20th century
Industries were affected by boom-and-bust cycles of war and depression, but remained viable into the 1960s. They included paper and industrial textiles in Holyoke and West Springfield, bicycles in Westfield, and a series of smaller mill towns along the Westfield River in Russell, Huntington and Chester that mainly produced various kinds of paper and industrial textiles. Strathmore Paper Company produced fine stationery and art paper. It was established in Woronoco by Horace Moses, who was a social visionary as well as a formidable capitalist. Moses developed Woronoco into a company town with high-quality housing, sufficient wages, and remarkably good social and community services. A trolley line connected towns along the Westfield River with Westfield and Springfield, until automobile ownership became ubiquitous.
Construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike in the 1950s, and then Interstate 91 improved connections throughout the region and nearly halved travel times. However by the 1960s wage competition and obsolescence began taking a toll. Mills and factories were downsized, and then closed. The larger, most industry-dependent cities -- Springfield and Holyoke -- suffered economic decline, however the postwar growth of higher education kept cities and towns with colleges and universities afloat, and warehousing developed on the outskirts of Westfield where open land was available.
In the hilltowns, remaining subsistence farmers continued to die off. Old farmsteads were often converted to exurban residences, but fields fell into disuse and reverted to forest. Logging lagged behind growth and rural roads were no longer maintained. Patchy forests converged and matured into an approximation of wilderness. By 1960 deer were probably more abundant than they had been since 1760. Beaver, coyotes, wild turkey and black bears were reintroduced or returned from northern sanctuaries. By the end of the century even moose were showing up.
Settlement
Puritans from England were settling in the alluvial and fertile Connecticut River Valley by the 1630s and began growing cash crops so they could buy imported goods. Vegetables, fruit and high-quality tobacco are still grown there commercially, although urban and suburban developments have encroached.
Uplands east and west of the central valley had only as much soil as weathered from bedrock and glacial debris in the past 10,000 or so years. This soil was thin, rocky and often infertile, but better land in the valley was spoken for. Settlement in the hills did not begin until the 1700s when new immigrants were mainly Scotch-Irish -- Scottish Presbyterians who had migrated to Northern Ireland before coming to the New World. Upland farming was mostly hardscrabble subsistence. Where valley farmers with cash crops could afford goods imported from England, hill farmers with very limited cash income made do with what they could produce at home or barter for. Traditional hill farmers -- mostly a departed breed now -- conformed much more to Yankee stereotypes than farmers in the Connecticut River Valley.
Decline of subsistence farming and industrialization
After the Revolutionary War, land that was better than most of New England's opened up in western New York state and in the Northwest Territory Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Children moved west from upland farms to pioneer while parents and one or two siblings remained behind.
The early 1800s brought the First Industrial Revolution powered by falling water, especially at cascades and rapids where rivers could be dammed. Holyoke became an industrial city at cascades on the Connecticut River with a power potential of some 70,000 horsepower 50 million watts. Smaller mill towns developed along the tributary Millers, Westfield, Montague and Deerfield Rivers.
The upland population figured prominently in early industrialization since local crafts in lieu of imported goods developed mechanical aptitude and insight, while employment was a source of cash to buy goods that could be mass-produced much more efficiently than at home or in small preindustrial workshops. Women played an important part in the early industrial workforce, and employment was surprisingly genteel with farm girls chaperoned in boardinghouses and the new industrial communities very much on the lecture circuit.
Development of coal- and wood-powered steam engines began liberating industrialization from falling water, although valley sites were still preferred for their proximity to rail lines that took advantage of easy grades along rivers instead of climbing and descending over hill and dale. This was the Second Industrial Revolution starting around 1850. It created more jobs than upland Yankees could fill. Employers turned to immigrants from Canada, Ireland and then other parts of Europe, paid them low wages, and worried less about workers' morals and living conditions. Poverty and cultural differences -- immigrants were more likely to be Catholic and to speak some other language besides English -- promoted social distinctions persisting even today.
Geological forces
The Connecticut River flows through a branch of the rift zone where the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart 180 million years ago to create the Atlantic Ocean. Points of geological interest include Trap Ridges where lava intruded into fracture zones. The resulting basalt resists erosion and now rises prominently out of the valley floor. Dinosaurs roamed the ancient rift valley, leaving fossil footprints in South Hadley and other locations. Hills west of this valley abruptly rise as much as 1,000 ft 300 m along ancient fault zones.
Pleistocene glaciers scraped away New England's soil, but melted to form ephemeral Lake Hitchcock where fine sediments settled to create New England's most productive cropland.
Education
Puritans believed in self-improvement, particularly education. Although no Pioneer Valley schools are nearly as old as Harvard 1636, this ethos founded the private secondary boarding schools Deerfield, Williston and Mount Hermon-Northfield. For higher education the Amherst-Northampton area has the Five Colleges Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges as well as the University of Massachusetts' main campus. Just to the south, the Springfield-Holyoke-Westfield area has American International, Baypath, Holyoke Community, Springfield, Western New England, and Westfield State Colleges.
Other educational venues near the Connecticut River to the south in Connecticut State Trinity College, University of Connecticut and Yale University and to the north in New Hampshire Dartmouth College are linked to the Pioneer Valley's schools by Route 10, often called the College Highway.
Amherst, Northampton and South Hadley all have pronounced college town ambiances, and Westfield increasingly so as its manufacturing base dwindles.