Turner Falls Historic District

Turners Falls is a planned mill village on a knoll beside the Connecticut River in Montague, Massachusetts. Its roughly 130 acres hold more than 275 properties, mostly built between 1866 and 1886 under Alvah Crocker's concept of an industrial community. A 1867 plan by William P. Crocker and Charles W. Hazelton placed mill sites along a power canal fed by a dam, with the rest of the village on a grid of lettered avenues and numbered streets. Avenue A was laid out as a 100-foot tree-lined avenue. The district includes brick paper mills, a cotton mill, the concrete dam of 1912-15, canal bridges, churches, commercial blocks, and many single and multi-family homes. Industries such as the Keith Paper Company, the Montague Paper Company, the cutlery works and the Turners Falls Company shaped its economy and drew immigrant workers. The district is notable because most of the original buildings survive and few modern intrusions disturb its character.