The History of the Town of East Longmeadow is one of slow steady progression. Initially seen as little more than common pastureland during the colonial period it slowly developed into a community of small farms until found underneath the local soil was several types of red and brown sandstone which became a widely used building material in the latter half of the nineteenth century leading to it’s use in buildings and monuments across the United States from Massachusetts to Wyoming.  This lead to settlement and migration to the area of hundreds of Swedish, French Canadian and Italian stonemasons and stonecutters who enriched and transformed the towns social and cultural framework around this time.  This new highly valuable and attractive industry created an imbalance between the area that now constitutes East Longmeadow (known at that time as the East Village) and that which constitutes Longmeadow (known at the time as The Street) where the East paid 1/3^rd of the taxes but had 2/3rds of the population while both areas didn’t even have a unified school system.  This lead in 1894 for the State Legislature to upon the petition of citizens from the “The Street” to grant a partition which created from some 13.4 square miles of the land in the then Town of Longmeadow, the current Town of East Longmeadow.   The new town proceed until the early 20^th century to rely on it’s quarrying industry to provide it’s economic backbone until with the introduction of modern construction techniques such as steel framing for buildings and cement blocks the cost benefit of using this highly durable fire resistant material vanished leading to East Longmeadow to move to dependence on industry and status as a suburban bedroom community for the nearby City of Springfield for it’s economic wellbeing. As it moves into the twenty first century the Town of East Longmeadow has been able to maintain a mix of rural, suburban, industrial and urban elements which form a quilt of a vibrant multi ethnic and multicultural community with its best days still ahead of it.

More detailed sources on the Town History can be found through contacting the Town’s Historical Commission whose purpose it is to record and preserve the towns past.