Timeline of Holyoke, Massachusetts


This is a timeline of the history of the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA.

14th century

17th century

18th century

  • 1704 – May 13: Months after the successful Raid on Deerfield during Queen Anne's War, a number of tribesmen attack Easthampton in the Pascommuck Massacre. Several go further south and set fire to the homestead of Benjamin Wright in Smith's Ferry, only to be repelled, with one killed during the skirmish.
  • 1725 – Elmwood, then-known as Baptist Village, is settled; 5 baptized on the Connecticut River by the First Baptist Church of Boston.
  • 1745 – Rock Valley village is settled.
  • 1776 – Captain Joseph Morgan, resident of Ireland Parish and descendant of pioneer Miles Morgan, gathers a number of recruits to join the cause of the American Revolution, and serves in several campaigns, including as part of the reinforcements who prevented the recapturing of Fort Ticonderoga in the autumn of that year. The exact date Morgan joined the Continental Army is unknown.
  • 1778 – February 7: Bushman Fuller marries bride Flora Parry, representing one of the earliest records of Black freemen living in Holyoke, then a part of West Springfield.
  • 1780 – The earliest year which the oldest identified house in Holyoke is estimated to have been built; the Henry Tuttle House at 1329 Northampton Street, is today one of the only Federal style houses in the city with a center chimney.
  • 1783 – The first mills, a gristmill and a sawmill, powered by flumes, are constructed on the westerly banks at Hadley Falls. The sawmill is constructed by Titus Morgan, great-uncle of Junius Spencer Morgan, who was father of J. P. Morgan.
  • 1785 – Crafts' Tavern, first called Miller's Inn, is built near Northampton Road. One of Holyoke's first post offices, stagecoaches from Northampton and Springfield would stop there twice daily. At a 1923 Daughters of the American Revolution dedication, it was described as "the seat of all social activity in Old Holyoke".
  • 1786 – July 7: The boundaries of the 3rd Parish of West Springfield are defined; with the exception of the Smith's Ferry purchase of 1909, these boundaries would be coterminous with the future city.
  • 1792 – The first church meetinghouse is built in Baptist Village, known colloquially as the "Lord's barn", as it remained an unfinished structure, and served as a home for the First Baptist and First Congregational churches, then unofficially extant.
  • 1799 – December 4: The First Congregational Church of Holyoke is formally established, with only nine male members.

