Talk:Berkshires

Comments by an anonymous user in the article says: Please note that this section should be properly known as the Berkshire Hills, not the Berkshire Mountains.'

So I am moving the page based on this information. -- (WT-en) Huttite 20:47, 24 Mar 2005 (EST)

Good to know thank you --(WT-en) LebronJames23 05:44, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

Name?

Any reason in particular this is called "Berkshire Hills"? I've never heard anyone refer to the region by that name. Why not "the Berkshires"? This is what people actually call it.Godsendlemiwinks (talk) 22:55, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

That's what I've heard, too, and I've heard "Berkshire Mountains," not "Berkshire Hills." Mount Greylock, Mount Washington, Butternut Mountain, etc., are not called hills. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:49, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to rename to 'The Berkshires'

This page should match its Wikipedia counterpart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berkshires

Countyparkour (talk) 12:48, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Agree, this should absolutely be renamed to "The Berkshires". --ButteBag (talk) 03:26, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Sure. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:30, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

This was never resolved. I plan to take care of this within 48 hours unless there's an objection. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:13, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Done, but with no "The". Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Unpopular merge proposal

I find the cities list quite difficult to make sense of, and I've been to the area! Any appetite for a little merging? The articles linked in parenthesis below would be merged into the bolded article, so imagine the text in the parens not being there. Anyway, I know I'm usually too aggressive with what I think is acceptable to merge, so please let me know if you have any ideas. Thanks! We'd need to add a new "Rural Berkshires" page, maybe something like this -> User:ButteBag/Rural_Berkshires?

Cities:

• Adams (Cheshire, New Ashford, Savoy) — Distinct from its bigger brother to the north, Adams is known as the birthplace of Susan B. Anthony.
• Great Barrington (Alford, Egremont, Mount Washington, Sheffield) — A compact downtown with restaurants, shops, specialty stores, banks, and more. Easy and safe mobility options often find Great Barrington a place on tourism top 10 lists.
• Hancock — Home to Jiminy Peak ski area and Ramblewild, a tree-top forest adventure park.
• Lanesborough — Gateway to Mt. Greylock and the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail. Small family-owned and operated farms dot this country town.
• Lenox (Richmond, Stockbridge, West Stockbridge) — Home to Tanglewood Music Center, Kripalu, Cranwell, Canyon Ranch, Shakespeare & Company, and more. Downtown Lenox is bustling with artisan shops and lots of tasty restaurants.
• North Adams (Clarksburg, Florida) — North Adams is the Berkshires' second largest city, boasting the expansive MassMOCA art museum as well as two state parks. The Mohawk Trail's western terminus can be found found right here.
• Pittsfield — The Berkshires' largest city at around 44,000, plays host to shopping, museums, hotels, and restaurants. The former home of Herman Melville; author of Moby Dick, is here as well.
• Rural Berkshires (Becket, Dalton, Hinsdale, Lee, Monterey, New Marlborough, Otis, Peru, Sandisfield, Tyringham, Washington, Windsor) — Get way off the beaten path in this quiet corner of the Berkshires.
• Williamstown — Home of Williams College, The Clark Art Institute, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

--ButteBag (talk) 03:39, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I tend to disagree. Each village has its own character. I certainly wouldn't merge Stockbridge with anything, nor Sheffield, and probably not Lee. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:37, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed with Ikan. The problem with the "Cities" section is that half of the items on the list are either redlinks or regular non-linked bullet points. Eliminate those and you've got a much more manageable list. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:52, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments Ikan and Andre! In a certain sense I agree with you guys, but I remain generally confused.

I totally agree each village has its own character. Totally. But I don't understand how merging articles would demean the individual spirit of each location. What's wrong with enumerating the details in the understand section, demoed in my Rural Berkshires article?

I also agree this would be easier to remove the redlinked and unlinked cities from the list. But isn't WV supposed to cover every place on the globe without overlap? How could we delete the town names while retaining full coverage?

