The building of the new State Highway across Hoosac mountain was an event which turned a great volume of travel through a region which had been little appreciated, and seen by necessarily few tourists. With this great volume of travel over a splendid highway, bearing a name which implies a history of its own, there was awakened a desire to learn what that history is.

Many travelers have asked what justification there is for supposing that there ever was an Indian trail across the mountain, and many more who knew that a trail did exist, were eager to know at what places they traversed the ancient path.

In an endeavor to satisfy these inquirers, this story of the Trail has been written.

• First, the Indian trail, a foot path.
• Second, the first rough road, made presumably by Hawley in 1753, for horses and ox carts.
• Third, the Rice road, which was but a new way of ascending the eastern slope. It joined the Hawley road at the summit and was later called the "Shunpike."
• Fourth, the turnpike which kept along the river to near present Hoosac Tunnel, where it ascended the mountain emerging at Whitcomb Summit on the new Mohawk Trail. This was the stage road of Tunnel days.
• Fifth, the new Mohawk Trail. These roads are all in use today, with the exception of the Rice road, whose course may still be traced as a path.
• It may give a clearer understanding of descriptive matter to those not familiar with the region to say that the mountain barrier of the Hoosacs is not a single ridge, but double with an elevated valley between. The western crest we have designated as Perry's Pass. The eastern is Whitcomb Summit.

There is plenty of evidence that our first settlers found the wilderness crossed by numerous Indian footpaths or trails, which by the testimony of Indians then living, had been used by countless generations of their race. It was evident that the Indians were familiar with regions hundreds of miles away, and early records show that trails with but few breaks, extended across almost the entire width of the country. The constant passing over them for so long a period had worn them so well, that many are plainly visible today. Because of the Indian habit of traveling single file these trails were seldom over eighteen inches wide, yet they were the highways for traders, migrating Indians or settlers, embassies and messengers. They naturally follow the line of least resistance. In mountainous country they cross the lowest places, and many times the route used in summer was discarded in winter for the ice bound river or stream or for ways more convenient for snow shoe travel.

So it was that the first settlers of the Deerfield Valley found one of these ancient trails following the river up from Deerfield, and the first settlers at Albany found a similar trail following the Hoosic from its mouth nearly to its source. Then when we consider the freak of nature which led these river courses to approach each other so nearly that there is barely five miles of mountain between them, we realize that here if anywhere there must have been one of the immemorial Indian trails.

But although nature seemed to arrange these river courses so carefully, nevertheless, she placed between them a stupendous barrier. Here the watershed is compressed into one narrow breadth, which is expanded to forty miles in width in many places. To the northward even now it is impassable for a railroad until we reach a point opposite Rutland.

At the time of the construction of the Tunnel, it was observed that the hand of Providence had plainly marked this place for a tunnel, and it was also observed that it was a pity that the same hand hadn't pushed a finger through the barrier.

The Encyclopedia Brittanica says: "The Indians were no exception to the rule that one of the fundamental contributions of a primitive people to the culture factors in the life of the race dispossessing them consists of the trails and camping places, waterways, and trade routes which they have known and used from time immemorial. The great importance of these trails and camps has often been emphasized. It was over these trails that the missionary, soldier, adventurer, trader, trapper, hunter, explorer and settler followed the Indian with guides or without.

"THE ROAD FOLLOWED THE TRAIL, AND THE RAILWAY, THE ROAD." This was the exact story of our trail. The highway follows the old trail closely, and the railroad follows the same course from either side, making the passage of the watershed by tunnel directly beneath. (See Note A).

So for centuries ran the Indian foot path up the Hoosic valley, across the Hoosac divide and down the Deerfield valley to the Connecticut. But with the advent of the white men, it immediately began to disappear and as settlements pushed along the Hoosic and Deerfield from either side, the trail was replaced by roads, the course across the divide being the last portion to be replaced.

At the building of Fort Massachusetts we know that a passable road existed from there to the Hudson. A road from Deerfield to Charlemont was made at an even earlier period, but not until 1753 did a road cross the mountain barrier, the ancient trail thus losing the last portion of its course as a foot path.

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