Celebrating paper making in the Upper Housatonic Valley
At one time, there were 52 paper mills here.
The Housatonic River valley was chosen by the early paper makers because of the way the water fell, the presence of people who would work in the mills, and machinists who would build and repair machines.
Papermaking in the Upper Housatonic Valley began in 1801, with the founding of Crane & Company in Dalton. Crane & Co. Inc. still manufactures paper used for U.S. currency. Three years after Zenas Crane began his operation there, Samuel Church built his mill in South Lee, now Onyx Specialty Papers. At Onyx, they make technical papers for medical filtration and biomedical testing, auto manufacturing, décor/decorative laminates, and other applications, as well as fine papers for artists.
By the 1840s, the southern Berkshires was the center of the country’s paper industry. In the 1860s, Smith Paper of Lee made the first commercially viable paper from wood pulp. And Dard Hunter’s artisanal papermaking enterprise at Lime Rock, in the late 1920s and 1930s, helped inspire the nationwide rebirth of the craft of making paper by hand.
Housatonic Heritage works to interpret this important industrial heritage in several ways, including:
- Collaborating with the City of Pittsfield’s Lichtenstein Art Center to curate an exhibit about paper making in the region. This exhibit included videography and photography.
- Funded a paper making workshop for Lee middle students and teachers, hosted and run by Paper Town Projects and artist Ricki Cowell, at Naoussa Gallery in Tyringham.
- Support efforts to teach students about this technology, for example, connecting the Crane Museum of Papermaking and the Lee Elementary School Art Department for paper making workshops for students.
- Work with Crane Museum of Papermaking to organize an oral history project with past Crane employees and museum docents.
- Working with documentary filmmaker Ben Willis to create a short film on Onyx Specialty Paper, in particular how two employees purchased the business from Mead Westvaco, keeping paper making alive in Lee. At the time of that purchase, Schweitzer Mauduit had recently closed its four mills. The 200 years of paper making in the town of Lee was about to end.
Visit our PaperHeritage.org, our sister website, for more history.
