J. A. Skinner State Park
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The J.A Skinner State Park is located on Mount Holyoke, the western-most peak of the Mt. Holyoke Range located in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts. It is accessible from accessible from RT-47 in Hadley, MA. At the summit is the historic Prospect House, an old hotel first opened in 1851. In its heyday, a steamer would pick up guests at the Smiths Ferry railroad station across the Connecticut River in what was then Northampton, ferry them to a tramway leading to the Half Way House. From there guests could take a steep inclined tram to the summit. The Prospect House, under the proprietorship of John and Fanny French, was expanded twice, first in 1861 and nearly doubled in size with the construction of an annex in 1894.
In 1908 the property is sold to the Mt. Holyoke Hotel Co. This corporation was formed by Joseph Skinner a local industrialist, L. Threadway of Threadway Inn fame, and Christopher Clarke to hold the land in trust for an eventual state reservation. The hotel continued operation until the Great Hurricane of 1938 badly damaged the 1894 annex which was subsequently demolished. Soon after Joseph Allan Skinner offered to donate the hotel and the surrounding land to the State on the condition it became a state park named after him. The formal dedication was held in June 1940.
State funds for maintenance of the summit house and tramway during the intervening years were inadequate. The remains of the tramway were removed in 1964 and by the mid-1970s there were proposals to condemn and demolish the summit house. This led to a public outcry and in the mid-1980s the summit house, consisting of the original 1851 structure and the 1861 addition, was restored by the state. The summit house is now open to the public only on weekends or for special events such as a summer concert series sponsored by the Friends of the Mount Holyoke Range (FOMHR).