19th century

  • 1803 – October 5: Dr. Thomas Rand becomes the first formal pastor of the First Baptist Church of Holyoke.
  • 1815 – A gang of counterfeiters from Chicopee are caught producing fake silver coins in a small hut in the woods in a since-filled dingle in modern-day Highlands to the west of Log Pond Cove; following their capture, the ringleader had his ears cropped as penalty. The incident lended the area the name "Money Hole Hill" for a number of decades thereafter.
  • 1827 – The first Hadley Falls Company, not to be confused with the 1848 company by the Boston Associates, is established by John, Stephen, and Warren Chapin, and Alfred Smith. Believing the area could be used for future industrial purposes, Smith ordered that the company purchase 100 acres of land by the present-day location of the Holyoke Dam. He would go on to serve on the boards of the 1848 counterpart and its successor, the Holyoke Water Power Company, established in 1859.
  • 1846 – George C. Ewing, a traveling salesman for Fairbanks Scales first suggests the idea of a dam at Hadley Falls to his employer, Erastus Fairbanks, who approaches the Boston Associates and other merchants in Hartford, proposing a venture for a new industrial city.
  • 1847 – December 16: In the earliest days of the excavation of the Holyoke Canal System, workers find a subterranean channel with a chamber holding the skeletons of four Amerindians in seated positions, facing the East, with a stone mortar and pestle beside them.
  • 1848 –
  • 1849 – The second timber Holyoke Dam is completed, withstanding the forces of the Connecticut River.
  • 1850
  • 1853 – May 14: Joseph C. Parsons establishes the Parsons Paper Company out of the old 1783 grist mill and neighboring buildings, establishing the first paper mill in Holyoke, and the beginning of a city industry which would produce 80% of the United States' writing paper.
  • 1856 – The first Catholic church is established, St. Jerome's, serving a growing Irish Catholic population.
  • 1865 – January 19: Germania Mills is established by August Stursberg, marking the beginning of the history of the city's German immigrant colony.
  • 1867 – The First Lutheran Church is established, originally as the German Lutheran Church in South Holyoke; the church's earliest ministers would also offer German language classes.
  • 1868 – July 4: Ingleside, the neighborhood's namesake resort, opens to travellers.
  • 1869 – June 12: The Holyoke & Westfield Railroad Company is established, in part backed by the City, it is created in an effort to foster more competitive shipping rates than those offered by the Connecticut River Railroad.
  • 1870 – James B. Emerson establishes the Holyoke Testing Flume on the Canal System at the request of the Holyoke Water Power Company, it is later described by "father of modern hydrology", Robert E. Horton, as the "first modern hydraulic laboratory" in the United States and the world.
  • 1871 – Construction on City Hall begins.
  • 1872 – Holyoke High School begins receiving students from Qing China from the Chinese Educational Mission, several of whom would go on to serve important roles in the Qing government.
  • 1873 – April 7: Holyoke incorporated as a city.
  • 1874 – The Skinner family moves their business William Skinner & Sons and their estate Wistariahurst to Holyoke, following the devastation of the Mill River Flood of 1874.
  • 1875
  • 1876 – March: John B. McCormick develops the Holyoke "Hercules" water turbine while working for the Holyoke Machine Company, and subsequently J. W. Jolly Co. The turbine reached double the efficiency of others at the time, exceeding 80%, and was the first modern mixed-flow turbine ever developed. The design, combining the inward flow principles of the Francis turbine with the downward discharge of the Jonval turbine, ushered in a new era of American waterpower design.
  • 1877 – City Hall's clock tower is complete, with the timekeeping mechanism installed.
  • 1878
  • 1879 – December 5: A Massachusetts jury awards $3,433 to Joseph Parker, a French-Canadian parishioner in Holyoke, after finding that Rev. André Dufresne unlawfully excommunicated him for allegedly attending a lecture by ex-priest Charles Chiniquy. The case garners national attention, with Harper’s Weekly publishing a Thomas Nast cartoon titled “No Interference,” highlighting the tension between ecclesiastical authority and civil liberties.
  • 1880 – The first French-language school opens in Holyoke at the new Precious Blood Church.
  • 1881 – November: Irish republican John Devoy makes an address before local Fenians during which he predicts the Easter Rising, stating "Ireland's opportunity will come when England is engaged in a desperate struggle with some great European power".
  • 1882 – January 31: A banquet is held at William Whiting's Windsor Hotel honoring poet Louis-Honoré Fréchette, the first Canadian author to receive a European literary prize; among other dignitaries he is received by Governor Long, Mark Twain, and a telegram from President Garfield welcoming him to the United States.
  • 1883 – March 23: The first issue of the German Holyoke Journal is published; later merging with Der Beobachter, it would become the Neu England Rundschau in 1889, the longest running German-language newspaper in Massachusetts.
  • 1884 – The first Italians are recorded arriving in Holyoke, with the marriage of one Charles Marano to a May O'Connor.
  • 1885
  • 1887 – October: John J. Prew christens Springdale, and begins subdividing and selling properties to workers largely from South Holyoke.
  • 1888
  • 1889
  • 1890 – Dr. George L. Gabler, a physician and YMCA training instructor, introduces his friend James Naismith to a group of men at the Holyoke YMCA, playing a prototype of basketball using a ball and peach basket. Naismith would later go on to define rules for the game, placing baskets at opposite ends of the gym in Springfield, making modern day basketball the following year. In the 1940s, a series of columns in the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram would appear in the sports section alleging it was Gabler who deserved credit for the game's invention, however Gabler insisted emphatically it was Naismith who devised the game in its modern form, telling the journalist responsible- "I don't want you to use this story until after I have passed on. I don't want to hurt my good friend Naismith."
  • 1891 – August 7: The first electric streetcars begin operations on the Holyoke Street Railway.
  • 1893 – February 3: David Goetz, a former employee of William Skinner & Sons, opens the first among a handful of Holyoke silk mills independent of Skinner.
  • 1895 – Construction begins on the third and current Holyoke Dam.
  • 1896 — Steiger's Department Store is established in Holyoke.
  • 1898 – The Holyoke Philo-Celtic Society, a group promoting the Irish language and culture, aligned with 12 other societies, including Boston's, New York's, Philadelphia's, and Chicago's, to form the Gaelic League of America, a sister society of Conradh na Gaeilge.
  • 1899

