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Monument Mountain Reservation Review

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Monument Mountain Reservation

Fodor's Review:

Three miles north of Great Barrington, en route to Stockbridge, you can leave your car in a parking lot beside U.S. 7 and climb Squaw Peak in Monument Mountain Reservation. The 3-mi circular hike (a trail map is displayed in the parking lot) takes you from 1,000 to 1,640 feet. There's a turnoff where you can choose a less steep or a steeper ascent. Early in his career, William Cullen Bryant wrote a story about Monument Mountain. It was the Berkshire version of Romeo and Juliet. A squaw, forbidden by the Mohican Indian tribe to marry her beloved, leaped from the top of the mountain. When the tribe saw what their stubbornness had wrought they regretted their decision. It became a tradition that as any tribe member passed the spot from which she leaped, they would place a stone, mourn the loss, and remember their own stony hearts. The pile of stone grew, formed the top of the mountain, and gave it its name. When you reach the top there is a 15-foot-high outcropping said to be the collection of stones. In the 1850, a party of guests of David Dudley Field climbed this mountain; caught in a rain storm, they spent many hours and formed a friendship. Among the many guests were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. From the top of the surrounding mountains on a clear day you can see all the way to Mt. Greylock and down into the nearby towns.

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