North Leverett, Massachusetts

The New England Peace Pagoda is a peace pagoda located in Leverett, Massachusetts. It was the first Nipponzan-Myōhōji peace pagoda to be built in the United States.

The Moore's Corner Historic District of Leverett, Massachusetts, encompasses the historic rural mill village of Moore's Corner. Centered on the intersection of North Leverett Road with Dudleyville Road, Church Hill Road, and Rattlesnake Gutter Road, it includes 15 houses and several other buildings, mainly from the village's mid-19th century peak as a modest rural village center. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

Rattlesnake Gutter is a scenic boulder filled chasm, 3/4 mile long and 1/8 mile wide, located in Leverett, Massachusetts. The origins of the gutter are uncertain, but theories include: A subglacial meltwater channel A tear at the site of an old geologic fault. A spillway for a temporary proglacial lake.An important ecological habitat, the property is under conservation stewardship. The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail passes near the gutter.

North Cemetery is a historic cemetery at 114 Montague Street in Leverett, Massachusetts, United States. The 1-acre (0.40 ha) municipal cemetery is located on the west side of the street about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Leverett center. The cemetery, whose oldest documented burials date to 1776, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. Its burials include some of the town's early residents.

The Leverett Center Historic District is an expansive 467-acre (189 ha) historic district encompassing the historic heart of the rural community of Leverett in eastern Franklin County, Massachusetts. The district is focused on a two-mile stretch of Depot and Montague Roads, at whose center is the civic heart of the town. It includes the 1838 Greek Revival First Congregational Church, the town hall, whose present form was achieved in 1895 by raising the 1845 construction and building a first floor underneath it, and the Colonial Revival Field Memorial Library (1916). It also includes a town pound (a stone-walled pen for stray livestock) built c. 1822, and a number of 18th century residences. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.Leverett was first settled in the late 17th century as part of Sunderland, and was separately incorporated in 1774. Its town center, located at the junction of Depot, Montague, and Shutesbury Roads, arose by the placement there of the community's first meeting house not long after incorporation. The oldest surviving residences in the center date to about 1750. Its single largest period of growth lasted until about 1830, which included construction of the town's first school c. 1800 (94 Depot Road), and the town pound. Modest growth continued in the mid-19th century, when a railroad line was run nearby. This provided the impetus for some small-scale industrial activity, evidence of which survives in a single modest wood-frame factory building.

Mount Toby, 1,269 feet (387 m), is the highest summit of a sprawling collection of mostly wooded hills and knolls that rise from a distinct plateau-like upland in the towns of Sunderland and Leverett, Massachusetts, just east of the Connecticut River. This mountain mass, part of the Metacomet Ridge geology, is oval shaped and roughly three miles by two miles wide. Although three of the subordinate peaks have names of their own (Roaring Mountain, Ox Hill, Bull Hill), none of them are noteworthy on their own, and the designation “Mount Toby” is most often used (locally and formally) to describe the entire geologic mass. This article, therefore, describes the entire Mount Toby upland. Mount Toby is notable for its high biodiversity, attractive woodlands, waterfalls, and its glacial kettle ponds (most notably Cranberry Pond). Although the summit is wooded, there is a fire tower, open to the public, which provides 360-degree views of Amherst and the Holyoke Range in the south; the Connecticut River and Mount Sugarloaf to the west; Mount Snow, Mount Ascutney, and Mount Monadnock in the north; and the nearby Peace Pagoda in Leverett to the east. Additionally, there are several cliffs located on the lower south and southwest facing slopes overlooking the Connecticut River Valley and the town of Sunderland.

The Robert Frost Trail is a 47-mile (76 km) long footpath that passes through the eastern Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. The trail runs from the Connecticut River in South Hadley, Massachusetts to Ruggles Pond in Wendell State Forest, through both Hampshire and Franklin County and includes a number of scenic features such as the Holyoke Range, Mount Orient, Puffer's Pond, and Mount Toby. The trail is named after the poet Robert Frost, who lived and taught in the area from 1916 to 1938.

The Montague Center Historic District encompasses the well-preserved 19th century village center of Montague, Massachusetts. Montague Center, one of the town's five villages, is the civic heart of the town, and was also an active industrial area in the 19th century. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Montague is a town in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 8,580 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts metropolitan statistical area. The villages of Montague Center, Montague City, Lake Pleasant, Millers Falls, and Turners Falls are located in the town of Montague; Turners Falls, comprising over half the population of the town and its main business district, is sometimes used as a metonym for the entire town of Montague.

