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The Housatonic River

Housatonic History, from “A Canoeing Guide for the Housatonic River in Berkshire county, including the Williams River”, Third Edition. Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and the Housatonic Valley Association.

The River’s Past

The Housatonic River - called Hooestonnuc by the Mahican – literally means “place beyond the mountains.”  The Berkshire Hills and the Housatonic Valley were crossed by various bands of Amerid peoples for eight to ten thousand years prior to European contact.  These roving bands of hunters, and later semi-agricultural people, have left considerable archaeological evidence in the form of flint and stone artifacts at sheltered sites along the Housatonic.  Archaeologically, these artifacts are classified as being Archaic (9000 BC – 3000 BC), and Woodland (1000 BC – 1600 AD).

The Mahican, a tribe related to Indian groups living along the Hudson River, used the Berkshire highlands as a summer hunting ground.  The Mahican’s use of the Housatonic included fishing for schools of shad, herring and salmon in the spring.  They built fish weirs (enclosures placed in water for catching fish) in the tributary streams and used nets handled from dugout canoes on the river.  The fish and fresh water mussels were smoked for winter stores.  Migratory water fowl, plentiful in the spring and fall in the marshes, were hunted.  Garden plots were maintained in the floodplain where they were fertilized by the annual spring flood.

Competition between the Mahican and Mohawk for the fur trade at Fort Orange ( now Albany, New York), which the Dutch established in 1624, began a series of wars between the two tribes.  By 1628 the Mahican were driven from the west bank of the Hudson and settled in the Berkshires. 

The smallpox epidemic of 1690 decimated the local Mahican population.  Those Mahicans who survived, led by Chiefs Konkapot and Umpachenee, sold some of their lands to the Commonwealth in 1724.  English settlement began a year later.

At a tribal meeting in 1735, which was attended by nearly 200 Mahicans, Rev. John Sergent established the Mission Station at what is today Stockbridge.  Through the late 18th century the Stockbridge Indians – as they were now called, joined with the survivors of other Mahican bands.  In 1773 their total estimate population was only three to four hundred people.

Sargent’s joint Anglo-Indian town, established in 1736, failed and he later blamed liquor for the failure.  We recognize today that the clash between the Mahican and English social and moral values, together with the Mahican’s unfamiliarity with the English concept of land ownership, caused the Indians’ forced exile to the west in 1784. 

English settlement of the upper Housatonic River began in 1725 at Sheffield.  Their settlement patterns followed those of the native population; the earliest homesteads were built on the second river terrace (above the floodplain.)  This preserved the floodplain for agriculture and protected the settlers from the malarial low lands.  Because of the fear of Indian raids, settlement of the headwaters of the Housatonic did not really begin until the end of the French and Indian wars in 1759.

At Great Barrington (“Upper Sheffield” until 1761) the fall of water below the Great Bridge was harnessed for a saw and grist mill built in 1739 by David Ingersoll.  He also built a bloomery forge the same year to convert bog iron to crude iron bars with a water powered triphammer.  Later blast furnaces, utilizing the Housatonic’s water power, were the Lenox Furnace, built in 1829 by Silas Pierce at Lenoxdale, and the Stockbridge Ironworks south of Glendale, also called Alger’s Furnace.  After 1800, the expansion of manufacturing began to increase reliance upon the river’s water power.  Spinning and weaving of textiles and paper-making led to the use of multiple water wheels within the same factory.  Arthur Schofield of Pittsfield and Zenas Carne of Dalton were pioneers of the technique in 1800 and 1801 respectively.

Samuel Church founded the South Lee paper industry in 1806; Charles M. Owen and Thomas Hurlburt purchased the mill in 1822.  The building was rebuilt by the Hurlburt Company in 1872 and is now the Willow Mill of Mead Corporation which still uses the water privilege today.  Church was also responsible for developing the first paper mill at Lee proper in 1808, which later became the Planter-Smith Mill, the first in America to convert wood pulp into paper in 1867.”

Available water power limited production as demand increased during the 19th century.  Textile and paper factories had to augment the water power with steam engines during the dry summer months.  To satisfy the increased demand, improvements were made in water driven equipment and a new form of power, electricity, was tried.

