Mount Washington is about as remote as you can get in Berkshire County.
“It's the third smallest place in Massachusetts, with about a land mass the size of Manhattan Island, but with 165 residents," explained Bobbie Hallig.
She's lived in what locals call The Town Among the Clouds since the 1960s.
“When I first got here, which is 60 something years ago, there was a school teacher, a retired English school teacher, and she said, how did you come to be on Mount Washington?" Hallig continued. "And I said, well, we just were looking for a place with beautiful nature, and she said, well, you're very fortunate, because I travel the world all my life, in my, my vacations, and everything, and the place -- and she was up in her 80s, then maybe 90 -- she said, this is the place that has changed the least of all the places I've ever been, so I'm really proud of that.”
Since she first bought her acreage in Mount Washington decades ago, Hallig has felt a responsibility to ensure its ongoing preservation.
“I definitely do not feel like I possess this land," she told WAMC. "I own it outright, I pay taxes on it, but it's not really mine. It belongs to the globe, to the health of our nation, to the people who come and visit here. I'm not at all feeling like I own anything.”
Deep in the southwestern corner of Massachusetts, Mount Washington feels like entering another world. Its narrow, winding access roads take you to a leafy, quiet refuge tucked into a sprawling state forest in the Appalachian Highlands. The Nature Conservancy Watershed Conservation Manager Angela Sirois-Pitel says that below the surface, the town only gets more special.
“Where we are here in Massachusetts is one of the biodiversity hotspots for the entire state," she said. "There are more rarities found here in Massachusetts than pretty much anywhere else in the state.”
Mount Washington is home to calcareous wetlands, which support endangered and uncommon species.
“This mountain ridge used to be a coral reef in the ocean on what we would now consider the Atlantic Coast," explained Sirois-Pitel. "And because of the coral reef matter that has like become like a calcium and limestone bedrock, you have really unique geology and therefore water chemistry and kind of forest conditions here then you don't find other places in the Appalachians.”
The Nature Conservancy, with the urging of Hallig, first protected what is now the 1,500-acre Mount Plantain Preserve around a quarter century ago. Karen Lombard, director of Stewardship for the Massachusetts chapter of the global nonprofit, says it’s part of a larger effort to prepare for a hotter Earth as climate change continues to reshape the planet’s ecosystem.
“We're into what's something called the Berkshire Wildlife Linkage, which is connecting the southern part of the Appalachians to the northern part, and we expect some of the large migratory species to use those corridors to move north," Lombard told WAMC. "And also, there's a lot of species that need big chunks of unfragmented forest for to survive. There are types of songbirds that like interior forest- again, the large ranging mammals. So, it’s really important to protect these sites, and Western Massachusetts has a lot of that remaining.”
The removal of the crumbling concrete dam at Becker Pond inside the Mount Plantain Preserve last year was the product of collaboration between local advocates and volunteers, NGOs like The Nature Conservancy, and the commonwealth of Massachusetts. As Mass. Division of Ecological Restoration Director Beth Lambert explained, the project ties Mount Washington into a broader statewide effort.
“Massachusetts has more than 3,000 dams," she said. "The vast majority of those were built in the 1700s and 1800s, many to power mills. Others were built as swimming holes, some serve as drinking water sources, but the vast majority are obsolete. They are deteriorating, and as the climate changes, those dams continue to fall apart, and they act as a liability for dam owners and for residents.”
Gov. Maura Healey has put forward a goal to remove 10% of those dams by 2050.
In 2025, the trek down to the waterway went through a rough-cut forest pathway and a muddy worksite for the crews working to take out the dam and restore the stream. Now, that journey is a smooth stroll down a new trail installed by Berkshire youths flanked by flowers, ferns, and other fauna.
Sam Del Molino is the conservation manager at Greenagers, a South Egremont-based nonprofit that trains young people to work in farming, conservation, and other outdoor, nature-oriented professions.
“The part we just walked down through the mountain laurel was a big what we call a bench cut. It's the way you cut at an angle so you can walk on it," he told WAMC. "So, there's a big bench cut. That was the huge workforce right there, pulling a lot of roots, digging in the ground, and a squad of teenagers, shovels and picks, hand tools, and we were out there making that trail, building the tread so that it was sustainable, so that the water won't erode it, and so that everybody can walk on it safely, and not rip it up.”
The trail is named in honor of Bobbie Hallig and her lifelong effort to preserve Mount Washington’s specialness in perpetuity. When it was first put to her, she wasn’t keen on the idea.
“He said, 'We want to acknowledge you and what all you've done here.’ And I said, 'I don't want to be acknowledged.’ And he said, 'Well, what if we name a trail for you?’ I said, 'Oh, I like that,’” she laughed.
Hallig’s advocacy journey didn’t only change the land she loves in the Southern Berkshires. It also changed her.
“I learned that you can make things like this happen," she told WAMC. "You just have to stand up for it.”
