Along the Westfield River Valley, William Cullen Bryant, editor and publisher of the New York Evening Post for many years, wrote meditative verse and influenced the 19th-century land conservation movement that included Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Eliot, founder of The Trustees.
From 1865 until his death in 1878, Bryant summered here at his childhood home, a two-story farmhouse turned into a three-story Victorian cottage surrounded by encompasses pastures, fields and woodlands.
The grounds and trails of the Homestead are open to the public. Along the Rivulet Trail, an old-growth forest of hemlock and a magnificent cherry tree stand along the stream. The Pine Loop wanders through giant pine trees that reach heights of 150 feet, among the tallest in the Northeast.
A broad red barn sits in a curve of the dirt road at the Cummington farm house where Poet and editor William Cullen Bryant spent summers in 19th century.