20th century

  • 1900 – Holyoke reaches its peak rank among American cities by population, as the 82nd largest in the United States, with a population of 45,712; in rank, comparable to Buffalo or Scottsdale in 2018.
  • 1901 – November 9: The local chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union dedicates a Temperance fountain donated to the city, at the corner of Dwight and High Streets by City Hall, the granite drinking fountain is fitted with a chamber for ice for cooling.
  • 1902
  • 1903 – August 20: Workers for the American Writing Paper Company return to work following an operator strike by the Eagle Lodge of Papermakers, which began on June 15 of that year, and was described as the second major strike in the history of the city's paper mills.
  • 1904 – The first Greek family settles in Holyoke.
  • 1906 – The Olmsted Brothers complete Springdale Park, the largest of the city's public parks.
  • 1908 – The University of Notre Dame's fight song, the Victory March is first publicly played in the Second Congregational Church of Holyoke. Father Michael Shea, organist of New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral was home visiting his brother John Shea, to compose the song, when he ran into his former music teacher and the church's music director, Professor William C. Hammond, who suggested he try the new song on the church's organ.
  • 1909
  • 1910 — In the 1910 US Census, Holyoke is described as the 3rd most crowded city in the nation, behind New York and Hoboken, with 11.9 people per household. Conditions were especially poor in crowded French-Canadian homes in Ward 2 where the number rose to 22.3 per dwelling.
  • 1911 – September 6: William Jennings Bryan makes the inaugural luncheon speech at the Holyoke Board of Trade's then-new banquet hall in the top floor of the Smith/Prew Building, with attendance at it and a second speech at the High School reported to be at-capacity.
  • 1912
  • 1916 – Holyoke reaches its peak population according to the World Book, at an estimated 65,286 residents. This was to decline slightly before the highest recorded population of 60,203 in the 1920 US Census.
  • 1917
  • 1918 — May 19: Franklin D. Roosevelt, then the assistant secretary of the navy, opens a fundraiser for the American Red Cross to a filled City Hall.
  • 1919 — March 23–24: At the invitation of William Skinner & Sons, the Honorary Commission of the National Association of Raw Silk Industry of Japan is received by Joseph Skinner at the Hotel Nonotuck. The goodwill delegation tours the city, including the silk mills, Wistariahurst, the Skinner Coffee House, and the Skinner Memorial Chapel of the United Congregational Church of Holyoke. Among the group are, a member of the Japanese House of Councillors, and industrialist, Shibusawa Eiichi, the "father of Japanese capitalism".
  • 1920 — The New England Greek-American Publishing Company is founded by one Christ Bress, who uses it to launch the weekly Voice of Greece. It is unknown for what duration this paper was extant; becoming defunct before 1929, it would be Holyoke's only newspaper in the Greek language.
  • 1921 — May 7: Then-Second Lady Grace Coolidge is received at the Highland Park Community House as a guest of honor, her first time visiting the city since her husband was elected to serve as Vice President of President Warren Harding.
  • 1922 – Predating the NBA, the Holyoke Reds win the first Interstate Basketball Championship title, defeating the favored Easthampton Hampers. The game was one of the earliest championship games of any professional basketball league.
  • 1923 – The Holyoke League of Arts and Crafts is organized, a nonprofit organization, its membership purchases the original collection of the Holyoke Museum of Fine Arts and Natural History, 27 American and European paintings.
  • 1925
  • 1928
  • 1930 – April 29: The 104th Regiment of the Massachusetts National Guard is called in to manage traffic and crowds during a massive fire at the Caspar Ranger Lumber Yard which ignites several other buildings across the downtown. High winds carry embers to the Farr Alpaca and William Skinner Silk mills, as well as a number of blocks on High Street. City Hall's roof catches fire during a session of the Board of Aldermen and is extinguished by hand, as the amount of water in use to extinguish other fires creates inadequate water pressure for hoses. Only five individuals are seriously hurt despite mass evacuations and a crowd of 40,000 residents assembling in the city's streets. The fire, estimated to have caused between $750,000 and $1,000,000 in damages is the largest in the city's history.
  • 1932 – The Holyoke Testing Flume ceases testing and is gradually disassembled after 62 years and 3,176 efficiency tests of water turbines.
  • 1934 – May 7: Bantamweight Sixto Escobar, subsequently the first Puerto Rican to win a world title, makes his mainland debut at the Valley Arena, defeating Bobby Leitham.
  • 1937 – September 6: The last streetcar of the Holyoke Street Railway stops at City Hall, marking an end to rail service.
  • 1939 – Future Pulitzer Prize winner, historian Constance Green, had her 1937 thesis published by Yale University Press, Holyoke, Massachusetts: A Case History of the Industrial Revolution in America. The thesis would win the Eggleston Prize and was one of the earliest scholarly works in urban history.
