History
Mount Toby is named for Captain Elnathan Toby, a settler from colonial Springfield, said to be the first Caucasian to summit the mountain. Like other peaks in the Connecticut River Valley in the 18th century, a resort hotel was built on the summit of Mount Toby, but it burned down a year after it was constructed, and was not rebuilt. The land was subsequently acquired by the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst), and is currently part of the Mount Toby State Demonstration Forest managed by the University.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)