The Great Bore
A Souvenir Of The Hoosac Tunnel

41 settle the Hoosac valley. In 1738 a commission was appointed, with Captain Ephraim \\ illiams, the founder of Williams college, at its head, to survey the valley and open it for settlement. Dining the following year the commissioners, accompanied by surveyors, worked their way into the then unknown wilderness and surveyed and located three town- ships,—East Hoosuck, now North Adams and Adams; West Hoosuck, now Williamstown, and Clarksburg. For some reason, however, settlcis did not avail themselves of the opportunities offcicd by the state legislature, and so for a decade more the deer and black bear had almost undisputed pos- session of the narrow valley and the wooded moun- tains which shut it in, and the trout swam unmo lested in the brooks and streams. In 1749 East Hoosuck was re-surveyed and the town laid out seven miles north and south and five miles east and west. In 1762 it was sold (owing to the failuie o the settlers to comply with the act of Pu lie auction, at the Royal Exchange Tavern, Boston, for >£3,200 sterling to Nathaniel Jones, of \ eston. Sixteen years later the town began its 1 cal existence. On October 15, 1778, a special act of the legislature authorized the changing of the name of the p anta tion of East Hoosuck to that of the township of Adams, in honor of Samuel Adams.