A children’s chorus singing happy birthday, live music and fireworks by the high school will ring in the 250th anniversary of West Springfield’s founding.
Incorporated just two years before the Declaration of Independence was adopted, West Side originally split off from the City of Springfield after a century of providing crops and feed for livestock.
“Well, 1774, which is what we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of this year, was when the town of West Springfield got chartered with this act of incorporation," said West Springfield Historical Commission Chairman Richard Kosinski.
Kosinski showed a copy of the founding document while opening up the town museum, giving WAMC a tour ahead of the anniversary’s kickoff.
Today, West Springfield is home to some 30,000 residents who are invited to take part in a celebration that runs throughout the year – something town Chief of Operations Carly Camossi says she and her team have been planning for some time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When only a handful of us were here at town hall, we had kind of a skeleton crew working during COVID – we started talking about what we were going to look forward to and everyone knows in COVID times, there wasn’t a lot to look forward to," Camossi said. "So, for us, it was like ‘alright, well, what can we bring to our residents that is going to be just something to make them smile.'”
As it would turn out, getting a head start on the town’s semiquincentennial was the solution.
Finding a way to celebrate the home of the Big E was not too much of a challenge, according to Camossi and Mayor William Reichelt, with guidance given from neighboring communities that celebrated their own centuries-old anniversaries, including Westfield, which turned 350 in 2019.
“Four years later, we’re here and we’re ready to party. I think that’s one of the best qualities about West Springfield is that we like to have a good party," Camossi said.
“This is a great chance for us to bring up a lot of our history that many of us don’t know about," said the mayor.
Speaking with WAMC, Reichelt noted how locals in the mid- to late-18th century appealed for the town’s incorporation, given the treachery of trying to cross the Connecticut River – all on top of flooding, which local tribes were said to have warned the settlers of as they arrived and pushed westward.
Years later, parts of the town would split off to form Holyoke and Agawam.
As time went on, bridges would be built, mills would come and go, and a large rail yard would form in the town’s south side, in addition to West Springfield hosting the Eastern States Exposition, which would only grow after its start in 1916.
But while West Springfield is technically smaller than it was over 200 ago, its current mayor calls it a hub – what with it being home to the crossroads of I-91 and the Mass Pike, and being in the center of multiple cities.
“We’re not the town of West Springfield of 250 years ago – we’re not a farming community anymore, we’re not a pastoral community – we are the hub of, arguably, the Pioneer Valley," Reichelt said. " I won’t try to fight that out with Springfield – Springfield is Springfield, they’re the county seat, they’re the largest city here – but there’s a lot going on in West Springfield and there’s a lot that we can do to connect the other communities together and kind of be that hub.”
According to the mayor, West Springfield can’t be defined by any one thing, whether it’s the Big E or how it was home to the stallion that led to the Morgan horse breed.
He also noted the town is one of the largest refugee resettlement communities in the Northeast per capita.
All of which he and others hope to see celebrated Friday and beyond.
“Historically, the group of people that we have living here, all 30,000 of our residents - they’re incredible," Camossi said ahead of Friday's kick-off event. "And I’ll say through this experience, they’ve been so supportive and they just want to see this particular event thrive.”
Other events planned for 2024 include a 5K run in March, a “250th Gala” in May and a parade in August. More information can be found here.
A special Facebook page devoted to recounting the town's history, "West Springfield: Our Story," can be found here.
