Shelburne, Massachusetts
A Short History of Shelburne
From a northwest corner of old Deerfield, to a hill town named for a British Prime Minister, to a dead trolley bridge that townspeople turned into a garden that still blooms every summer.
Deerfield Northwest
Shelburne started as the far corner of somewhere else. It was first settled in 1756 as part of Deerfield, and in those years it went by the plain name Deerfield Northwest. The land is hill country in the valley of the Deerfield River, and the first English families here farmed it. In 1768 the settlement was organized on its own as the district of Shelburne, taking its name from William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, an English statesman who would later serve as Prime Minister during the American Revolution.
From District to Town
A Massachusetts district could hold its own meetings and tax its own residents, but it was not yet a full town. Shelburne crossed that line in 1775, when it was incorporated as a town in its own right, on the eve of the Revolution. From that point on its Town Meeting set the budget, chose its officers, and passed its bylaws, which is the same form of government that still runs the town today.
Two Towns on One River
Shelburne has always had two sides. The main body of town stayed farmland spread across the hills, while the western edge grew into the village of Shelburne Falls, packed along the Deerfield River. The village is unusual: it sits in two towns at once, half in Shelburne and half in Buckland, joined across the river by a bridge. Where the river drops, the falls once turned mills, and the village became the trading and manufacturing center for a wide stretch of the hilltowns.
The Bridge of Flowers
When the trolley line that once crossed the Deerfield River shut down in the late 1920s, the town was left with an abandoned concrete bridge. Rather than tear it down, townspeople decided to plant it. They raised the money themselves and hauled in the soil, and the Bridge of Flowers became a garden that has been tended, bloom by bloom, ever since. It is now one of the best known sights in the region, and it started as a local decision to make something out of what was left behind.
The Land Itself
Just below the village, the Deerfield River has ground scores of smooth round basins into the bedrock, the Glacial Potholes, among the largest known concentrations of glacial potholes anywhere. Massaemett Mountain rises to the east, topped by a stone fire tower and holding sections of the town’s state forest. Massachusetts Route 2, the Mohawk Trail, runs east and west through the town, the same route travelers have followed across these hills for generations.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelburne,_Massachusetts; the Bridge of Flowers, Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club (bridgeofflowersmass.org); U.S. Census Bureau.