and Little Tinker Hill located at the base of Mount Hitchcock in Hadley; Mount Pollux and Mount Castor , between Mount Norwottuck and the center of Amherst. The Metacomet Ridge, of which the Holyoke Range is a part, continues west and south across the Connecticut River as the Mount Tom Range. The Metacomet Ridge is broken to the north; the Holyoke Range is separated from the Pocumtuck Ridge, away by a relatively low-lying area punctuated with occasional rises. The north side of the Holyoke Range drains into the Fort River, thence to the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound; the south side drains into Bachelor Brook, then into the Connecticut River. History Mount Holyoke, at the western edge of the range, received its name from Elizur Holyoke, a 17th-century colonial settler of the Springfield, Massachusetts region. Folklore suggests that Holyoke named the mountain after himself. The City of Holyoke, Mount Holyoke College, and the Holyoke Range were in turn named after the mountain. Before 1821, very little history had been recorded about the Holyoke Range that distinguished it from the surrounding landscape. Native Americans inhabited the area around the Holyoke Range for at least 10,000 years; they grew maize, tobacco, beans, squash and other crops in the Connecticut River floodplain, clearing small sections of forest by burning to make room for their crops. They hunted and fished in the area, and made tools and arrowheads from the basalt rock of the Metacomet Ridge. Tensions between the Pocumtuc Native American tribe and colonial settlers, who began arriving in the region in the mid 17th century, reached a head in 1675 with the outbreak of King Philip's War, a conflict involving colonists and a confederacy of Native American tribes across southern New England under the leadership of the sachem Metacomet. More settlers arrived after the war ended with the defeat of the Native Americans, and by the early 19th century, most of the region's current towns had been established and most of the land had been cleared of trees to make room for farms. Farmers were particularly attracted to the rich soils of the region—one of the few places in New England where tobacco can be grown with commercial success. Rugged highlands, such as the Holyoke Range and Mount Tom Range, although unsuitable for farming, were often harvested of timber to produce charcoal, a primary source of fuel for the steel industry