Connecticut River
Before Holyoke was as an industrial center, it was home to some of the best farming land in New England. When the Europeans arrived, Holyoke was the dividing line between the Agawam and the Nonotuck Indians.
The first Europeans settled the area when William Pynchon came to Springfield in 1636. Europeans, including Captain Rowland Thomas and Captain Elizur Holyoke, gradually explored and expanded up the Connecticut River Valley.
Land in Ireland Parish, which was named for an early Irish settler to the are, was mostly used for agriculture, but there were a few production mills. Like the Native Americans before them, most of Ireland Parish's residents viewed the Connecticut River as a source for shad. Fish ran the river each spring and horses waited while farmers fished at the falls to supplement their diet of grains and vegetables.
As a result of the steady influx of white settlers, the Native Americans that fished and smoked shad along the Connecticut River gradually withdrew from the area. By 1783, Ireland Parish remained a quiet farming and fishing community. Only a stage stop on the main road from New Hampshire to Connecticut (Route 5) put Ireland Parish on the map.
In 1847, Ireland was the site for 54 cotton mills supporting 100,000 workers.
The Boston Associates, who developed cotton industries in Lawrence and Lowell, Massachusetts, recognized the falls at Holyoke as a power source three times greater than Lowell's. They bought land along the river, took the name of Holyoke Falls Company from the site's first cotton mills, and began digging canals and building a dam to span the Connecticut River. By 1850, a large mill had opened and Holyoke became a town.
