Harness Horses for Sale near Holyoke, MA

About Holyoke, MA

English colonists arrived in the Connecticut River Valley in 1633, when traders from the Plymouth Plantation established a post at Windsor, Connecticut. In 1636, Massachusetts Bay Colony assistant treasurer and Puritan iconoclast William Pynchon led a group of settlers from Roxbury, Massachusetts to the Valley to establish Springfield on land scouts had found to be advantageous for farming and trading. This settlement was built north of the Connecticut River's first major falls, Enfield Falls, where seagoing vessels had to transfer cargo into smaller shallops to continue northward on the river. Due to its proximity to the banks of the river Springfield quickly became a successful settlement on the Bay Path to Boston, as well as the Massachusetts Path to Albany. Originally, the settlement spanned both sides of the river but was partitioned in 1774 with the land on the western bank becoming West Springfield, Massachusetts.