To think about it another way, my question is basically the same as the most recent Pub question. This user got the advice to jam everything into a small city article, with the option of splitting it out down the road when/if it becomes too big. This is basically the advice I'd like to get, lol, so I'm wondering what the differences here are. Thanks! --ButteBag (talk) 01:29, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Lee has a 1-mile-long downtown now? If so, it's not rural, IMO. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:48, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Also, I think there's a bit of a practical difference between starting a new article and merging existing articles. I'll say this: Some of these places may in fact be too small for their own article. But, for example, in the case of Stockbridge, not only is it a small town of character, but I brought up the idea of including South Lee in the Stockbridge article. So on the whole, I'm not opposed to your idea; I just think you're going further than I'm comfortable with in that direction. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:37, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Ha, yes, I don't know much about Lee's downtown area. I was just reorganizing the content we already have to provide an example implementation. I still don't get why having an individual page for a given location affords it additional character. Maybe if there were some little template showing the population, land area, and elevation? That could make each place more of a "thing", when they're being show in list form. Anyway, thanks! --ButteBag (talk) 18:51, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Western MA Merging?

Swept in from the pub

Hello! Any interest in a little merging? The one new article this would generate could look like this? Thanks! --ButteBag (talk) 00:22, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Red links and mere names

Moved from the article. Bottom-level region articles need to list all blue-linked city articles breadcrumbed to them but do not need to list red links or mere names, especially as the "Cities" section in this article is a very long list even with just blue links. However, if anyone starts articles about them (particularly Dalton, I think, which has a lot of content below), we can create 1-liner listings for them and restore them as blue links to the article.

• Alford
• 1 Clarksburg - Clarksburg State forest offers recreation.
• 2 Dalton - The Appalachian Trail runs right through the center of Dalton, and many hikers can be seen staying in the home and camping on the lawn of local resident Tom Levardi on Depot St where hikers are welcomed. Dalton is also the home of Crane and Co. which has made the US currency and security papers for more than two centuries. There's a saying about the town that "the buck starts here". The Housatonic River winds south through Dalton and then through many other towns in Berkshire County on its 139-mile journey to the Long Island Sound. Dalton's surrounding mountains well exemplifies the many rolling hills for which the county is noted. One well-known and often visited location east of town off of Route 9 is Wahconah Falls State Park. Water flows from the reservoir above down in a beautifully tiered fashion alongside a scenic hiking trail, culminating in a spectacular 40 ft (12 m) descent into a deep pool. Legend has it that a love-sick Indian maiden named Wahconah jumped to her death there. However, upon further investigation, and contrary to this local lore, an article on web paints a decidedly happier tale of the Indian maiden's fate. This version of the story reflects a more endearing twist in which an English soldier wins the heart and hand of young Wahconah.
• 3 Egremont - a town bordering Great Barrington, points of interest include Jug End State Forest, the Old Mill restaurant, and many other shops in the small village.
• 4 Hinsdale
• 5 New Marlborough - a small village outside of Great Barrington. Cute and petite downtown with a library, General Store, and Fire Station.
• 6 Peru
• Richmond
• Sandisfield
• Savoy
• Tyringham
• Washington
• Windsor

Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:50, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Hinsdale added - it linked to a village in Chicagoland. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:59, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Subdivide?

With only blue-linked cities that link to the right state remaining, there are still 19. Should we divide "Cities" into subsections, such as "North Berkshires" and "South Berkshires"? If so, where would the dividing line be? Lenox and further north vs. everything to its south? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:11, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea! In some of the other sub-regions to the east, I've been pulling "cities" to the top, then subheading the list. My personal "city" guideline is +50k population or maybe has some important tourist destination linked from a parent page. Splitting the rest into the north/south subsections you suggested might get this list under control. ButteBag (talk) 20:59, 15 November 2022 (UTC)