Chicopee: Mill Town at the Confluence
Near Springfield, Massachusetts
Chicopee was first settled in the sixteen sixties, when the Chapin family built homes near where the Chicopee River meets the Connecticut. For two centuries it was simply the north end of Springfield. Then came the water.
The twin rivers carried enough hydraulic force to drive enormous machinery, and from eighteen twenty-three on, Boston investors founded a string of textile companies on the falls. The Ames Manufacturing Company followed, casting swords and other arms that would equip Union soldiers in the Civil War. By the mid-eighteen hundreds eight major companies were turning out textiles, firearms, and bicycles here, sending Chicopee-made goods around the world.
The city formally split from Springfield in eighteen forty-eight and incorporated as a city in eighteen ninety. That industrial heritage still lines the riverbank in weathered red brick.
