Chester, Massachusetts
A Short History of Chester
From a Berkshire hill plantation called Murrayfield, to the granite quarries and emery mills that gave it the name Gem of the Valley, to the stone arches that carried the Western Railroad through its hills.
Murrayfield, and the Name Chester
The land that is now Chester opened for settlement in the 1750s as Township No. 9 and was chartered as the town of Murrayfield on October 31, 1765. On February 21, 1783 it was incorporated under the name it still carries, Chester.
The Gem of the Valley
Chester calls itself the Gem of the Valley, and the name comes from what came out of its hills. In the nineteenth century the town was a center of the granite and emery industries, cutting building stone and mining the hard abrasive mineral used to grind and polish metal. The quarries and mills drew workers and rail traffic, and they are the reason a town this small once had the industry to matter to the whole region.
The Railroad and the Keystone Arches
On May 24, 1841 the Western Railroad reached Chester, and the stone railroad bridges known as the Keystone Arches still stand in the hills around the town. The all-volunteer Chester Foundation restored the town’s 1862 depot, and it is now the Chester Railway Station and Museum, which you can visit.
The Summer Stage
In 1990 a professional theater company took up residence in Chester and began staging plays each summer, and the Chester Theatre Company has performed in town ever since, often in the same Town Hall where the Select Board meets the rest of the year. For a town of about 1,200 people, a professional theater season is an unusual thing to have, and it is one of the reasons Chester’s name travels well beyond the hilltowns.
One School for Six Towns
Chester’s schools are not Chester’s alone. In 1957 the town joined five hilltown neighbors, Blandford, Huntington, Middlefield, Montgomery, and Russell, to form the Gateway Regional School District, and its grades 6 to 12 school, Gateway Regional School, stands on the Littleville campus in Huntington. Chester keeps its own elementary school in town and elects its share of the district’s committee, which is why a Chester resident’s vote still reaches all the way into a classroom.
Sources: Town of Chester (townofchester.net); the Chester Foundation, Chester Railway Station and Museum (chesterrailwaystation.net); Chester Theatre Company (chestertheatre.org); Gateway Regional School District (grsd.org).
MassCivics last checked this page on September 26, 2026.
Sources
- Town records: Town of Chester, About Chester, as of September 24, 2026.
- School district records: Gateway Regional School District, About Us, as of September 21, 2026.