Less than twenty years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, a group of intrepid pioneers set out for the Shawsheen Wilderness, named by the Native American population inhabiting its woods and rivers. By 1655, the group incorporated the settlement, naming it Billerica, after Billericay, England, the home of many of the Pilgrims. With images from glass-plate negative collections unseen for generations, Billerica takes a pictorial journey through the past of this Yankee Doodle town. Stories are captured as Billerica progresses from a small farming village to an Industrial Revolution capital with mills, railyards, and the Middlesex Canal (the first of its kind in the country). Billerica introduces some of the most influential people in the history of Billerica and showcases its heyday as a summer resort, when tourists traveled by trolley to enjoy a wealth of river and lake recreation.