The Brimfield area, between the Quinebaug and Quaboag Rivers and near Little Alum and Sherman Pond, was widely used by Native Americans before European contact, and a section of the Bay Path passed through town from the northeast to the southwest. English settlers first inhabited Brimfield in the early 1700s, and after its incorporation in 1731 the town was organized around a common. Once a rough space used by livestock, horses, and wagons, the common was redesigned in the mid-1800s as the first town common in Massachusetts to be improved through a formal design and transformed into a public park. It also served as a militia training ground, and after news of the battles of Lexington and Concord, Brimfield sent two militia companies from the common to join the fight in the American Revolution. Brimfield was among the first towns in the Commonwealth to erect a Civil War monument, dedicated July 4, 1866, and its citizens served in every foreign war afterward. In 2006, more than 50 local properties and sites were accepted into the National Register of Historic Places. For 300 years, a church has stood at the western end of the common, while Hitchcock Free Academy at the opposite end served as a secondary school for 100 years and now functions as a community center, with diverse historic homes and buildings forming the village center. Over time, Brimfield saw three hotels burn, trolleys replace horse-drawn wagons, automobiles replace trolleys, and the East Brimfield Dam and Reservoir built over the village of East Brimfield. The community also endured repeated floods, the Hurricane of 1938, and an EF3 tornado in 2011. Today Brimfield is home to the Brimfield Antique Show, which has operated continuously since 1959 and draws thousands of visitors three times a year, while the town also offers outdoor recreation and is one of nine Massachusetts towns designated by Congress as part of The Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor.