George W. Bain

“ And so the dinosaurs dominated the life in the early Connecticut basin, as it sank and trembled, and as mountains rose to the east; on dry days and days of cloudburst, on hot days and days when frost crystals formed in the mud, they roamed the plain, as the lowland settled nearly two miles and filled to the brim with red sands, muds, and marginal gravels. ”

“ It does not take half a dozen college and university degrees to collect rocks and minerals, and to understand what they mean; or to appreciate not alone the beauty, but also the long and involved, yet logical, origin of scenery; or to comprehend from a rock-cut or cliff the vast changes which have occurred in the course of geologic time; or to grasp the current significance, as well as the historical importance, of such rock and mineral products as the trap, the limestone, the pyrite, the lead veins, the soapstone, the varved clay, the gravel banks. ”

“ In less favored localities, the drive may be long and the relaxation short, but not so in the Connecticut Valley. Half an hour of travel, either to the east or to the west from any large community, provides an escape to the hills, where people, cars, houses, and all the minutiae of urban civilization are blurred on the canvas of upland and lowland. ”

“ Local pride and personal prejudice may proclaim one view superior to another; but the praise so liberally bestowed upon the heights beyond Westfield, the Mount Tom Reservation, the land called Goshen, Shelburne Summit, and many another site, merely bespeaks the rivalry of equally favored vantage points. Perhaps the trail to Pelham would not be singled out for special mention by the undiscriminating enthusiast, but the connoisseur of New England’s scenic beauty returns and follows it again and again. ”

“ Whether one’s interests are practical, historical, acquisitive, esthetic, philosophical or scientific, the geological features of the Connecticut Valley possess the variety to gratify them all. One must indeed be blind if he cannot find something of interest—a hobby—even a profession in the geological display spread before him in central Massachusetts. ”

“ Every grain is a piece of the countryside lost to the land and soon to become a part of the ocean floor. Very little of this sand comes from the lowland itself, for the Connecticut may cut the bank below Hadley, but it leaves almost as much sand as it acquires on the opposite shore. The river’s burden is brought to it by swift tributaries—the brook at West Pelham and hundreds more like it. Their sides are cut-banks, but no extensive sand bars are built to balance their erosive work; what they pick up they carry to the lowland, and what they bring to the lowland is soon transported to the sea. ”

“ Federal Highway 5 follows the Valley north to Greenfield, whence optional return routes are available through Shelburne Falls, Conway and South Deerfield in the western upland; or through Orange, Pelham and Amherst in the eastern upland. Each of these routes offers arresting views of the broad Connecticut Valley, the picturesque gorges along its margins, and the even-crested highlands with distant peaks of greater elevation. Indeed, the choice of attractive drives is bewildering, even for those who are hesitant about wandering off the surfaced highways. ”

“ Anyone who drives westward on the Jacob’s Ladder route from Springfield passes first through the open, rolling country of the Connecticut Lowland. Hills are in sight, but they seem remote until he leaves Westfield, and there the upland rises before him like a 900-foot wall. The road uses the gateway cut in the wall by the Westfield River, and the drive westward towards the headwaters of the river is one of the best known scenic attractions in western Massachusetts. But a greater treat awaits the person who will venture southward on the road along the Little Westfield River. ”

“ The twenty-two miles of country between Plainfield and South Deerfield contain a succession of highland views, glimpses into youthfully incised valleys, and a final sweep of Connecticut lowland that defy description. Nearly everywhere the glaciers of the Ice Age have scraped away the soil and have exposed the underlying metamorphosed sediments. Their high structures and their metamorphism show that they are merely the roots of an ancient range that once rose majestically to summits which, were they restored, would dwarf the planed upland of today. ”

“ The rocks composing the alluvial fans are flexed sharply downward east of Portland, Connecticut, like compressed pages in a book, where the great eastern mountain block pushed obliquely against them. In this way the mountain range was renewed as erosion wore it away, and the basin was deepened periodically as the wash from the highlands filled it. The intermittent uplift sustained the growth of the fans along the edge of the lowland, but the frequent recurrence of movement never permitted these graded accumulations of waste to extend far out from their mountain sources. ”

