Why Only Weekenders Can Afford the Town That Lit America

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store On March 20, 1886, William Stanley Jr. lit 23 businesses on Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts with the world’s first practical alternating current system — the same architecture that powers every home in America today. That street also raised W.E.B. Du Bois, born there in 1868. And in 1781, that same town’s courthouse freed Elizabeth Freeman in one of the first successful freedom suits in American history. Great Barrington has always been where the biggest American questions get answered first. Freedom. Electricity. Race. Now it faces a new one: who does a town belong to when the people who can afford it aren’t the people who built it? In 2020, home sales surged 78% in a single year as pandemic buyers from New York City flooded the Berkshires. The median price jumped from $325,000 to over $700,000. In December 2025, Massachusetts officially designated Great Barrington a Seasonal Community. The town that lit America now belongs, by statute, to weekenders. This is the story of the most consequential small town in the United States — and what happens when success prices out the people who made it possible. Sources: David Levering Lewis, “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Long Road Back to Great Barrington” — Du Bois Center at Great Barrington (duboiscentergb.org) IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki, “Milestones: Alternating Current Electrification, 1886” (ethw.org) “W.E.B. DuBois Memorial Park Dedicated Amid Heated Criticism,” The Harvard Crimson, October 20, 1969 “Short-term rentals are a cash cow for Great Barrington, but some residents want stricter regulations,” The Berkshire Eagle, February 2022 Town of Great Barrington, “Seasonal Communities Designation” (townofgbma.gov) National Constitution Center, “Elizabeth Freeman, her case for freedom, and the Massachusetts Constitution” (constitutioncenter.org)