Turners Falls is one of five villages in the town of Montague in western Massachusetts. It is located at a falls on the Connecticut River named for an attack led by Captain William Turner (1623-1676) on a group of Native people who were camped there (a site they called Peskeompskut) during Metacom’s (King Philip’s) War (1675-1676). Turners Falls was created as a planned industrial community by the Turners Falls Company, formed in 1866 by a group of businessmen led by Alvah Crocker (1801-1874). They were attracted to the site by an old dam and canal that had been built to bypass the waterfall, which they felt could be rebuilt to provide significant waterpower. Crocker’s plan was to sell mill sites along the power canal, and residential lots to the workers who would come to work in the mills. The village was laid out in a grid with the main avenues named alphabetically and the cross streets numerically. Avenue A, the main commercial district, was designed as a grand 100-foot-wide tree-lined avenue. The first factory to locate in Turners Falls was the John Russell Cutlery Company, moving its operations across the river from Greenfield in 1870; at its peak, it employed 1,200 people. By the turn of the century, Turners Falls was home to several score large and medium companies. Its population was primarily a mix of immigrants from Ireland, French Canada, Poland, and Germany. The village thrived through the first decades of the 20th century, but disasters in the 1930s undermined its industrial base. The Great Depression (1929-1940) affected many companies, and the great flood of 1936 destroyed several bridges, forcing the John Russell Cutlery Company to consolidate operations in Southbridge, Massachusetts. The early 21st century has seen Turners Falls retain its historic architecture, commercial center, and some industry, and offer a mix of cultural, recreational, and environmental education opportunities.