The Mohawk Trail

The French King Bridge on Route 2, soaring 140 feet above the Connecticut River between Erving and Gill — the grand eastern gateway to the Mohawk Trail and the addressable start of the drive.

Ranger Boone Merrick introduces himself at the eastern gateway of the Mohawk Trail.

The Pocumtuck legend of Ktsi Amiskw, the giant beaver of the Connecticut valley whose body became the mountains.

The Great Falls at Turners Falls, just downstream of the French King Bridge — for thousands of years the richest fishing place on the river, now home to fish ladders and the Great Falls Discovery Center.

Turn-by-turn direction, spoken because the app has no navigation.

May 19, 1676 — the dawn raid on the Native fishing camp at Peskeompskut, one of the darkest days of King Philip's War.

How French King Rock, the boulder in the Connecticut below the bridge, got its name during the French and Indian Wars.

Turn-by-turn direction, spoken because the app has no navigation.

Greenfield, the western-Massachusetts hub where the Connecticut, Deerfield, and Green rivers meet — the town the Mohawk Trail climbs away from as it leaves the valley for the hills.

Take a look at the shape of these mountains — soft, round-shouldered, endlessly folded, rolling off blue into the distance. They don't have the jagged drama of the Rockies, and there's a wonderful reason: these are so…

Why the trail carries the name of the Mohawk — the feared western nation who raided along it — rather than the valley peoples who lived here.

Here's something worth knowing about the road under your tires. When the Mohawk Trail opened in 1914, it wasn't built to get freight from here to there faster — it was built for this, for the drive itself. It was the…

The thousand-year-old Native footpath — the 'Great Path' between the Hudson and the Connecticut — that the Mohawk Trail was laid upon.

The village of Shelburne Falls, just below Route 2 — home of the Bridge of Flowers, a former trolley bridge turned into a hanging garden, and the Glacial Potholes carved into the riverbed.

How a bankrupt trolley bridge in Shelburne Falls became a world-famous hanging garden.

As you drive, keep an eye out for the old survivors of this road's golden age — because once the Mohawk Trail opened, a whole world of roadside Americana sprang up along it. This was the birth of the great American ro…

Charlemont and Mohawk Park, where the bronze 'Hail to the Sunrise' statue faces east over the Deerfield River — the heart of the old Native trail country and the gateway to the mountain climb.

The bronze statue in Mohawk Park — who raised it, who it honors, and the complicated tribute it represents.

It's worth understanding the water on this drive, because the rivers wrote the map long before anyone laid a road. The whole eastern half of the Trail follows the Deerfield River and its branches up into the mountains…

The 1704 Raid on Deerfield — the pre-dawn attack, and the captives marched 300 miles to Canada through the February snow.

Mohawk Trail State Forest and the Cold River gorge — where Route 2 threads a shadowed canyon beneath some of the tallest old-growth white pines in the Northeast.

Here's something for the hikers among you. That thousand-year-old Native footpath we keep talking about — the one this whole road was paved over — well, a stretch of the original trail still exists, and you can walk i…

Whitcomb Summit, at 2,240 feet the highest point on the Mohawk Trail, with a four-state panorama and a bronze elk statue raised in 1923 as a World War I memorial.

October 22, 1914 — the crowd of 1,800 at Whitcomb Summit that dedicated the Mohawk Trail as the first scenic auto road in America.

If you're driving this in autumn, you already know why you came — and here's the science behind the show. All summer, the leaves around you are factories, green with chlorophyll, turning sunlight into sugar. But under…

The Western Summit — a west-facing overlook and the historic Wigwam gift shop, opened in 1914, with a three-state panorama across North Adams and Williamstown to Mount Greylock and the Taconic Crest.

The Hairpin Turn — the Mohawk Trail's dramatic switchback above North Adams, with a near-180-degree bend and a sweeping overlook of the city, Mount Greylock, and the mountains of Vermont and New York.

The Hairpin Turn's white-knuckle reputation — the golden age of motoring and the runaway trucks that crashed through the Golden Eagle.

These woods are wilder than they look from the road, and they're filling back up with big animals. Black bears are all through these mountains now — Massachusetts has thousands of them, and the population's been climb…

North Adams, the old mill city at the foot of the mountains — birthplace of the giant art museum MASS MoCA and the eastern portal of the Hoosac Tunnel, the 'Bloody Pit.'

The Hoosac Tunnel — 24 years of boring through the mountain, nearly 200 dead, and the ghost stories that followed.

A few practical words, ranger to traveler, especially if you're doing this in the glory of foliage season. First: you will not be alone. Peak leaf-peeping weekends bring a lot of cars up this road, all of them full of…

Mount Greylock — named for the Abenaki war chief Gray Lock — and how Herman Melville watched it like a great white whale while writing Moby-Dick.

Ranger Boone Merrick introduces himself at the western gateway of the Mohawk Trail.

Turn-by-turn direction, spoken because the app has no navigation.

Williamstown, the college town at the western end of the Mohawk Trail — home to Williams College and the Clark Art Institute, in the shadow of Mount Greylock, the highest peak in Massachusetts.