[1] Lenox is the site of Shakespeare & Company and Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

[2] Hostilities during the French and Indian Wars discouraged settlement by European colonial settlers until 1750, when Jonathan and Sarah Hinsdale from Hartford, Connecticut, established a small inn and general store.

For 2,250 pounds Josiah Dean purchased Lot Number 8, which included present-day Lenox and Richmond.

But because the Berkshires divided the town in two, the village of Yokuntown (named for an indigenous chief) was set off as Lenox in 1767.

[citation needed] Early industries included farming, sawmills, textile mills, potash production, glassworks, and quarrying.

Other visitors to the area, including Timothy Dwight, Benjamin Silliman and Henry Ward Beecher, extolled its advantages.

In 1844, Samuel Gray Ward of Boston, the American representative for Barings Bank of London, assembled tracts of land to create the first estate in Lenox.

The period from 1880 until 1920 would be dubbed the Berkshire Cottage era, when the small New England town was transformed into a Gilded Age resort similar to Newport, Rhode Island, and Bar Harbor, Maine.

The wealthy and their entourage opened immense houses for recreation and entertaining during the Berkshire Season, which lasted from late summer until early fall.

One event was the annual Tub Parade, when Main Street was lined with ornately decorated carriages.

Tanglewood, the former estate of the Tappan family which lies partially in Stockbridge, would in 1937 become summer home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

It was a filming location for Before and After (1996) and The Cider House Rules (1999), which was shot at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum.

Lenox is bordered by Pittsfield to the north, Washington to the east, Lee to the southeast, Stockbridge to the southwest, and Richmond to the west.

Lenox is set apart from Richmond to the west by a branch of the Berkshire Mountains, with the highest peak in the ridge being Yokun Seat at 2,146 feet (654 m).

To the east, October Mountain rises above the Housatonic River, which flows along that side of town and is impeded by a dam that forms Woods Pond.

[5] Parts of the Housatonic Valley Wildlife Management Area and October Mountain State Forest line the river's east banks there.

The town is also home to the Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary south of Yokun Seat,the Wyndhyrst Resort and Golf Club, and a Miraval Spa.

Routes 7 and 20 meet in the southern end of town, heading north along a bypass road towards Pittsfield.

[20] The school's athletic teams are called the "Millionaires", in acknowledgement of the town's history, and their colors are maroon and gold.