Rowe MA

Below left is an Interactive Map provided by Google. Use it to get directions to and from locations in Rowe, MA. Various icons link to our community pages plus Real Estate Listings, Wikipedia article, official town page, and a Google web search of the community.

Rowe MA is located in Franklin County, Massachusetts with a population of about 400 people

Photo below shows Rowe MA via aerial view (Click on image for larger view in new window)

Rowe Information and History

Rowe has a town website. Quick Links include Departments, Boards and Committees, Downloadable Files and About Rowe.

From wikipedia:

Rowe was the site of fishing and foraging for local Native American tribes. The area was first visited by white settlers in 1744, and was the site of a fort to guard against raids. In 1762, the town lands were purchased by the Rev. Cornelius Jones, who named it “Myrifield” after the Greek word for “thousand”. The town had enough settlers by 1785 to have it incorporated as a town, renamed by the Massachusetts General Court after John Rowe, a prominent Boston merchant.

The town of Rowe grew around mills on the river, but also had other industries, including sulfur, talc and soapstone mining. This was nowhere more evident than in the now abandoned settlement at the Davis Mine. In the late 1880s, with the addition of the railroad along the river, the area had become somewhat of a small resort town. But, by the advent of the 1900s, most industry had begun to dry up, leaving the town fairly rural until the 1950s. At that point, with the “baby boom” underway, Rowe became the site of Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station, the first nuclear power plant in New England, near the Sherman Dam along the Vermont border. The plant was in operation from 1960 to 1992, and the plant is now completely decommissioned, with the nuclear waste set to be transported to Yucca Mountain’s containment facilities upon their completion in 2020.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 24.0 square miles (62.2 km²), of which 23.4 square miles (60.7 km²) is land and 0.58 square miles (1.5 km²), or 2.41%, is water.^[4] Rowe lies along the northern border of Franklin County and Massachusetts, bordered by Windham County, Vermont, to the north and Berkshire County to the west. The town is bordered by Whitingham, Vermont, to the north, Heath to the east, Charlemont to the south, and Florida and Monroe to the west. Rowe is located 23 miles (37 km) west-northwest of Greenfield, 53 miles (85 km) north-northwest of Springfield, and 112 miles (180 km) west-northwest of Boston.

Rowe lies along the eastern bank of the Deerfield River, which is dammed near the Vermont border to form the Sherman Reservoir. The town has two other large bodies of water, the Upper Bear Swamp Reservoir and Pelham Lake, which feeds Pelham Brook, a tributary of the river. The town is hilly, with two main ridges on either side of Pelham Brook. Near the southwest corner of town is Negus Mountain, along the western ridge, and along the eastern ridge lies Todd Mountain and Adams Mountain, the highest point in town. Much of the land southeast of Pelham Lake is part of Pelham Lake Park, which extends to the mountains. There are also two small units of Monroe State Forest in town.

Rowe is one of a handful of small towns in Massachusetts which has no state highways. (Nearly half of these towns are on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, with the majority of the rest in central and western Massachusetts.) The nearest state highways are Massachusetts Route 8A, which runs through neighboring Heath, and Route 2 (the Mohawk Trail), which runs through Charlemont and Florida. The nearest expressway, Interstate 91, passes through the center of the county, near the junction of the Deerfield River and the Connecticut River. A short section of railroad tracks leading westward to the Hoosac Tunnel passes through the southwest corner of town, but the town is otherwise not served by rail, bus or air service. The nearest bus and small air service is in North Adams, the nearest Amtrak service is in Pittsfield, and the nearest national air service can be reached at Albany International Airport in New York.

Rowe employs the open town meeting form of government, and is led by a board of selectmen.

The town has a police station, which also patrols neighboring Monroe, as well as a fire station, a library connected to the regional library network, and a post office, all of which are located near the Town Hall at the center of town. The nearest hospital, North Adams Regional Hospital, is located in North Adams.

Rowe’s school system is a sub-system in the nine-town Mohawk Trail Regional School District, which serves much of western Franklin County. Town students attend the Rowe Elementary School from pre-kindergarten through sixth grades, and all students in the district attend Mohawk Trail Regional High School in Buckland. There is a private academy in neighboring Charlemont, and other private and religious schools in nearby North Adams.

The nearest community college, Greenfield Community College, is located in Greenfield. The nearest state college is Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, and the nearest state university is the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The nearest private college is Williams College in Williamstown, with several others located southeast in the Northampton/Amherst area.

The Rowe Center is a Unitarian Universalist organization that began in 1924. It offers a variety of summer camp options for youth, as well as adult workshops and spiritual retreats.^] The summer camp was founded by Reverend Anita Pickett in 1924 for young people.

]The Rowe Historical Society, located at 282 Zoar Road, operates the Kemp-McCarthy Museum. Information on the museum, its collections and the calendar of special events is available at the Rowe Historical Society website.

The former mining village, and current ghost town, of Davis, Massachusetts, is located in the eastern part of town, near Pelham Lake.

Rowe MA Photos