Yokun Ridge - History

History

In the 1740s, Jehoiakim Yokun and another Native American of the Mahican Tribe bought all the unsold land between Stockbridge and Pittsfield for 12 English pounds from two fellow tribesmen. The land was subsequently acquired by the English in the 1750s. The Dutch name "Jehoiakim" may indicate that Jehoiakim Yokun was baptized by the Dutch in the Hudson Valley, a region where most Mahicans resided at the time. Yokun subsequently was active in the French and Indian Wars while later his son, Timothy, participated in the American Revolution as a member of the Stockbridge Militia at the Siege of Boston and died in a battle in the vicinity of present-day Van Courtlandt Park in Bronx, N.Y. "Yokuntown" (a designation for the village of Lenox in the 18th Century) was named after Yokun.

European settlers logged the area's forests for lumber and charcoal, the latter used as a source for nearby iron foundries, which helped supply ordnance in the American Civil War.

During the late 19th Century's Gilded Age much of Yokun Ridge was held by a handful of large estates, including the Stokes property, whose 1894 "Shadowbrook Cottage" below Baldhead was at the time reputedly the largest residence in America. It later became the site of a Catholic seminary and was subsequently destroyed by fire. The seminary's replacement building is currently occupied by the health and yoga retreat Kripalu. A former Stokes outbuilding is part of the Shadow Brook Farm Historic District. The American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who briefly lived near Yokun Ridge, describes a fictional walk to the top of Baldhead in his A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1852). In the same work, Hawthorne describes Shadow Brook, the local name for a minor stream that flows in the ravine separating Baldhead from the southern reach of Lenox Mountain.

Tourism helped to boost interest in recreation and conservation in the area as early as 1929, when the Lenox Garden Club established the Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary on Lenox Mountain, now owned by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. The Bousquet Ski Area opened in 1932 on the north side of the ridge at Mahanna Cobble. The New York Philharmonic gave a series of summer concerts in 1934 at the Hanna Estate, located on the lower east side of West Stockbridge Mountain. Two years later, the Boston Symphony began its longstanding seasonal residency at nearby Tanglewood, the former Brooks Estate.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Berkshire Natural Resources Council and others helped to further highlight the area's recreational and scenic potential.