Lower Historic District

Four farmhouses line Washington Mountain Road on a terrace of the southern slope of Washington Mountain, at about 1,600 feet. They are the surviving core of the earliest residential settlement in Washington, Massachusetts, known as Milliken's Corner. The William Milliken Farm, built soon after a 1763 land grant to one of the town's first ten proprietors, is the only Colonial-period building left in the town. Three Federal-period houses followed by about 1803: the Hiram Savery House, the Richmond-Foster-Corey House and the Clark-Strong-Abbott-Pomeroy House. Farming on the rocky land was difficult and stayed at subsistence level. When the County Road opened in 1830 and a railroad was built later in the century, both east of the mountain, development moved east and the settlement stopped growing. That lack of growth left a modest linear pattern of farms that most hilltowns lost. The district was listed for its local significance in settlement history and early architecture.