In 1883 William Stanley, employed by George Westinghouse, devised a system of alternating current distribution.  Stanley’s theory was rejected by Westinghouse.  In 1885 he returned to his hometown of Great Barrington and, working in an abandoned rubber factory, he constructed the first transformer.

Great Barrington was the first town to be illuminated with electricity distributed by Stanleys’ system.  Power from the hydroelectric station at Alger’s furnace supplied electricity to motors at the Monument Mills, the first industrial application of Stanley’s theories, and to a high voltage line that stretched the 7-1/2 miles to Great Barrington – the first such line in the world in 1894. 

Just as mills and early factories proliferated, so did dams along the Housatonic and its tributaries.  In Pittsfield alone there were more than 30 dams at the turn of the century, powering scores of enterprises along the East, West and Southwest branches of the river.  There were also dams to the east in Dalton and Hinsdale, to the south on the main stem in Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington and Sheffield, and still more dams on the many tributaries including the Williams, Green, and Knokapot rivers.  Although many of the dams are gone, many of the larger ones still exist along with prominent mill buildings at the Crane, Bel Air, Eaton, Mead, Hurlbut, Monument, and Rising sites.

The advent of the Housatonic dams in Massachusetts and Connecticut also spelled the demise of the once prolific Atlantic Salmon.  The young fry used to grow for two years in the headwaters, and then as smolts would venture to the sea.  Two years later they would return to the same headwaters as mature salmon having migrated as far as Newfoundland, feeding, growing and storing enough nutrients to last them for a year long journey.  Unlike Pacific Salmon, they do not die after spawning, but migrate back again.  Early settlers found them so numerous that they were fed to animals and servants and thought them much too common for “civilized” dining.  Efforts are currently underway to restore Atlantic Salmon to the Connecticut River, but the many dams on the Housatonic, especially in Connecticut, remain a formidable obstacle.

(Editor’s note:  There are conflicting opinions about whether salmon were ever able to migrate up the Housatonic as far as Massachusetts due to the steep waterfalls in CT.)

The dams created another unfortunate consequence: they tended to exacerbate pollution that was produced from the many industries along the river.  As coal and oil replaced water power as the driving force behind industrial growth, the mill ponds became repositories of municipal and industrial wastes.  With heavy industry came toxic wastes;  with the automobile came pavement, the spread of development and accompanying storm water run-off and non-point source pollution.  By the 1950’s, most Berkshire residents and visitors no longer thought of the river as a vital and invaluable resource.  It had become a receptacle for wastes, which people looked away from and ignored.  In Lee, people would comment that the way to know which dyes the paper mills were using was to check the color of the river.  In Pittsfield, despite 30 miles of river corridor along the three branches, most residents were oblivious of the river’s presence.  In essence, the “beautiful Berkshires” encompassed the mountains, lakes and meadows, but did not include the river.

The Housatonic River Watershed Association was found in 1962 and a new era of environmental consciousness and action blossomed in the 1970’s.  Attitudes changes and river clean-ups were organized.  The federal Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 which required wastes to be monitored and treated.  Municipal and industrial water treatment plants were built.  Massachusetts also enacted the Wetlands Protection Act in 1972 which required cities and towns to establish conservation commissions to protect wetlands.

Although the Housatonic is certainly cleaner, more appreciated and hospitable to people and wildlife, a great deal of work still needs to be done before the river becomes fishable and swimmable.  Efforts are underway to establish a greenway along the entire length of the Housatonic.  This protective buffer will not only enhance the attractiveness of the river, but will also help to absorb non-point source pollution and provide for needed wildlife habitat.  Efforts are also underway to remove PCBs (polychlorinated byphenyls) fro the river corridor, a legacy of the Transformer Division of the General Electric plant in Pittsfield.  Environmentalists and state and federal agencies have been working with renewed determination to come up with a workable plan to remediate this problem, which is particularly serious between the GE plant and Woods Pond in Lenox.  Although this stretch of the river is safe for canoeing, paddlers are urged to avoid contact with river sediments.  Canoeists should also take notice of the posted fish advisory warning of PCB contamination.