Editing Turners Falls, Massachusetts (section)

==History and culture==

The village of Turners Falls was founded in 1868 as a planned industrial community according to the plan of Alvah Crocker, a prominent man from [[Fitchburg, Massachusetts|Fitchburg]] who envisioned in the immense power of the waterfalls the means of establishing a great city. Crocker was influenced by other, earlier and successful experiments in [[Lowell, Massachusetts|Lowell]] and elsewhere. Crocker's vision was to attract industry to the town by offering cheap [[hydropower]] that was made by the harnessing of the [[Connecticut River]], through the construction of a dam and canal. His development concept was to sell mill sites along the power canal to those companies and to sell individual building lots to mill workers who would come to work in the mills. The rest of the village was laid out in a horizontal grid pattern with cross streets numerically. Avenue A, the main commercial district, was designed as a grand tree lined avenue.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://montague.net/Pages/MontagueMA_WebDocs/turners |title=Town of Montague - Village of Turners Falls |access-date=2015-12-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151229170106/http://www.montague.net/pages/MontagueMA_WebDocs/Turners |archive-date=2015-12-29 }}</ref>

===Turners Falls Massacre===

The largest of the five villages comprising the town of Montague, Turners Falls was named after Captain William Turner, who played a key role in the region's Indian Wars. In 1676, during [[King Philip's War]], Captain Turner led a group of about 160 mounted soldiers from Hadley and made a surprise attack on an Indian encampment located near the falls. The attack on a sleeping village of Native Americans on the Gill side of the Great Falls lasted several hours and resulted in the death of many people including many women and children. The area by the falls was traditionally shared by the Pocumtuk Confederacy, the Nipmucs, and the Wabanaki tribes because of the abundance of salmon and shad available there.
[[Image:IMG_3998_Turner_Monument.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Monument on the Gill, Massachusetts, side of the [[Gill–Montague Bridge]], with the text "Captain William Turner with 145 men surprised and destroyed over 300 Indians encamped at this place May 19, 1676"]]

Of the 160 attackers, at least 40 were killed in the withdrawal. Some, including the Chaplain, Reverend [[Hope Atherton]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TUEOAAAAIAAJ&q=Hope+atherton&pg=PA166|title=The History of New England from 1630 to 1649 by John Winthrop|last1=Winthrop|first1=John|year=1853}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vcbt3PeI9SAC&q=hope+atherton&pg=PA193|title=Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Volume 2 by John Langdon Sibley|year=1881|last1=Sibley|first1=John Langdon|last2=Shipton|first2=Clifford Kenyon}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/hopeathertonhist00tuck/page/n159/mode/1up| title=Hope Atherton and his times by Tucker, Arthur Holmes pages 63-72|year=1926| publisher=Deerfield?}}</ref> got separated from the main body and had to find their way alone; a few were successful while others never returned.
Captain Turner's body was found about a month later and was buried on a bluff west of where he fell. A tablet marks the spot today.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/massacre.html |title=Turners Falls Massacre |access-date=2015-09-19 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004221929/http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/massacre.html |archive-date=2006-10-04 }}</ref>
 
The Turners Falls massacre was called the [[Battle of Turner's Falls]] at the time and is often viewed as a turning point in the King Philip's War. As the historian Russell Bourne points out, “After the Peskeompskut massacre, allied sachems openly discussed the strategy of King Phillip, the name given to the Native American leader Metacom, and sending his head to the English as a prelude to peace negotiations”. Within one month of the massacre, the English offensive in the Connecticut Valley ended suddenly. The end of King Philip's War came not long afterward.

In recognition of the tragic nature of the Turners Falls massacre, the Board of Selectmen and Town of Montague, as part of its 250th anniversary, joined with representatives of various Native American tribes on May 19, 2004, in a Reconciliation Day ceremony.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://montague.net/Pages/montaguema_webdocs/turners |title=Town of Montague - Village of Turners Falls |access-date=2015-12-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151229170106/http://www.montague.net/pages/MontagueMA_WebDocs/Turners |archive-date=2015-12-29 }}</ref>