Dwight, Massachusetts

Dwight is an unincorporated, historical village in North Belchertown, Massachusetts, United States, named for the Dwight family.

It was a railroad destination and farming community in the 19th century with lumber mills, grist mills, schools, a chapel, cemeteries, two railway depots, flower fields, aquatic gardens, restaurants, ballrooms, inns, a silk mill, a carding mill, a woodturning mill, an apiary, a cider mill, a carriage-maker, wheelwright, gunsmith and blacksmith, a general store and post office. Today the community is known for its natural beauty, artists, photographers, scenic waterfalls, wildlife, forests, ponds, lakes, brooks, springs, hiking trails, and bike paths.

The community held what were known as grove dinners for many years, under the old maple trees near the schoolhouse, across Federal Street from the Dwight Chapel. In 2024 and 2025, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Belchertown Historical Association supported Dwight Day, a festival of music, food, history, reenactments, nature talks and culture, held at the historic Dwight Chapel, the space donated by the Christ Community Church.

The village developed around a heavily forested, mountainous, remote no-man's-land between the town commons of Amherst and Belchertown. It features the intersection of three cascading brooks: Montague, Scarborough and Hop. Jabish forms on its eastern border. Native Americans traversed its southern boundary for centuries before non-indigenous third and fourth generations of the original Massachusetts and Connecticut colonists harvested candle-wood, grazed cattle, boxed pine trees for turpentine and set ring fires for hunting deer, eventually putting up cabins in the late eighteenth century.

It was known first as "Log Town" for its timber industry, later it took on the names "Dwight's Station," for an early railroad stationmaster, and "Pansy Park," for the flourishing gardens visited annually by hundreds of tourists and consumers of flower seeds. The village encompasses the low-lying lakes region (Arcadia and Holland) and the mountainous northeastern region known as Mead's Corner, Knight's Pond and West Hill, or Great Hill, which is traversed by Munsell Street.