Connecticut River Valley

“ THE Connecticut is justly named “the beautiful river,” and its valley “the garden of New England.” Issuing from the heart of the northern wilderness, it spreads boundless fertility throughout its stately march to the sea. It is not a rapid river, but flows with an even and majestic tide through its long avenue of mountains. Radiant envoy of the skies, its mission is peace on earth and good-will toward men. As it advances the confluent streams flock to it from their mountain homes. On one side the Green Mountains of Vermont send their hundred tributaries to swell its flood ”

“ 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. ”

“ They flooded the lands in the spring, leaving loose sand and silt for the winds to blow when the water was low. Sand dunes rose near the river banks at North Hadley, Sunderland, Hatfield, and South Deerfield; but the march of the dunes was arrested as post-glacial vegetation repossessed the land. It was at this point in the story that man found and settled the Connecticut Valley, 50 becoming a witness to the geologic work of the river and an aid to the work of the wind as his plow bared the fertile soil to the elements. ”

“ Waterfalls are not common in rivers flowing through lowlands; they indicate disturbances of normal stream development and sometimes change in course.
The Connecticut Lowland is old, but its ancient drainage lines were buried by the deposits left in glacial Lake Hadley. The river’s present course was established upon these lacustrine sediments, and the inner valley plain is excavated in them. Before entrenchment took place, the south-flowing reach of the river above Millers Falls was deflected westward across the lake plain by the delta of Millers River. ”

“ In the vicinity of Springfield the most interesting drives are to be found on the west side of the Connecticut River, for the comparatively flat land east of the river is thickly settled and heavily industrialized, and geological phenomena are effectively masked. The country to the west offers a display of features which may be traced to the activities of the river, to the former presence of glacial Lake Springfield, to the prolonged erosion of the Triassic bedrock, and to the resistance of the pre-Triassic rocks in the western highland. ”

“ We alight like a bird upon the glassy bosom of Winnepiseogee the incomparable, and, like the bird, again rise, refreshed, for flights still more remote. We sweep over the Uncanoonucs into Massachusetts, steadying the eye upon far Wachusett as we pass from the Merrimac Valley. Now come thronging in upon us the mountains of the Connecticut Valley. We rest awhile upon the transcendently beautiful expanse of the Ox-Bow, and its playthings of villages, strung along the glittering necklace of the river. ”

“ There is very little soil that can be called good, except in the river valleys, and agriculture is as backward as in other parts of New England. The hills through the State furnish excellent pasturage and cheap fuel. The chief cultivated fruits are apples, pears, grapes, and the numerous kinds of berries. The principal crops are hay, oats, rye, corn, potatoes, and tobacco; and in the Connecticut River valley (extending, in this State, 30 miles N. of Middletown, and 20 miles wide) farming is very productive. The tobacco raised in the valley is said to be superior to any other. ”

“ Certain broad depressions through the highlands east of the Connecticut Lowland suggest that this drainage pursued a southeastward course to the Atlantic, and that the river did not establish its modern course until the straths were elevated and notched.
The land level above the strath-margins is a still older surface from which the rock-benches were cut. The higher surface stretches to the horizon at Pelham, but Mount Monadnock and Wachusett stand conspicuously above it. And on the Mohawk Trail one must ascend the tower at the eastern summit before any higher land comes into view. ”

“ Instead of the scream of a fish-hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.
This river too was at length discovered by the white man, “trending up into the land,” he knew not how far, possibly an inlet to the South Sea. Its valley, as far as the Winnipiseogee, was first surveyed in 1652. The first settlers of Massachusetts supposed that the Connecticut, in one part of its course, ran northwest, “so near the great lake as the Indians do pass their canoes into it over land.” ”

“ Long winters result in thick winter deposits, and heavy spring floods cause thick sand layers. If the winter of any year is long at 70 Northampton, it is usually long everywhere in New England; and if the Connecticut has floods, most neighboring drainage systems have them, too. In this way, similar layers, or similar successions of layers, are formed at different places at the same time; and the lake deposits at White River Junction, Deerfield, Hadley, South Hadley Falls, Chicopee and Springfield may be matched and dated with respect to each other. ”

“ Terraced River-Valley—1, 2', 3', 4', and 5, are Terraces,
It is obvious that terrace-formations occur in greatest perfection where the stream is not very rapid. Where it flows as a torrent, a flood-plain or delta may form only at its mouth. Sometimes, however, a swift stream is checked by the accumulations of débris or by rocky gorges, forming lake-like basins around which terrace-formations occur with great uniformity and beauty. The Connecticut River is 1,589 feet higher at its source than at its mouth ”

“ To the north lie the Adirondacks and the Berkshire Hills, hedging New England in close to the ocean. Two glittering waterways lie east and west of these heights—the Connecticut and the Hudson. Upon the valleys of these two rivers converged the two deeply worn pathways of the Puritan, the Old Bay Path 16 and the Connecticut Path. By way of Westfield River, that silver tributary which joins the Connecticut at Springfield, Massachusetts, the Bay Path surmounted the Berkshire highlands and united old Massachusetts to the upper Hudson Valley near Fort Orange, now Albany. ”

