Tri-Centennial Our Birthday Cake

White text and an illustration of a cake on a blue background

Westfield is a town in Western Massachusetts with a population of about 41,000. It was originally settled by the Pocomtuc tribe, and there is little known about them except that they led similar lifestyles to neighboring New England tribes. In 1640, they were uprooted by European settlers from the Connecticut Colony. The region was slowly acquired by the new tenants, who purchased the land off of Native Americans. Westfield, as the town was later called, was officially incorporated in 1660 and represented the westernmost settlement in Massachusetts Colony until 1725.

For more than a century after its founding, Westfield served as an agricultural hub in the Colony due to its rich alluvial lands. The town was later a manufacturing center for bricks, cigars, and whips—the last of which gave Westfield the nickname of “Whip City.” By the late eighteenth century, Westfield was firmly an industrial town and churned out bicycles, paper and woods products, and textile machinery. Though Westfield is no longer an industrial mecca, it continues to support large businesses by serving as an ideal place for warehouse storage.