Beartown was always occupied by farmers and sawmills, then after 1905 a few doctors discovered it, this is the getaway of Austen Fox Riggs (1876-1940), an internist who suffered from tuberculosis. During his recovery in 1907, he took an interest in psychiatry and psychology. “Influenced by the mental hygiene movement” of the time, he developed his own system of treatment based on talk therapy combined with a structured routine of daily activities that emphasized a balance between work, play, rest, and exercise. He founded the ‘Stockbridge Institute for the psychoneuroses’, renamed “The Austen Riggs Foundation’ in 1919. (Bernie Drew, Beartown Mountain one of my favorite books!)

For fresh air, Riggs in 1916 acquired several parcels of land in Beartown on Beartown Mountain Road. The two-room fieldstone cabin has a view of the old sawmill pond that powered Pardon Perry’s sawmill.

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