The Bookmill (sometimes Book Mill) is an independent bookstore in Montague, Massachusetts. The 1834 grist mill it occupies is listed as the Alvah Stone Mill on the National Register of Historic Places. The store's motto is "Books you don't need in a place you can't find," and it claims to have "40,000 books and one waterfall." Housed in a 19th-century former gristmill, The Boston Globe called it "a magnet for bibliophiles from the nearby Amherst-Northampton Five College area". In 2005, the Globe devoted an entire article to the bookstore, quoting the owner as saying, "We're not particularly convenient, we're not particularly efficient, but we're beautiful."The New York Times has described The Bookmill as "the valley's most pristine ambiance for just plain readers" and praised "the Book Mill's cafe, where the baked offerings are superior, as is the view of the rushing waters and the evergreens on the opposite bank, sharply edged against the snow."Comedian John Hodgman frequents the Bookmill. In a 2013 interview Hodgman claimed "...most dear to my heart The Book Mill and Lady Killigrew in Montague. That’s a used bookstore and great cafe where I would spend every hour of every day even if they didn’t have Wi-Fi, and they do."

Lake Pleasant is a village in Montague, Massachusetts, United States. It is also the site of an early and prominent American Spiritualist campground. It claims to be the oldest continuously-existing Spiritualist community in the United States. Lake Pleasant was founded in 1870 as a "campmeeting grounds" with 75 tent lots, and by 1872 was popular with Spiritualists for summer tenting. In 1874 the New England Spiritualist Campmeeting Association (NESCA) was organized by Henry Buddington and Joseph Beals, and in 1879 formally incorporated. The village rapidly expanded to 90 small cottages, and 50 acres (200,000 m2) around the lake were divided into many more camping lots. At its peak, circa 1900, Lake Pleasant contained 196 homes and cottages, swelling in August to as many as 2,000 residents. Lake Pleasant was one of a couple dozen Spiritualist camp meetings in the Northeast during this time, including Onset Bay, Grove in Wareham, Massachusetts, Queen City Park in Burlington, Vermont, and Lily Dale, outside Jamestown, New York. Emma Hardinge Britten, one of the many invited speakers at Lake Pleasant, painted this portrait of the community in 1880: Its attractions are manifold — embracing every variety of inland scenery — everything possible for the comfort and convenience of visitors, and ample facilities for amusement and recreation. The lake is a beautiful sheet of about one hundred and eight acres, and is within a mile of another lake of sixty acres. Bath houses are located at convenient points on the shore, a commodious wharf lies near the foot of the stairs leading to the grove from the railroad station, and a flotilla of boats is always in readiness to take out pleasure or fishing parties. An elegant Pavilion stands on an elevated plateau overlooking the grove on the one side, and the railroad station on the other, accessible from each by easy flights of stairs. . . . From the first peep of day, the campers are astir, lighting gipsy fires, preparing breakfast, and trading with the various hawkers who ply with their provisions regularly through the white-tented streets. After the morning meal, visits are exchanged, and the business of the day proceeds with as much energy and order as in the cities. Sailing parties, séances, amusements, and business, all proceed in due course, until the hour for speaking arrives, when thousands assemble at the speaker’s stand, to partake of the solid intellectual refreshment of the day. Lectures, balls, parties, illuminations, public discussions, &c., &c., fill up the time until midnight, when the white tents enclose the slumbering hosts; the fires and lamps are extinguished, and the pale moonbeam shines over rocks, groves, and lakes, illumining scenes as strange and picturesque as ever the eye of mortal gazed upon. . . . Bookstalls abound, photographs of spirits and mortals are on sale, and literature is rapidly changing hands. Healing, trance, test, and physical Mediums, put out their signs, and ply their professional avocations as industriously here as at home. Lake Pleasant's decline began in 1907 with a fire that destroyed 130 homes, and its fate was sealed when the lake itself became a public water supply off limits to recreation. As property values fell, many buildings were acquired by the water department for demolition. From 1913 to 1976, Lake Pleasant was home to two competing Spiritualist organizations, each with its own temple and followers, namely the original NESCA, affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, and The National Spiritual Alliance established in 1913. The two groups differed on questions of reincarnation. The NECSA temple burned down in 1955, and NECSA itself disbanded in 1976.

Wendell State Forest is a Massachusetts state forest located in the town of Wendell. The 7,566-acre (3,062 ha) parcel occupies a forested and hilly upland plateau south of the Millers River and west of the Quabbin Reservoir. Park roads were developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.