“ The rock floor of the coal basin contains a variety of ancient materials. Some rocks were river deposits, some were marine limestones, a few were lava and volcanic ash, and many were granite and gneiss which crystallized at great depths and became exposed only after streams had stripped away the thick overburden. The basin floor thus holds a complex story, in which land and sea, vulcanism and quiet, erosion and deposition, all played their respective roles. Only in the west, along the margin of the Connecticut Valley, is the involved story at all clear. ”

“ They look and act like those hills of the desert, the sand dunes, and they record the drift of wind-whipped sand across a naked land, before the river had established a floodplain within its present confines. ”

“ The complete record in the valley shows that, in the vicinity of the Holyoke Range, the lake came into existence about 18,000 years ago.
In each of the clay pits every set of lines exposed on the working faces represents a year, and the deposit as a whole is a calendar—in fact, it is also a thermograph for part of the region’s post-glacial history. Some bands at South Hadley Falls and along the Hadley river bank are highly distorted, and the distorted layers are planed off smooth. Spring sand covers the distorted beds. ”

“ The Holyoke Range
For years it has been a popular outdoor pastime to “walk the Range.” The distance is neither so great nor the route so rugged that it cannot be covered in the course of an afternoon, even if ample time is allotted for stops at the many lookouts. The latter provide ever changing views of the valley from Greenfield and beyond, to Meriden, Connecticut. The buildings in Hartford are easily visible on a clear day. The trail follows the crest of the Range closely and only rarely leaves the basalt lava flow. ”

“ The range of hills stretching away like beads on a string is the Holyoke Range. Mount Toby, Mount Sugarloaf, and the Pocumtuck Hills are the prominences in the lowland to the northwest. The lowland was eroded out of the New England upland after the land was elevated far back in Tertiary time, and the disintegrating rock was carried to the sea by the rivers. The hills in the lowland were left where the rocks resisted destruction more successfully than elsewhere, but they only approximate the level of the upland of which they were once a part. ”

“ Clays in a region of seasonal aridity are different. They are baked hard in the hot sun, and the water contains dissolved mineral matter which crystallizes in the clay and sand as the water evaporates, cementing the particles into a rock-like aggregate. Impressions in this sort of mud are preserved. The Connecticut Valley had the right kind of sediment and climate in Triassic time; impressions of salt crystals can be 68 found in the shales where the tracks are clearest, not only in this locality but elsewhere in the neighborhood of Holyoke and West Springfield. ”

“ Every stream has its load of sediment, as the silt- and sand-filled reservoirs along the edges of the valley so effectively testify. Each sandy river bed is an aggregate of rolling grains, moving with the current, slow where it is slow and faster where the current is accelerated, but travelling always towards the sea. ”

“ In the depression, the trail winds between hills of twisted lava and consolidated agglomerate. When the trees are leafed out and the surrounding hills concealed, it is easy to imagine oneself on the slope of a Pacific volcano. The trail divides at the lowest point in the depression, and the less used fork goes north to the Bay Road at the northern base of the Range. The other fork ascends Mount Hitchcock, and at a slight elevation above the low flat it crosses from the agglomerate to the Holyoke basalt sheet. ”

“ The coarser sandy layer just above the finest clay records the spring break-up, the melting of the ice, and resuscitated streams flowing from the hills with a vigor that can be acquired only when the melt-water from the winter snow combines with the normal run-off. ”

“ If the day is clear, the tall buildings of Hartford appear in the far distance. Six hundred feet directly below, the highway goes through the Notch, and across the road is the trap quarry in Notch Mountain, which supplies the crushed stone for the local highways. The face of Notch Mountain lies north of the main line of the Range because the basalt sheet has been displaced northward between fault planes that bound the eminences on either side. The notches utilized by the highway and by the power line are due to facile erosion of the crushed rock along the fault planes. ”

“ The glacier advanced as far as Long Island and Martha’s Vineyard, and the lakes of the Connecticut Valley formed along the ice margin and spread northward as the ice front receded. The distinct layers, or varves, of clay mark off 25,000 years since the recession began, but for a million years before its final retreat, the ice covered 10 all New England intermittently. This length of time transcends human comprehension unless one considers years in terms of what has been done. ”

