A seasonal automobile road crosses the summit area near three structures from the 1930s; these together constitute a small National Historic District.

Various hiking paths including the Appalachian Trail traverse the area, which is part of the larger Mount Greylock State Reservation.

Northern hardwood forest characterize lower and mid-elevations, while upper slopes are covered with balsam fir and red spruce as well as American mountain ash.

These include the blackpoll warbler and Bicknell's thrush which breed exclusively in boreal forest, with limited opportunities elsewhere in Massachusetts.

[22] Mount Greylock is part of the much larger Taconic Allochthon, a structure that migrated to its present position from 25 miles to the east.

[24] More narrowly, the local massif is mostly "Greylock Schist," a term used by geologists starting in 1891 and much more recently, although the age of these rocks had been uncertain into the 1960s.

Successive episodes of ice-age glaciation rounded the mountain, leaving glacial erratics such as "Balanced Rock" on Greylock in Lanesborough.

[31] The peak's namesake, Gray Lock[32](c. 1670–1750) was an Abenaki tribal figure from near Westfield, Massachusetts, known for raiding English outposts near the Connecticut River[33] and not historically associated with the mountain.

The Greylock Commission sought a more substantial shelter to replace an earlier summit house (built c.1902; destroyed by fire in 1929).

Today, Bascom Lodge is run (in warmer months only) by a service company under a concession-type lease from the state.

[43] Among the largest was a 1938 event attended by 7,000 spectators, who watched Fritz Dehmel of Nazi Germany set a course record of 2 minutes and 25 seconds.

[48] [49] Separately, a 1990s landslide area on the eastern face of Greylock that is unrelated to the Thunderbolt trail was reportedly skied in 2005 [50] The Veterans War Memorial Tower was approved by the state legislature in 1930, supported by local lawmakers and Governor Frank G. Allen.

[51][52] An estimated 1,500 people attended the 1933 dedication by Governor Joseph B. Ely, an event broadcast nationally over NBC radio.

It includes Art Deco details, some by John Bizzozero of Quincy, whose work also appears on the Vermont Capitol building.

One of the inscriptions inside the monument reads, "Of those immortal dead who live again in the minds made better by their presence", which is a line from a poem by George Eliot.

The Veterans War Memorial Tower was closed for four years beginning in 2013 because of water infiltration that caused structural damage from freezing.

[55] Although not as part of the Historic District, one radio and one television station transmit from a broadcast tower below the summit on the west side: WAMC (90.3 Albany, New York); and W38DL (38 Adams, Massachusetts) (repeater of WNYT-TV).

Among them were writers and artists inspired by the mountain scene: Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau.

His experiences there, specifically a walk he took at midnight where he saw a burning lime kiln, inspired his story, originally titled "The Unpardonable Sin".

[60] Melville is said to have taken part of his inspiration for Moby-Dick from the view of the mountain from his house Arrowhead in Pittsfield, since its snow-covered profile reminded him of a great white sperm whale's back breaking the ocean's surface.

In August 1851 Melville and a few friends, including the young poet Sarah Morewood, camped for a night on Greylock's summit.

His account of this event in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers described his approach up what is today the Bellows Pipe Trail.

Dwight's travel memoir describes the mountain: "During a great part of the year, it is either embosomed or capped by clouds, and indicates to the surrounding inhabitants the changes of weather with not a little exactness.

The Greylock Park Association (GPA) was formed in 1885 and shares were sold locally with plans to make money by attracting tourists.

[69] But 12 years later, with the GPA's business future imperiled by debt, local legislators proposed acquiring the company and forming Mount Greylock State Reservation.

[74] After the authority announced plans for a ski resort in 1964, a local conservation group called the Mount Greylock Protective Association led a campaign to shift the Reservation to state management from Berkshire County.