As the location of early industrial sites on the Sawmill River and the nexus of transportation routes, Montague Center became a hub of commercial activity in central Franklin County in the mid 1700’s. Surrounded by productive farmland, the village was ideally sited for settlements. As the Connecticut River became more industrialized in nearby Turners Falls, Greenfield and Hadley in the mid-nineteenth century, small manufacturers appeared in Montague Center along with factory housing, which increased the size and density of the small rural community. As a result, it acquired a diversity of type and scale in its architecture that was unusual for a village its size. As the industrial economy of western Massachusetts declined in the twentieth century, Montague Center gradually returned to its earlier pastoral inclinations. Today, the factories no longer exist and the mills have been put to other uses. As it did one hundred years ago, Montague Center’s distinctive plan, a crossroads village organized around a village green, vividly conveys the image of a mid-nineteenth century rural New England town.