Easthampton, Massachusetts

Easthampton, Massachusetts
City
View of Mount Tom from the center of Easthampton
Seal
Motto: Artes et Literæ cum Virtute Conjunctæ (Latin "Arts and Letters joined together with Virtue")
Location in Hampshire County in Massachusetts
Easthampton, Massachusetts Location in the United States
Coordinates: 42°16′00″N 72°40′10″W / 42.26667°N 72.66944°W / 42.26667; -72.66944Coordinates: 42°16′00″N 72°40′10″W / 42.26667°N 72.66944°W / 42.26667; -72.66944
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Hampshire
Settled	1664
Incorporated	June 17, 1785
Government
• Type	Mayor-council city
• Mayor	Karen Cadieux
Area
• Total	13.6 sq mi (35.2 km2)
• Land	13.4 sq mi (34.8 km2)
• Water	0.2 sq mi (0.5 km2)
Elevation	170 ft (52 m)
Population (2010)
• Total	16,053
• Density	1,192.1/sq mi (460.3/km2)
Time zone	Eastern (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	Eastern (UTC-4)
ZIP code	01027
Area code(s)	413
FIPS code	25-19330
GNIS feature ID	0608739
Website	www.easthampton.org

Easthampton is a city in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is on the southeastern edge of the Pioneer Valley near the five colleges in the college towns of Northampton and Amherst. The population was 16,053 at the 2010 census.

Easthampton was first settled by European immigrants beginning in 1664 and was originally considered part of Northampton. In 1785, the village of Easthampton was formally named its own separate political entity, and in 1809, it officially became a town. Easthampton is the youngest town in Hampshire County by date of incorporation. (It was not, however, the last incorporated; two of the three disincorporated towns of the Quabbin Reservoir in Hampshire County, Enfield and Prescott, were incorporated afterwards.)

The town grew primarily around the Manhan River, both through its phase as a strictly agricultural community and later, through the industrial revolution, when mills and factories were first built in Easthampton, mainly in connection with textile manufacturing and its offshoots. The first of these, the Williston-Knight Button Company, was established in 1847 by Samuel Williston, son of the town’s first minister, a Congregationalist named Payson Williston. The company specialized in cloth-covered buttons – a coveted item at the time – and to facilitate the operation of the machinery, a local brook was dammed, creating Nashawannuck Pond. Other mills soon opened nearby, a number of them specializing in elastic and rubber thread manufacturing.

Following this spurt of industrial development, the town’s first high school and first national bank opened in 1864, and a town hall was built in 1869. Constables were replaced by the town’s first police officer in 1871, the same year that Easthampton became a regular stop on the railroad. The town’s public library opened in 1881, and fourteen years later in 1895, the community was introduced to two new innovations, telephones and streetcars. With the influx of new residents came a number of new churches, founded for Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Methodist parishioners, as well as a second Congregational church. In 1899, the West Boylston Manufacturing Company and the Hampton Company, both specializing in cloth production, moved to Easthampton, recruiting a larger immigrant labor force, particularly from Poland and Canada.