The site of this village was formerly a pine forest, with some white oak intermingled. The principal staple of early traffic was, therefore, pine and other lumber, and the material of which the fences and many of the earlier, buildings were constructed was such as to give it the name of " Slab City." Like those farmers who eat only such produce as they can’t sell, many of the men who built took lumber that was not merchantable. The stumps of huge trees remained for a long time in the very streets, and Main street, it is said, was only cleared by a "bee" of some fifty men, with teams, headed by that indefatigable roadmaker, Jere Colgrove, Sr. The digging of cellars and the preparation of gardens were very much impeded by these stumps. In times of freshet the lower portion of the village was flooded by the river, rocks of enormous size and gravel by the ton being distributed plentifully across the "flats." There are evidences of the river having formerly been much broader than now, and it certainly rose higher and was more ungovernable at the dreaded season of "breaking up" of the ice after the vigorous winters of one hundred years ago. The furious flood has been known to sweep from the point where the lower bridge on Union street is located across the entire village south, to the bank bordering Church and Summer streets. The entire flat where now most of the trade and mercantile business of the village are transacted, would be washed with an ice- cold stream, driving the settlers from their houses, sweeping away or greatly damaging the little property they possessed, and literally drowning the hopes they had cherished of a prosperous season, by obliging them to begin anew. The clearing up of the forests and consequent drying of the springs, as well as the more gradual melting of the snow, has diminished the volume of water in all the streams, and such extraordinary freshets are no longer to be feared. Like other dangers, out of sight, they are out of mind.

The village site and its immediate vicinity was called by early settlers the poorest part of the town of Adams. It was miserable land for farming purposes, like most pine land. The first farmers preferred settling on the mountain slope; they said the "flat would hardly bear white beans." The pine lumber, however, was of first rate quality. Tradition states that one tree was felled of the extraordinary height of 114 feet to the first limb. Very little pine timber grew at any other point within a dozen miles or more.

About the Year 1756, and during the last French war a saw mill was erected near the site of the cotton mill now owned by the Freeman Manufacturing Company, called the "Estes mill." This saw mill is supposed to have been on the south bank of the river and the primitive forest extended to the north bank. Tradition further states that an Indian, standing on a rock on the north bank, fired across the river and shot the man who was running the mill while he was at work, and caused his death. This was the Indian method of warfare.

Oliver Parker, Sr., who settled in this town in 1766, and was a conspicuous Whig and a town officer for many years, built two dams and a saw and grist mill at the "upper union" — the saw mill standing near the southern end of the Eclipse mill and the grist mill near the northern end. These mills were in operation before 1780, and did considerable business. They were carried off in the terrible freshet in the month of April, 1785, called the "Parker’s flood" for many Years after, on account of the damage it inflicted upon him. He lost about 50,000 feet of sawed lumber by the flood, and the grist mill stones were lodged in the bed of the river, and remained there visible for many years. This flood was one of those which deluged almost the entire village, as above described. Giles Barnes, whose mill property was in great danger from it, and who was a blunt-spoken man, said "Noahs flood was the only one that ever equalled it." The only road to Parker’s mills was the old clay-bank road, over Church hill, which afterward sunk to the ignoble condition of a foot path, but of late years repaired and made a public highway.