It is also notable for its unique microclimate ecosystems and rare plant communities, as well as significant historic sites, such as the ruins of the 18th century Eyrie House located on Mount Nonotuck.

[4] According to popular folklore, Mount Tom (the high point on the range) takes its name from Rowland Thomas, a surveyor who worked for the settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts in the 1660s.

Native Americans inhabited the area around the Mount Tom Range for at least 10,000 years; they grew maize, tobacco, beans, squash and other vegetables in the Connecticut River floodplain, clearing small sections of forest by burning to make room for their crops.

More settlers arrived after of the war ended with the defeat of the Native Americans, and by the early 19th century, most of the region's current towns had been established and most of the land had been cleared of trees to make room for farms.

A 2004 ecological resource study conducted for the National Park Service suggests that the Metacomet Ridge may have remained more or less forested (cleared only intermittently) throughout New England's agricultural period, thereby allowing the area to retain its biologic diversity through the 20th century.

[2] Increasing urbanization and industrialization in 19th century New England resulted in an opposing aesthetic transcendentalist movement characterized by the paintings of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters such as Frederic Edwin Church and Thomas Cole (who, in 1836, famously painted the Connecticut River from sketches he made from the summit of Mount Holyoke), the work of landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted, and the writings of philosophers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The hotel burned down in 1901 when Street attempted to cremate two horses on the mountain and lost control of the fire, leaving only the cellar holes and the walls of the stone understory standing.

The project changed hands several times until its closure in 1988 when competition from larger amusement parks gradually sapped business away what had become affectionately known by locals as "The Queen of the Mountain.

[10] The ridge of the Mount Tom Range was formed 200 million years ago during the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods and is composed of traprock, also known as basalt, an extrusive volcanic rock.

Basalt is a dark colored rock, but the iron within it weathers to a rusty brown when exposed to the air, lending the ledges a distinct reddish appearance.

The basalt ridges are the product of several massive lava flows hundreds of feet deep that welled up in faults created by the rifting apart of North America from Eurasia and Africa.

[13] In 2002, several conservation non-profit organizations and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts collaborated to successfully preserve a large tract on the east side of the range that was once part of a downhill ski area that closed in 1998.

The efforts were spurred by public outcry following overtures by the former landowner to sell the land to a nearby rock and gravel operation for the expansion of the existing quarry.