European settlers avoided western Massachusetts out of fear of attack during the King Philips War. By the 1720s, individuals and families petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony to establish two townships in the Housatonic River valley. These became Upper and Lower Housatonic townships: Stockbridge/West Stockbridge and Sheffield and environs. Omitted from the original Indiantown grant was present‐day Lenox and Richmond.

Dutch as well as English interests pursued settlement near the Taconic ridge. According to Katharine Annin, Richmond, under an act of 1762 “was purchased from two Indian Sachems named Yokun and Ephraim who had already given their names to the tract of land lying south of Pontoosuc (Pittsfield) and between the Housatonic River and the New York line. The designations Mount Ephraim to the west and Yokuntown to the east seem to have been well established and they persisted in local usage for a long time afterward. There is a legend that Chief Yokun, when he realized the foolishness of what he had done, climbed to the rocky ledge at the north end of the ridge that divides the tract, and there mourned his loss; and at least it is true that this spot is called Yokun Seat to this day.”

Yokun Seat is on the mountain above Bousquet’s Ski Area — a popular place to shoot off fireworks in the 1940s. Yokun Brook, once called “Small River,” had sufficient water flow and drop to support saw, grist and other mills, according to Lenox historian David Wood. There are also Yokun Street, Yokun Avenue, Yokun Brook Forest, Yokun Inn and more.

As Bernadette Mayer expressed poetically in Midwinter Day:

“Used to be called Yokuntown after Chief Yokun,
A Mahican of the River Tribe who lived by the Hudson
In good weather they hunted in the Berkshires,
Not fools enough to live here what they call year‐round…

A deed describes the Mohicans‐to‐Europeans sale of the 6 square miles of real estate that became the town of Richmond is signed by Benjamin Kohkewenaunant and others to Samuel Robbins & others in 1758. The selling price was £250 lawful New York money.

The land holding was incorporated in 1765. Two years later, it was divided. Yokuntown was renamed for the Englishman Charles Lennox, and Mt. Ephraim was renamed for the same Englishman, who was the Duke of Richmond and great‐grandson of King Charles II.

The Gore, the western rise along West Stockbridge’s boundary with New York, according to West Stockbridge historian Edna Garnett was deeded by two Indian owners, John Pophnehonnukwok and Jehoiakim Yokum of Stockbridge, to “several persons having entered on said tract of land and made improvements and got into possession of part of the premises, and several other persons are desirous to make improvements thereon….”

Berkshire Natural Resources Council has established hiking trails in north (including Burbank Trail and Old baldhead Road) and south (including Vista Walsh and Charcoal trails) of Olivia’s Overlook, with trailhead on Lenox Road in Richmond, reached by Richmond Mountain Road off Route 183 in Stockbridge.

— Bernard A. Drew