The Mohawk Trail, shown on maps as Massachusetts Route Two, is a great trip for scenic driving. You can take the trail in an easy, curvey sixty plus mile stretch, just making the usual pit stops. Or you can spend days exploring its side roads and villages, hiking its open public lands. Either way makes for a satisfying excursion. And every season has its beauty; during the fall leaf peeping season the foliage is spectacular, but the route tends to be clogged - just another reason to take it slow and enjoy the view.

The trail began life as a Native American footpath across the Berkshires, used for trade, hunting, and social calling by five tribes, including the Pocumtuck and the Mohawk. After the colonization, the trail was successively widened and repaved, and its route altered to accomodate changing modes of transportation. All the stages of the region's economic life are represented: wild forests and mountains, colonial trading and farming villages, 19th century manufacturing towns, and the 20th century retrofitted rust belt.

In 1914, at the dawn of the automobile age, the Mohawk Trail was declared a scenic route, the first such one. There are many other firsts about this route, many of which we've noted below.