  • 1940 – October 17: Margaret Sanger speaks at the city's Textile Union offices after her original invitation is rescinded to speak at the First Congregational Church, following a rift between Protestant and Catholic businessmen and clergy. The "Sanger Incident" becomes known nationally, bringing attention to birth control laws in Massachusetts.
  • 1941 — December 7: While driving to his home in Holyoke after a shift at Westover AFB, future four-star General Curtis LeMay hears an interruption of the Dodgers-Giants game on the radio with the announcement that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. He later describes a feeling of relief with the broadcast, knowing with complete certainty that he would be deployed.
  • 1942 — June 26: Facing scrutiny and anti-German sentiment during the Second World War, Holyoke and Massachusetts' longest-running German-language newspaper, the Neu England Rundschau ceases publication.
  • 1946
  • 1947 – March 17: Rocky Marciano debuts on St. Patrick's Day as a professional boxer at the Valley Arena, defeating local favorite Lee Epperson.
  • 1949 – August 22: The Holyoke Water Power Company begins excavation for modernization of the Holyoke Dam's power station.
  • 1950
  • 1951 – November 7: The new power station of the Holyoke Dam is brought online, following its two year modernization project.
  • 1952
  • 1956 – The former Polish language Gwiazda, then known only as The Star, being published primarily in English since 1953, ceases publication.
  • 1958
  • 1959 – June: Wistariahurst is donated to the City by the Skinner family and made the permanent home of the Holyoke Museum of Fine Arts and Natural History, previously maintained in the library building.
  • 1960
  • 1961 – Whiting Farms Road is completed. Constructed prior to the completion of Interstate 91 for the new Regional Business Development Corporation's industrial park, initially the road is known by critics as the "Road to Nowhere".
  • 1962 – December 23: Holyoke's tallest commercial building, the Hotel Essex, originally known as the LaFrance Hotel, for its developer, suffers a two-alarm fire gutting much of its upper 4 floors. Its closure marks the last time the building would be used as a hotel, before being converted into apartments after a decade of renovation plans and foreclosures. With Roger Williams Hotel closing in the previous year, its closure marked a period in which the city had no hotels in operation.
  • 1963 – The former Skinner Silk Mill, then manufacturing rayon under Indian Head Mills, closes altogether, marking the end of the once-largest silk mill in the world being used for textile manufacturing.
  • 1964
  • 1966 – Following a prolonged period of declining ridership, the Boston and Maine Railroad discontinues passenger rail service to the city.
  • 1967 – Construction begins on Interstate 391.
  • 1972 – Bodybuilding journalist Charles Gaines asks photographer George Butler to join him in covering the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness's 1972 "Mr. East Coast" competition at Mountain Park for Sports Illustrated. The shoot included winner Leon Brown, who became the first bodybuilder to be showcased in the magazine. Arnold Schwarzenegger was also featured at the competition as a guest poser, and having met Gaines and Butler at the event, the three would go on to make Pumping Iron, a book and movie which introduced bodybuilding to the American mainstream, having been a largely obscure subculture up until that time.
  • 1973 – July 27–31: Following a disturbance between police and residents when a local man was arrested for stealing a bicycle, Mayor William Taupier imposes a 6pm to 6am curfew on The Flats, requiring residents to present identification to access their homes. After a review of the incident by the aldermen and Model Cities Program administrators, the resulting political fallout ends the Team Policing program in favor of regular patrols.
  • 1977 – April 25: The Holyoke Millers, a Minor League Baseball team, make their home debut at Mackenzie Stadium following a rain delay the previous day, losing 7-5 against the Waterbury Giants.
  • 1979 – Michael Kittredge opens his first factory in Holyoke for Yankee Candle, renting space from an older mill building.
  • 1980 – July 16: The abandoned former primary mills of William Skinner and Sons, including one that was once touted as the largest silk mill in the world, are razed by what was described by the Springfield Union as one of the largest fires in the city's history.
  • 1981
  • 1982 – Interstate 391 is completed.
  • 1983 – With growing business Yankee Candle leaves its Holyoke factory, establishing its headquarters in South Deerfield.
  • 1984 – The first annual Holyoke Puerto Rican Parade is held in South Holyoke proceeding to Springdale Park.
  • 1986
  • 1987
  • 1993
  • 1994
  • 1996 – July 6: A memorial plaque is dedicated at the site of the 1946 Mount Tom crash, with many small pieces of the B-17 still being found by that time.
  • 1997 – Holyoke Gas & Electric launches its first fiber optics communications services.
  • 1998 – April: Mount Tom Ski Area ceases operations after its last season.

