This beautiful reproduction poster has been re-mastered from an original 1912 booklet advertising Mt. Tom and Mt. Tom Railroad in Massachusetts.
The high-resolution image is printed on heavy archival photo paper, on a large-format, professional giclée process printer. The poster is shipped in a rigid cardboard tube, and is ready for framing.
The 13"x19" format is an excellent image size that looks great as a stand-alone piece of art, or as a grouped visual statement. These posters require no cutting, trimming, or custom framing, and a wide variety of 13"x19" frames are readily available at your local craft or hobby retailer, and online.
A great vintage print for your home, shop, or business!
HISTORY OF MOUNT TOM, MASSACHUSETTS
According to popular folklore, Mount Tom takes its name from Rowland Thomas, a surveyor who worked for the settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts in the 1660s. Thomas supposedly named Mount Tom after himself while his fellow surveyor working on the opposite side of the Connecticut River, Elizur Holyoke, gave his name to Mount Holyoke.
The Mount Tom Hotel was constructed on the summit of Mount Tom in 1897, but it burned down three years later. Subsequently, rebuilt, it burned again in 1929 and was never rebuilt; in 1902 the property became the first parcel of the Mount Tom State Reservation. Ruins of the old hotel foundations are still visible today. In 1933 the Civilian Conservation Corps assisted with the construction of reservation structures and park roads; their work also remains visible today.
In 1897 the Holyoke Street Railway Company began constructing the Mount Tom Railroad, as well as what would become known as "Mountain Park", a trolley park and later an amusement park on the east side of the mountain. The project changed hands several times until its closure in 1988 when competition from larger amusement parks gradually sapped business away from what had become affectionately known by local residents as "The Queen of the Mountain."
During the heyday of northern New England's logging and river drives during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the spring freshet, augmented by impoundments called drive-dams or squirt-dams on far-flung upper tributaries, carried logs rolled into rivers and lakes far down the Connecticut River to mills at falls where the river was pinched by bedrock at Mount Tom. For many logging company workers, the specialists called river-hogs, the end of the drive at Mount Tom spelled the end of their employment until they joined crews going into the woods the next fall.
On 9 July 1946, a US Army Air Force B-17G Flying Fortress, in use as a military transport, hit the northern flank of the mountain. All 25 on board died instantly in a large fireball. Some of the men were Public Health employees of the US military who had worked in Europe in World War II. Sixteen were U.S. Coast Guardsmen returning from duty in Greenland. Tiny pieces of the plane are still on the mountainside. The site is accessible on a road made to access the antennae. This road is directly over the old trolley tracks to the mountain. A memorial site, dedicated 6 July 1996, is at the location and is lit at all times.
