If you’ve grown accustomed to the typical tourist New England of village greens and clapboard B&Bs, industrial North Adams (pop. 14,681) may come as something of a shock. Nearly from its inception, North Adams tied its fortunes to major manufacturing plants, churning out printed cotton until textiles went south, then rolling out electronics for everything from the first atomic bomb to the television sets of the 1950s and 1960s. When electronics went solid-state and overseas, North Adams nearly died clinging to the belief that some new assembly line would come fill its sprawling complex of massive Victorian-era mill buildings. Finally, the town’s long-awaited salvation seems to be taking shape, in the form of art: the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Better known as Mass MoCA (daily in July & Aug., closed Tues. rest of year; $10; 413/664-4481), the museum galleries fill some 200,000 square feet of heavy-duty industrial buildings with an ever-changing array of cutting-edge art (plus the inevitable shop and a very nice café, Eleven).
For those more interested in the olden days, the region’s historic gravy train is faithfully recollected in the Western Gateway Heritage State Park (daily; free; 413/663-8059). Occupying the former freight-yard of the Boston and Maine Railroad, the park highlights the landmark construction of the five-mile-long Hoosac Tunnel and North Adams’s front-row seat on the Boston-to-Great Lakes rail connection it made possible.
In northwestern Massachusetts, this Appalachian Trail crosses the Oregon Trail transcontinental road trip along US-20 and other highways.
