Berkshire County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Berkshire County

The summit register at Mt. Greylock (3,489 ft, the high point of Massachusetts) includes a documented 1844 entry by Henry David Thoreau in his personal journal — the only place east of the Mississippi where the Concord transcendentalist is known to have summited under his own narrative, predating his Walden residency by a year. The peak's iconic Veterans War Memorial Tower (a 92-ft granite cylinder erected 1932) is the official Massachusetts state war memorial and on clear days admits visibility into five states (MA, VT, NH, NY, CT). Mohawk Trail MA-2 over the Berkshire highlands is the oldest scenic highway in the United States as a formal designation — the Massachusetts Legislature acted in 1914, 75 years before the National Scenic Byway program — and runs 69 miles from Athol to North Adams through the Berkshire spine, with the Whitcomb Summit pull-off offering a panoramic Hoosac Range view that's been a postcard staple since the 1920s.

Berkshire County covers 931 sq mi from the Vermont line south to the Connecticut line and includes the entire Massachusetts segment of the Appalachian Trail (90 miles), Tanglewood in Lenox (Boston Symphony summer residence since 1937), and the MASS MoCA contemporary-art museum complex in North Adams (250,000 sq ft of reused 1860s textile-mill space, the largest contemporary-art museum by floor area in the United States). Pittsfield (population 43,927, the county seat) sits at the watershed divide between the Housatonic (south) and Hoosic (north) drainages. Mount Greylock summit road bans rigs over 35 ft length and over 11 ft height per Mass DCR regulations posted at both park entrances. October Mountain SF in Lee accepts rigs to 35 ft with electric hookups, the largest state forest in Massachusetts at 16,500 acres. Practical winter staging is severely limited — most state-park loops close Columbus Day through Memorial Day, leaving only Pittsfield-area commercial sites running year-round.