Turners Falls Airport

The Montague Nuclear Power Plant was a proposed nuclear power plant to be located in Montague, Massachusetts. The plant was to consist of two 1150 MWe General Electric boiling water reactors. The project was proposed in 1973 and canceled in 1980, after $29 million was spent on the project.On 22 February 1974, George Washington's Birthday, organic farmer Sam Lovejoy took a crowbar to the weather-monitoring tower which had been erected at the site on the Montague Plains. Lovejoy felled 349 feet of the 550-foot tower and then took himself to the local police station, where he presented a statement in which he took full responsibility for the action. Lovejoy went on trial in September 1974 on charges of malicious destruction, but was acquitted on a technicality. Lovejoy's action galvanized local public opinion against the plant which ended the project entirely.In 1975, Green Mountain Post Films made Lovejoy's Nuclear War which told the story of the tower toppling and subsequent trial. The documentary film was instrumental in organizing the anti-nuclear movement. Lovejoy, and other members of the Montague Farm commune such as Anna Gyorgy and Harvey Wasserman, helped to form the Clamshell Alliance anti-nuclear group. In 1977, the Clamshell Alliance was involved in a series of mass protests against the proposed Seabrook, NH twin nuclear plants. The series of protests occupying the proposed site of the Seabrook nuclear power reactor in New Hampshire resulted in over 1,400 arrests, garnered national publicity and inspired nuclear opposition groups in other parts of the United States.Green Mountain Post Films, composed of producers Dan Keller and Charles Light (also Montague Farm commune members, went on to make The Last Resort, Early Warnings, Save the Planet, Training for Nonviolence and other films that helped organize a national anti-nuclear movement. Lovejoy went on to become President of Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) which organized five nights of benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden in 1979, featuring artist such as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Crosby, Stills and Nash and a host of other music stars. MUSE also staged a 250,000 person rally on what later became Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. A total of 63 nuclear units were canceled in the USA between 1975 and 1980. Many nuclear plant proposals were no longer viable due to the downturn of electricity demand increases, significant cost and time overruns, and more complex regulatory requirements. Also, there was considerable public opposition to nuclear power in the US by this time.

Barton Island is a small island in the Connecticut River, near Barton Cove, in Gill, Massachusetts, USA. The island is southeast of Riverside (neighborhood) and far southwest of the Chappell Drive & Mohawk Trail road (Route 2) intersection. The island is heavily forested in three separate sections of the island. These three separate sections of the islands are connected by possible runoff sediment and/or other form of soil.

Connecticut River Greenway State Park is a protected environment with public recreation features that consists of separate state land holdings, including open spaces, parks, scenic vistas, and archaeological and historic sites, along the Connecticut River in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts. The state park includes critical wildlife and plant habitat as well as areas providing public access to the river in its run across the state and is intertwined with other protected land including farmland under state-held agricultural preservation restrictions (a type of conservation easement), municipal and conservation land trust holdings, and state and national wildlife refuges.

The Millers River is a 52.1-mile-long (83.8 km) river in northern Massachusetts, originating in Ashburnham and joining the Connecticut River just downstream from Millers Falls, Massachusetts. Sections of the river are used for whitewater kayaking, and a section upriver is popular with flatwater racers (canoe racing), and the river is known locally as a good place for pike fishing.

The French King Bridge is the three-span "cantilever arch" bridge that crosses the Connecticut River on the border between the towns of Erving and Gill, Massachusetts, United States. The bridge, part of Massachusetts Route 2, carries automobile, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic and is owned and managed by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT).

The Riverside Village Historic District encompasses a village community near Massachusetts Route 2 in Gill, Massachusetts. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

Millers Falls is a census-designated place (CDP) in the towns of Montague and Erving in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 1,139 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts metropolitan statistical area.

The Battle of Turner's Falls or Battle of Grand Falls; also known as the Peskeompscut-Wissantinnewag Massacre, was a battle and massacre occurring on May 19, 1676, in the context of King Philip's War in what is present-day Gill and Greenfield, across from Turners Falls on the Connecticut River. The incident marked a turning point in the war, and in the colonization of Native lands by British settlers. The war led to the expulsion of most Native Americans in the Connecticut River Valley.A largely untrained, inexperienced militia force of 150-160 engaged in an initial massacre early in the morning around dawn, taking advantage of the native practice of the warriors sleeping in a separate camp during wartime about half a mile away, and began looting of the Peskeompskut camp, killing between 100 and 200 people, mostly women and children. Conducting a fighting withdrawal after the counterattack through ambushes set by the Algonquian tribe's outnumbered warriors, resulting in the deaths of 38 militiamen (including the commander, William Turner) and the wounding of an unknown number. The massacre has been described as genocide. The site of the incident has in recent years been memorialized by the NRHP's establishment as the Riverside Archeological District at the approximate site of the battle.

Turners Falls is an unincorporated village and census-designated place in the town of Montague in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 4,512 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its name is sometimes used as a metonym for the entire town of Montague, for which it is the business district and comprises more than half the population.

The Turners Falls–Gill Bridge (sometimes called the Gill–Montague Bridge), is a steel deck truss bridge crossing the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. It connects the Town of Gill with the village of Turners Falls in the Town of Montague. The bridge carries automobile and pedestrian traffic.

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.

The Turners Falls Canal, also historically known as the Montague Canal, was a canal along the Connecticut River in Montague, Massachusetts. It was reconstructed in 1869. The canal was first completed in 1798 by the Proprietors of the Upper Locks and Canals on Connecticut River under a charter granted on February 23, 1792, by the Massachusetts legislature and Governor John Hancock. After completing the South Hadley Canal, many of the earlier Proprietors turned their attention to extending navigation to regions above Turners Falls. Construction work included a log-crib dam extending across the Connecticut River at a place called "Great Falls" (now Turners Falls), a canal 2.5 miles (4 kilometres) long and 20 feet (6 metres) wide from there to a point downstream near the Deerfield River, and a towpath on its east shore. The canal had ten locks as finally completed. Upstream a dam and single-lock canal near the mouth of the Millers River allowed barges to bypass the French King rapids. The canals were opened for business in 1798 and by 1802 supported regular freight traffic by boat from Long Island Sound to Bellows Falls, Vermont. The canal was profitable for 30 years, returning 4% dividend to its investors, and even in 1826 briefly considered as part of a larger system from Boston to the Hudson River, but within a few decades railroads had become the favored means of transport, and it eventually closed to navigation in 1856. However, in 1869 it was reconstructed, along with the Turner Falls Dam, to provide waterpower for both existing and newly planned mills. This reconstructed power canal followed a somewhat different route from its predecessor, and served as the origin of today's village of Turners Falls.