“ Most mineral collectors will instantly recognize a road turning off to the left (27.8) as the way to the Westfield trap quarry. For years this locality has been as important a source of specimens to collectors as it has been of crushed rock to road-builders. Beyond the quarry road the valley narrows, and the terraces close in as the river enters the gap in the trap ridge. The black lava flow crosses the river (28.3) at the Westfield-West Springfield town line, and shortly the upper flow appears, resting on red shales in both railroad and road cuts (29.1) . ”

“ Hot springs the world over register their presence by leaving deposits of unusual minerals, and they have left this sort of record at Loudville. Here the coarse sandstones of the lowland rest upon gneiss, and at the south end of the Loudville lead vein barium sulphate crystals, called barite, formed in the sand before it was cemented into solid rock. The crystals are the product of highly charged mineral water, rising through the sands from a subjacent fissure. The fissure itself is also filled with barite, and with galena and quartz as well. ”

“ Even today this gravelly ground, particularly the beach of the ancient lake, is well drained, and it forms the best land for the apple orchards of the valley.
Glaciers Came
The delta deposits and the clays form a thin veneer over a bouldery soil that comes to light along the delta-top margins and in gulches cut down through the gravel and sand. Some of the boulders are huge, attaining diameters of twenty feet; and all are strangers to their present resting places. Some are set upon a bare rock floor, scratched as though by sandpaper, and they teeter to the weight of a child ”

“ But places suitable to every taste lie within the Connecticut Valley or along its fringing uplands. Some are near the highways and others are on woodland trails; a few are interesting for their immediate surroundings and many because of their expansive view. Here is a landscape which can be appreciated without leaving or stopping the car; but there is a sight which can be relished only from a trail, or from a pinnacle accessible to the agile climber. Drives satisfy some tastes ”

“ The Connecticut emerges from behind Mount Sugarloaf, wanders through the Hadley fields, flows through the watergap just west of Mount Holyoke, and disappears far to the south beyond Springfield. Northampton is spread out below. Automobiles on the Hockanum Road look like so many moving dots. The hills between the Range and South Hadley are made of volcanic ash and lava; many have pipe-like cores which were the necks of ancient volcanoes. Off to the east are higher points on the Range which lie on the route to be followed. ”

“ Many small but abrupt descents occur along the path as it follows the ridge eastward. Each of them marks the position of a minor fault, along which the eastern side has been pushed down and southward under the western side. However, the elevation of the trail increases gradually to the summit of Mount Norwottock, which is almost as high as the uplands bordering the valley. If one can momentarily overlook the lowland excavated on the incoherent Triassic sandstones, the regional surface seems to slope gently upward to the east, the north and the west. ”

“ Northampton makes an excellent base for many drives that will gratify the lover of scenery, of rocks, or of minerals. The drives range from ten to one hundred miles in length, and any one of them may be extended or shortened at the whim of the driver. To the east the hard surface of Route 9 leads through Amherst, Pelham, and Belchertown; and to the west, as the Berkshire Trail, it rises to the western upland via Williamsburg and Goshen. Side roads go to Ashfield and Conway, and permit a return by way of South Deerfield ”

“ At other times sluggish rivers, flowing from the northwest, laid thick layers of sandy mud over the surface of the bogs. The alternating muds and coal seams are thousands of feet thick, and they record the story of a basin which sank as fast as it filled—a depression which was never built high enough to be a well drained plain, yet never subsided sufficiently to be inundated by the sea. The Carboniferous peat bogs and mud flats may have extended westward almost to the Connecticut Valley ”

“ While the volcanoes rumbled and erupted, earth forces intermittently 26 thrust the eastern mountain range southward and upward, dragging the eastern margin of the lowland with it and upturning the sedimentary fill, much as a plow might upend a layer of snow at the roadside before shearing it off and pushing it out of the way. The relentless movement caused the entire eastern floor of the basin to be broken into blocks ”