“ The crooked little Wells River flows out of the Green Mountains and falls into the Connecticut at the village of Wells River, nestling in a deep basin among the high hills; and here is another important railway junction, with routes going westward to Lake Champlain, northward to Canada, and eastward to the White Mountains. The latter route is up the Ammonoosuc River valley, past Littleton, with its glove factories and summer boarding-houses, on the edge of the mountain district, and thence to Bethlehem and into the heart of the White Mountain region. ”

“ Natural levees border the Connecticut River south of the Sunderland Bridge.
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The river has moved at will from one side of its alluvial plain to the other, and its threats to change its course are not to be taken lightly. Until 1830 it flowed past Northampton, around the great ox-bow to Easthampton and then back to the watergap between Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke. It served as the main line of communication to the Atlantic seaboard and was a much travelled route. ”

“ The picturesque Housatonic comes from the Massachusetts Berkshire hills down through the western counties; the centre is crossed by the Connecticut Valley, which has great fertility and beautiful scenery, while in the eastern 99 section the Quinnebaug River makes a deep valley, and, flowing into the Thames, seeks the Sound at New London. These many hills make many streams, all having water-powers, around which cluster numerous busy factories. ”

“ It is noted for beautiful scenery and has many cataracts, the chief being Olcott Falls, at Wilder in Vermont, South Hadley in Massachusetts, and Enfield in Connecticut. The soils of its valley are extremely fertile, making a garden-spot in the otherwise generally sterile New England, the most luxuriant crop being the tobacco-plant, known as "Connecticut seed-leaf," used largely for cigar-wrappers, and often yielding two thousand pounds to the acre. Steamboats navigate the river to Hartford, about fifty miles from the Sound. ”

“ Here, however, all evidence points to the fact that Connecticut settlers did not migrate west of Muncy, which is located at the juncture of Muncy Creek and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River (where the bend in the river turns into a directly western pattern) . Thus the Connecticut boundary dispute of 1769-1775, which erupted into the Pennamite Wars, did not involve the Fair Play settlers. [8] Nevertheless, at least one Fair Play settler looked [Pg 21] forward to the possibility of an advance of the Connecticut settlement along the West Branch. ”

“ From the main highway the delta built by West Fork Brook into glacial Lake Hadley appears as a flat terrace along the western highland (18.2) . The rolling fields (19.7) east of the railroad are dunes which were once raised by the wind along the old Connecticut channel. Mill River, which rises near Conway, parallels the highway for 6.1 miles and crosses it here to enter the Connecticut (20.3) . The road approaches the massive gray rocks of the western upland (20.5) , and the Hatfield lead vein (see p. 64) outcrops in a bluff on the right (20.9) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rocky hills border the valley and rise abruptly from the lowland. The few tributaries of the river in this part of its course are normal in direction.
About six miles below Sherman, Rocky River enters Wood Creek Swamp, which is 51⁄2 miles long by about one mile wide and completely covers the valley floor, extending even into tributary valleys. Within the swamp the river is joined by Squantz Pond Brook and Wood Creek. Tributaries to Wood Creek include Mountain Brook and the stream passing through Barses Pond and Neversink Pond. ”

“ The Connecticut Lowland was broadened in this way, and the tributary Deerfield has developed its valley in similar fashion but to a lesser degree. Today streams near the headwaters acquire sediment, not from the upland across which they flow to reach the deeply entrenched valleys, but from the steep slopes in the most remote recesses of the upland on which they rise. ”

“ From the far north flows the Connecticut River broadening on its way, as Green Mountain and White send down on either hand, from melting snow-drifts and hidden springs, their tribute to its waters. Through forests and broken hill country, through meadows, sometimes broad and sometimes narrow, past town and village and lonely farmhouse, it flows before it makes a bend to pass between Mounts Tom and Holyoke, but in all its course it flows through no fairer landscape than that which spreads itself around the base of these two historic mountains. ”

“ Rather more than a hundred miles from New York the railway crosses the Connecticut River, on one of those bridges that at a little distance resemble spiders' webs hung between the shores. From here one may look down quite to the river's mouth, where it enters the Sound; and if it be a warm summer's day, the bluish-gray streak of land across it may be seen. The Connecticut is the only river of importance emptying upon the New England coast that has not an island lodged in its throat. ”

“ When the ice and flood prevail in the great river Connecticut, they frequently carry off large pieces of ground on one side, and carry them over to the other. By this means the river is every year changing its bed, to the advantage of some persons and the disadvantage of others. This has proved the source of perplexing lawsuits, and will most likely continue to produce the same effects so long as the demi-annual assemblies remain in the colony ”

“ 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 beauty of the Connecticut River, as an inland stream, and as you journey along its banks, upward towards its source, is far greater than where it approaches its confluence with the sea. It glides in the gentlest, most patronizing manner among green vales, and quiet villages, seeming to enjoy the fertility and happiness which it dispenses. ”

“ 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. ”