Above the Oxbow: Stories Entangled with a Mountain

Above the Oxbow is a journey through the tangle of rich narratives surrounding Mount Holyoke, a locally cherished mountain in Western Massachusetts. It explores how visitors have forged connections with the mountain through various activities over the past two centuries. In an accessible blend of storytelling and scholarly analysis, Danielle Raad shows the significance of the landscape, historic sites, and material culture, revealing how cultural perspectives, community activism, collective memory, and personal experiences shape our understanding of a place. Situated at the intersection of public history and environmental history, this ethnography of place also discloses the curious stories of the Summit House, an erstwhile tramway, an airplane crash, and the local fight to conserve Mount Holyoke as a natural space and celebrates its myriad uses today.