William Cullen Bryant Homestead

Now Trustee-owned, the serene vista of the Westfield River Valley that inspired one of America’s greatest poets. William Cullen Bryant’s verse celebrates this quintessential American landscape, and helped inspire the 19th-century land conservation movement.

From 1865 until his death in 1878, Bryant summered here at his boyhood home, today a National Historic Landmark. He converted the two-story farmhouse into a rambling three-story Victorian cottage and expanded the sprawling red barn to store apples and pears from his orchards. Inside the house you’ll discover colonial and Victorian pieces from the poet’s family, as well as exotic memorabilia from his extensive European and Asian travels.

The Homestead’s pastoral landscape has been largely unchanged for more than 150 years and includes pastures, fields, maple sugar bush (that has been tapped for more than 200 years), and woodlands. You can schedule landscape and home tours at this landmark, or even a private group tour.

Tour schedules and dates: http://www.thetrustees.org/things-to-do/events.html?srrelated_property=56485917 Cummington, MA 01026