Mills of Monterey — and why the village is here.

As you enter the Monterey Library, look down at the bronze medallion in the center of the historic grindstone embedded in the sidewalk which reads “The Site of Brewer’s Mills.”

• What was Brewer’s Mills?

• What does that have to do with the Monterey Library?

• Have you ever wondered about “Old Center” and why the village of Monterey is here?

The answer is literally under the library.

In the late 1730s, the Proprietors, as the land purchasers were called, of the newly chartered Township No. 1 were busy surveying and laying out the township. Like many other colonists, they believed that the high ridges were the best place to build their homesteads instead of in the foggy valleys with their “miasma” of disease. So all the proprietors’ home lots were laid out high along the ridge, along several main east-west roads (Hupi-Brett, Mt. Hunger-Art School), together with the site for the First Meeting House (Lot 1), the First Minister (Lot 25), the School (Lot 20), and—most importantly for this story—the site for the essential saw mill and grist mill (Lot 2, in oval above.).

The mill lot was originally planned to be along Loom Brook east and north of Beartown Mountain Road. After several unsuccessful attempts to attract a miller to come build and operate mills here (the site lacked sufficient and reliable water flow), the proprietors relocated the mill lot two miles downstream along the river from the outlet of 12 Mile Pond (Lake Garfield). Captain John Brewer then agreed to come from Hopkinton, MA, and by 1740 had built both a sawmill and grist mill. Thus, “Brewer’s Mills.”

The stone foundations of the sawmill are still visible immediately behind the Monterey Library (see photo on page 10). The stone dam formed the mill pond for the sawmill and downstream grist mill. The proprietors also soon had to have a road built between the meeting house and the village mills. This road is now Carrington-Battel Road, Beartown Mountain Road, and Tyringham Road.

During the latter half of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, many other mills were built in the town at various locations including in North Tyringham along Hop Brook, in Old Center along Loom Brook, along the Konkapot River along River Road, and especially in what became Monterey village. These included mills owned and operated by the Langdon family who took over the sawmill and grist mill from the Brewers and also established the general store.

As shown on the 1830 map (below), the mills in South Tyringham’s “Lower Village” (our current village) included two sawmills, a carding factory and clothiers works, and a grist mill. A paper mill was built a little downstream during the 1830s and a woolen factory existed by 1858. The “Upper Village” (“Old Center”) included the second meeting house (built 1796 to replace the original meeting house half Mills of Monterey half a mile north) and a sawmill. Other mills in South Tyringham (as Monterey was called prior to separation from Tyringham) included two more sawmills on “Conkapot Brook” along River Road, a rake factory upstream from Hupi Road, and an iron ore bed along Brett Road. An 1858 map shows three dams serving the mills in the lower village.

In 1849, the third meeting house (the Congregational Church) was built in the center of the village; and in 1876 the mills in what was by then Monterey village included a sawmill on the foundation of the original Brewer sawmill, a planing mill, woolen factory, and the R. L. McDowell paper mill, as well as a shingle mill along a tributary stream.

Monterey village was flourishing. The Old Center was still active but had become mostly a residential village. — Rob Hoogs