The Hilltown History Trail was started out of a desire to enable community members to access the rich and thoughtful local history museums often open only a few hours per week. It is returning for its third year the first Saturday in August, despite challenges in finding funding.

“Initially, it was a means to provide the public with access to local historical museums that are usually open very limited hours,” Stacy Kontrabecki, the Hilltown History Trail director, explained.

The idea came to Kontrabecki after touring the Plainfield Historical Society museum, which is open only by appointment. “I was just amazed by the wealth of history and artifact and stories that Plainfield had there, and I said, ‘Hey! Buckland does open houses … Would you like to open with us? Maybe we could also get some other towns to open at the very same time,’” Kontrabecki explained.

From there, the event was born.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Aug. 3, the Ashfield Historical Society Museum, the Wilder Homestead in Ashfield, the Buckland Historical Society Museum, the Shaw-Hudson House in Plainfield, the Cummington Historical Commission museum, and the Shelburne Historical Society will be open. Visitors can tour all the museums for free, though donations are welcome.

“It brings a lot of people to see our wonderful collection and the special exhibit that we have each year,” said Carla Ness, the chair and lead archivist for the Cummington Historical Commission. She added that this year’s special exhibit is entitled “Courage and Cummington” and details the town’s history with abolition.

Ness also noted that the Cummington Historical Commission has five buildings, all of which will be open for the duration of the event.

“We have the Kingman Tavern museum, which is a household museum that also has a fully stocked 19th century store … and that is super fun,” Ness said. She added that there is also a barn stocked with tools from the era, a shed that houses a historical sleigh school bus, a ciderhouse, and the building where the special exhibit is kept.

“So there’s a lot to see there. Whether you’re really into clothing [or] really into tools, there’s a lot to see,” Ness said that there will be various guided tours, as well as self-guided exploration, so there’s something for everyone regardless of how much time you have available. There will also be light refreshments available.

However, despite all these museums offer, the event is limited by a lack of funding, Kontrabecki explained.

For the first two years, Kontrabecki received funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to run the event, the first year in the form of a grant, and the second year through the Pioneer Valley History Network, which, inspired by her event, sponsored several local history trails.

However, this year, the event was unable to receive any funding due to the timing of the Massachusetts Cultural Council grant program.

“This year, we have no money for it,” Kontrabecki explained. “But since we’ve got it honed and fine-tuned, we have our signs, we have our connections, we’re still running the program.”

Kontrabecki is hoping to have pamphlets to hand out with a map showing how to get to each of the locations, but is unsure if she’ll be able to get them done in time. She is working with a pro-bono graphic designer, but said that, “it’s all very shoestring, zero-budget.”

Regardless, Kontrabecki says that she is looking forward to the event, and noted that she expects to draw people from across the state as well as New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, as they have in previous years.

“It’s nice because this is something the museums do anyway — we’re just aligning the access to all of them on the same day. The entry is always free to all of the museum properties and all of us thrive off of donations from visitors,” Kontrabecki noted. “A lot of these museums have amazing, amazing pieces and architecture to explore and it’s really excellent.”

The Shelburne Historical Society is another one of the museums participating. Richard Philben, a volunteer for the Society, said that they appreciate the opportunity to get visitors from outside of the town.

“Generally, the people who come to our museum are from Shelburne,” Philben said. But for the Hilltown History Trail, he said, “we have people coming from all over the area to check out what we’ve got … It’s been a really decent turnout over the last couple of years.”

He added, “You can make an entire day of it. They’re all close enough where if you wanted to … you could hit all the different museums … And it would give you an opportunity to see different things between the museums, but also, any kind of similarities that they have.”

In the future, Kontrabecki hopes to include several more interested hilltown historical societies, but due to the lack of funding, at the moment it is not possible.

“I could make a second day, easily add another six museums for a whole weekend of history touring, but volunteers only have so much time,” Kontrabecki explained. “So we’re keeping it small, keeping it similar to last year.”

“We’re looking forward to it,” Ness said. “We’re looking forward to having lots of people.”

For more information about the event, contact the Shelburne Historical Society at 413-625-6150 or visit www.HilltownHistoryTrail.org.