briscoe), R.M. Owen (Owen Magnetic), Albert L. Pope (Pope Hartford), E.H. Cutler (Knox) and Walter White (White). There was one woman driver, Joan Newton Cuneo (White steamer). Glidden drove a Napier.

With Knox and Packard trucks providing sweep, they came from Worcester via West Becket and Lee into the village. A 50-horsepower Panhard et Levassor, the heaviest car in the run, had motor trouble. A Pope-Hartford had tire punctures and a Pierce needed a coil vibrator. Nevertheless, Percy Pierce won the contest with a score of 996 out of a possible 1,000. (The tour concluded in New York City with a vote of all the motorists.)

Motor Age noted: “No more peacefully picturesque run could be picked out than that of today. The route carried one into the Berkshires at historic old Stockbridge, where Jonathan Edwards preached to the Indians and wrote his famous philosophical essay on ‘The Freedom of the Will.’ Then came a ride down the Housatonic valley, widely famed for its scenery. Jacob’s Ladder was coasted, or more properly bumped down ….”

There were no electric vehicles in the competition, but Lenox garage owner Thomas S. Morse rented Waverly Electrics to guests and kept a charging station on the hotel grounds in 1905. The Aspinwall burned in 1931. Trails at John Drummond Kennedy Park in Lenox lead walkers to the inn’s footprint and, elsewhere, to the walls of the hotel garage.

1914: TRAILBLAZERS CREATE AN AUTOMOBILE ROUTE FROM A MOHAWK PATH The Mohawk Trail, Route 2, Charlemont to Williamstown

Four horse-drawn wagons took laborers under the direction of foreman Oreste Benescarito to the summit of Florida Mountain in August 1913 to improve a section of the 16-mile road to Charlemont.

By that December, Cortlandt Field Bishop, of Lenox, was the first automobilist to navigate the road, declaring it a “scenic wonderland.” He was accompanied by contractor Michael L. Camarco. Bishop came back in January 1914 to be the first to motor the 310-foot bridge over the Deerfield River with Camarco and Kelton B. Miller of The Berkshire Eagle as passengers. The first woman to drive the route was Mrs. W.H. Pritchard, of North Adams, in September 1914 the a month before the highway was officially dedicated.

“In 1753 the first road across Hoosac Mountain was built by Captain Elisha Hawley, who previously commanded Fort Massachusetts [in North Adams] and was given a grant by the General Court to lay out and build a road from Fort Massachusetts to Charlemont. It was completed in 1765,” according to David L. Costello, a Massachusetts Department of Public Works engineer who in 1975 mapped the original Mohawk Trail.

European travelers on foot or horseback took the Native American path to reach Fort Massachusetts in North Adams from Deerfield. The Mahican-Mohawk Trail Council of Franklin County created a foot trail that approximates sections of the old Native American path on the east side of the mountain, for anyone who wants to step into the past. Jake Swamp, a white pine, at 173 feet, is believed to be the tallest tree in New England; it stands in the Mohawk Trail State Forest. ■

Name That Trail

Many historic roads in the Berkshires were given colorful names as our system of highways was widened, flattened and paved more than a century ago. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts named particular east-west roads and other nicknames came over the years:

• Route 9 through Windsor: Berkshire Trail

• Route 8 from Becket to Dalton: Crane Trail

• The road east from Route 8 in Hinsdale: Skyline Trail

• Route 143 from Hinsdale to Worthington: Lafayette Trail

• Route 20 from Lee to Westfield: Jacob’s Ladder (That’s only a section of the longest highway in the United States, which stretches 3,365 miles from Boston to Newport, Ore.

• The old Boston-Albany Road (Route 20) west from Pittsfield over the mountain into New York: Lebanon Trail

• Route 23 from Great Barrington to Blandford: Knox Trail.

• Route 2 (originally New England Interstate Route 7) from North Adams to Shelburne: the Mohawk Trail on the east, Taconic Trail on the west.

These roads sprung from indigenous hunting and trading paths, though only one makes that acknowledgment.

North-south routes weren’t so blessed. The entire Route 8 has no special name for its 67 miles in Massachusetts, though it was known to Nutmeg Staters as Stratford-Waterbury-North Adams Route.

And the 54-four-mile Route 7 in Massachusetts, once designated Interstate Route 4, was for a time seriously known as New York-Berkshire-Burlington Way, less seriously at the southern end as Antiques Alley.