image description — The tree near the monument is believed to be a double balsam.

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North Adams Opens the Holiday Season with Tree Installation

Jack GuerinoiBerkshires Staff
12:21PM / Monday, November 03, 2025Print Story | Email Story

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — City workers spent the morning on Monday installing this year's Christmas trees.

"We love this," Wire and Alarm Inspector Mitchell Meranti said. "Everybody looks forward to it."

The tree closest to city hall is a Blue Spruce donated by the Mancini Family on Hathaway Street.

Kathy Mancini said the tree has been an important part of their lives for over 30 years. She said her daughter Katie made her first communion in 1993 and all she wanted for her first communion gift was a pine tree sapling to plant

"My husband's uncle Henry Dean went out into the woods and came home with the tiniest sapling I have ever seen," Mancini said. "They planted it and that is the tree that we just donated to the city."

She said the tree is well over 40 feet.

"We always decorated it at Christmas time until we couldn't, and it has been just such a sentimental tree for us…it just brought so much joy to this neighborhood," she said. "But I know I am not going to be here forever. We talked it over with our daughter…and we felt what better way to memorialize it…we wanted to donate it to the city for everyone to enjoy because it is such a beautiful tree."

She praised the city workers and said they cut her a slab from the tree. They plan to place photos of their daughter with the tree as well as a photo of the tree at city hall as a gift.

The monument tree was donated by Juan Bolte from Houghton Street. Meranti said it was a double balsam, about 30 feet tall.

"If you look at the branches on a single balsam, they are flatter. Double balsam has more of a rounded look to it," Meranti said.

Meranti said that although installing the tree was easy, getting it to downtown North Adams was a challenge.

"It's the first time we've had to unhook the truck from the trailer. I had to get in position first with the bucket to get the harness on," he said. "Then we had to back the trailer in. In very tight quarters, we had to back the trailer in and unhook that. Then we drove the crane in and got him set up. Then we reversed the whole operation."

"It went in very smoothly, and it is a beautiful tree."

Once both trees are secure, Meranti will spend the time between now and Thanksgiving stringing the lights.

This story will be updated with more information on the trees.

Tags: Christmas tree,

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State Planning to Temporarily Shut Down Route 8 Bridge in Clarksburg

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:14AM / Wednesday, February 04, 2026

CLARKSBURG, Mass. — The state is shutting down the Red Mills Bridge on River Road for two months.

Select Board Chair Daniel Haskins said he, Town Administrator Ronald Boucher and Road Foreman Kyle Hurlbut had a Zoom meeting a few weeks ago with the state Department of Transportation to express their concerns.

"They're going to put a temporary bridge over the top of the existing bridge," he said at Monday's Select Board meeting. "They're going to shut down the road for about two months, which is our main artery going through town, which

we weren't too excited to hear that."

The temporary bridge is expected to serve until MassDOT installs a new one in five years.

Surveyors had been at the Route 8 bridge, at the intersection with East Road Extension, and at the bridge over Hudson Brook on Middle Road, which the state also plans to replace.

"It's still up in the air right now if we can even keep East Road still open, going up that way, because ... the temporary bridge that they're putting in the way has to kind of come out past the [existing] bridge," Haskins said. "It may block off East Road, so we're hoping to maybe at least keep it one lane for getting up there, for one-lane traffic."

Blocking off the bridge causes several issues: it blocks off East Road and Daniels for emergency services and buses, closes the main highway into Vermont, and forces large trucks to detour over narrow residential roads.

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