Send an E-Postcard of:
Watering Place Looking up the Mountain Side

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.

In the early 1900s, many Americans wished to reestablish a link with nature they felt they had lost with the growth of cities and industry. Large numbers of people took to the road in automobiles, a new invention that was itself a product of the industrialization and pollution people wished to escape. The Mohawk Trail in western Massachusetts was a popular destination for Americans at the dawn of the automobile age. This mountain spring offered refreshment to travelers and horses (although few horse-drawn vehicles used the Trail by the time this photograph was taken around 1915.) Water was also useful for car radiators that had run dry as car motors overheated from the strain of driving up steep mountainsides.

top of page