The Jacob’s Ladder Trail spans Route 20 from Russell to Lee, it has seen many changes: oleared hillsides reverted to mature forests; whole industries developed to thriving enterprises, only to whither and die, or move to some other part of the country; farms and forests turned to new houses (just a few).

The Yellowstone Trail, 1912-1930.
America’s first 3,600-mile transcontinental auto highway through the northern United States. Grassroots network connected local roads from Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, to Puget Sound, Washington, with the slogan:

“A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound”

The Yellowstone Trail incorporated the Jacob’s Ladder Trail, a 35-mile sub-section of today’s U.S. Route 20 between Springfield and Pittsfield; the first (1910) east-west state highway improved specifically for automobiles over the mountains, passing through Russell, Huntington, Chester, Becket, and Lee

The road, too has changed drastically. A century ago, the entire road was barely wider than one of its modern travel lanes. Its course has been straightened and reshaped, and of course, widened, as greater capacity for reshaping the terrain through which it passes have made it possible to push back or cut through steep hillsides.

The challenges remain the same though. A century ago, engineers were just beginning to understand the venerability of blacktop to heat, frost, traffic and a harsh, sometimes ledgy, sometimes marshy environment. The surface of the road that opened in 1910 began to crumble almost immediately, needing improvements to paving compounds and methods.

Ours is a special place – steeped in history and brimming with its own unique culture. There is barely an acre that hasn’t seen human habitation or cultivation, yet it’s one of the wildest areas in southern New England with thousands of acres of forests and open spaces, the darkest place in Massachusetts in the night sky view from space!

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