Although this intersection doesn’t look like much today, as recently as 1904 these roads were the major roads from West Springfield to Southampton, Northern Westfield and Western Holyoke. In fact, between 1636 and 1663 the road through “Bush’s Notch” was the only route open to Westfield since the highway along the Agawam River didn’t exist at that time.
Millville Street goes due north from the four-corners toward the “Great Pond”, now called Ashley Pond. The pond is a spring fed, natural body of water, which is the source of Paucatuck Brook and therefore part of West Springfield’s drinking water supply at Bear Hole Reservoir.
Millville Street was significant in the town’s early history because it was the site of a 1690’s sawmill built on a waterfall just south of the “Great Pond”. Remnants of the dam and the stone foundations of the mill and related buildings are still visible at “the upper falls of Paucatuck Brook” and can be located by walking out Millville Street and listening for the sound of the water fall.
The waterfall area was quite a large industrial complex from 1700 to 1900 with the sawmill, a grist-mill, iron works, shingle mill and even a hydraulic cement mill showing on the various County and State maps at different times.
As late as 1912 there were two farmhouses at the “four-corners” intersection and all the land in the vicinity was orchard, pasture or farmland. Old cellar holes and stonewalls still abound in the area but so does poison ivy so, explorers beware.