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This is a list of mill towns in Massachusetts. Mill towns as described here are not expressly towns that had mills in them but, rather, (mostly former) company towns which depend or depended heavily on one or more millstone gristmills and after the industrial revolution, mass production of goods, that most or all residents were dependent on as an economic engine.
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For example, Lowell [1] is nationally renowned for its numerous historic mill complexes, [2] but along with Easthampton and a handful of others such as Greenfield [3] unique for their preservation of the same as an industry and labor museums dedicated to teaching the shared history of an boom that fueled the growth of the country's economy yet also inflicted gruesome abuses on workers so numerous that it necessitated the creation of the very first successful Labor unions in the United States.
The egress of the mills left numerous large empty factory complexes and economically depressed communities in its wake, something some of these towns, such as Ware, MA have yet to fully recover, whilst in other more diversified economies such as Amherst and Northampton in the Knowledge Corridor with their numerous Colleges and large State University, places such as 'Factory Pond' in Amherst are now known as 'Puffer's Pond' with little recollection of the mills that once stood there, and are thus not considered 'Mill Towns' in the same way as nearby Orange and Athol, Massachusetts.
