New Salem, Massachusetts
A Short History of New Salem
From a 1737 hill settlement named by families out of Salem, to the 1938 flooding of the valley next door that made New Salem the largest town by area in Franklin County.
A Town Named for Salem
New Salem was first settled in 1737 and incorporated as a town in 1753, taking its name from the settlers who came west from Salem, Massachusetts, to farm the hills above the Swift River. For its first decades the town belonged to Hampshire County, which then stretched across most of western Massachusetts; when the Commonwealth carved Franklin County out of the northern part of that county in 1811, New Salem became one of its towns and has been part of Franklin County ever since.
The Quabbin Takes the Valley
In 1938 the Commonwealth did something drastic to the towns next to New Salem: it dissolved them. To build the Quabbin Reservoir and pipe drinking water to metropolitan Boston, the state flooded the Swift River valley and wiped four towns off the map, Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott. New Salem absorbed most of what had been Prescott, along with parts of Greenwich and Enfield, and in the process became the largest town by land area in Franklin County. Today three roads out of the common still run straight to a Quabbin gate and stop, and the watershed land is managed by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
A Town of 1,543, Then 357, Then 983
New Salem’s population peaked early, at 1,543 residents in 1790, when the hill farms were full. Over the next century and a half the count fell as the farms emptied and the Quabbin lands were taken, bottoming out at 357 people by 1940. The recovery has been slow and partial: the 2020 census counted 983 residents. The town that results keeps its open fields, its town meeting, and a government run by the neighbors it elects.
Keeping the Records of the Lost Towns
The memory of the four drowned towns did not disappear with them. The Swift River Valley Historical Society, at 40 Elm Street in North New Salem, keeps the artifacts, photographs, and town records of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott, so that the communities the reservoir replaced can still be studied by the students and descendants who come looking for them.
Sources: Town of New Salem (newsalemma.org); Wikipedia, New Salem, Massachusetts; Swift River Valley Historical Society (swiftrivermuseum.org); U.S. Census Bureau.