Erving was originally established as Erving’s Grant by Boston Merchant John Erving (1727-1816) in 1752. Several other tracts were purchased by speculators but the town remained unsettled until Asaph White (1748-1828) of Heath, Massachusetts, built a home there in about 1801.

Erving became a town in 1838, one of the last towns in the state to be incorporated. Erving is defined by the long, high ridge rising north of the Millers River, with most of its population clustered in the river valley. The availability of waterpower defined the character of the town, and from the beginning waterpower supported grist mills and a tannery.

There are three villages in Erving – Erving Center, Farley, and Ervingside. Ervingside was once known as Millers Falls, which was then a village that lay on both sides of the Millers River – the area of Millers Falls north of the river was in Erving and the area south of the river was in the town of Montague. Manufacturing at Millers Falls began in the 1860s. The official center of Millers Falls was in Montague but early on most of the manufacturing took place on the Erving side, aided by a canal that supplied waterpower to the factories.

Today more than half of Erving’s eastern side is state forest. On its western edge is the power company reserve that extends into neighboring Northfield, where power is generated from a large reservoir that the Western Massachusetts Electric Company built on top of Northfield Mountain in 1967.