21st century

  • 2001 - December 14: Holyoke Gas & Electric purchases the Dam and Canal System from the then-defunct Holyoke Water Power Company.
  • 2003 - Churchill is redeveloped with the construction of the Churchill Homes, a mix of owner-occupied and housing authority single-family homes, built over the former Jackson Parkway projects.
  • 2004 - Hazen Paper Company, a paper converter based in the city, lands its first job making the holographic cover of the Super Bowl program, a job it has kept every year since as of 2020, including 8 years featuring the New England Patriots.
  • 2005 - April: Parsons Paper, the first and subsequently last paper mill in the city, ceases operations.
  • 2007 - The Holyoke Giants FCBL team departs to become the North Shore Navigators in Lynn.
  • 2008 - The Valley Blue Sox NECBL baseball team debuts at Mackenzie Stadium in its inaugural season.
  • 2010 - September: Citing aging infrastructure and efforts to minimize energy usage, Holyoke Gas & Electric discontinues district heating in the downtown.
  • 2013 - October 28: The Holyoke Public Library reopens after 2 years of renovations and construction of a $14.5 million dollar expansion.
  • 2015 - The modern Holyoke station opens, bringing passenger rail service to the city after an absence of 49 years.
  • 2017 - August 8: The Valley Blue Sox win their first NECBL championship, in a series against the Ocean State Waves.
  • 2018 - September 25: Holyoke Gas & Electric and French-multinational energy utility company Engie unveil Massachusetts' largest utility-scale energy storage system, used for storing solar energy for use at non-peak hours.
  • 2020 - September 30: Hampden Paper, a paper converter and the last Holyoke mill still in use by its founding business, closes after 140 years.