The Traprock Landscapes of New England. Peter M. LeTourneau
Valley. The Hanging Hills, Mount Lamentation, Chauncey Peak, Mount Higby, and Beseck Mountain—dominating the local skyline—enticed us into countless youthful adventures among their peaks and ledges. These formative experiences motivated us to pursue separate careers in environmental science and the fine arts, following in the footsteps of scientists and artists who had studied and painted the traprock hills for more than one hundred years. As we practiced our respective crafts, the traprock ridges continued to whisper, speak, and sometimes shout: “Remember, respect, and protect us.” So we returned—countless times spanning decades—to photograph, paint, research, write, lead tours, and lecture on the most stunning landscapes in southern New England.
After half a lifetime exploring, studying, and photographing the traprock highlands, we finally paused long enough to assemble our pictures and thoughts into this celebration. We hope that this book will inspire you to visit these landscapes of national significance for the first time, or return after a long absence.
Thank you for joining us on our tour through the traprock hills. Please support the conservation organizations managing the parks, preserves, and trails in the traprock highlands, including the Meriden Land Trust, Berlin Land Trust, Simsbury Land Trust, Ragged Mountain Foundation, Sleeping Giant Park Association, Peter’s Rock Association, Friends of East Rock Park, Friends of the Mount Holyoke Range, the Nature Conservancy, Connecticut DEEP, Massachusetts DEC, and the Trustees of Reservations; and, especially, the Connecticut Forest and Park Association.
The authors are extremely grateful to the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and to Catherine Lapollo, for their generous funding in support of publication.
The following libraries provided essential reference material: the Libraries of Columbia University; Thomas J. Watson Library and Nolan Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New York Historical Society; the New York Public Library, especially the East 96th Street Branch, William Siefert, Manager; Olin Library, and the Science Library, Wesleyan University; Meriden Public Library; the New Haven Museum; the New Britain Museum of Art; the National Academy of Design, New York; the Connecticut State Library.
This project was supported and encouraged by many, including: Nick McDonald, Westminster School (ret.); Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, Wesleyan University; Dr. Paul E. Olsen, Columbia University; the Connecticut Landmarks Foundation; Jim Little, Connecticut Forest and Park Association; Gini Traub, Massachusetts DEC; Deborah Woodcock, Clark University; Elizabeth Farnsworth, New England Wildflower Society; Uwe Neiring, National Park Service (ret.); and Teresa Gagnon, Connecticut DEEP.
The authors especially thank Parker Smathers, Suzanna Tamminen, Jaclyn Wilson, and Marla K. Zubel at Wesleyan University Press; Cannon Labrie; and Susan Abel and Mindy B. Hill at the University Press of New England for their efforts on behalf of this project.
The authors are grateful to Bob’s wife, Marcie Pagini, for her endless support and encouragement, including many hours of stimulating discussion about local history, and exciting field walks on the traprock hills. Peter is indebted to his dad, Lawrence, for taking him on his first hike up Chauncey Peak and instilling a love of nature, science, history, and art; Bob Pagini for his outstanding efforts on this project; and Annie, Peter’s shining star, for absolutely everything.
NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY AND USAGE
Nearly all the geographic locations and topographic features discussed in this work are found in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Therefore, to spare the reader the tedious repetition of the state names, the author assumes that the reader will refer to the included maps, and has, or will gain, a passing knowledge of the major towns and cities in the Connecticut Valley. Thus, it is obvious within the geographic context that Springfield refers to the city in Massachusetts, and New Haven to the coastal city in Connecticut.
The early Connecticut Valley settlers referred to the alluvial terraces bordering the major rivers as “intervales.” With easily worked, fertile, and well-watered soils, the intervales were important to the agricultural success of both the Native Americans and the Euro-Americans in the Connecticut Valley. The Connecticut Valley intervales rose to prominence as the most productive soils in the nation, a reputation based on high yields of grass and grains, and, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, shade-grown and broadleaf tobacco. The term prospect was used in the nineteenth century to indicate a scenic view, hence, Prospect House on Mount Holyoke, Prospect Mountain, and so on.
Colloquial terms for basalt lava include trap, trap rock, trap-rock, greenstone, bluestone—to name a few; following modern usage, we will use traprock for any igneous rock of volcanic origin in the Connecticut Valley. The word trap derives from the Swedish trappa meaning “stairs” or “steps,” and refers to the blocky appearance of the lava formations. We also use diabase rather than the European term dolerite for the coarse-grained rocks of basaltic composition found as dikes and sills intruded into the sedimentary layers.
The geographic term Connecticut Valley, or, as designated by William Morris Davis in the late 1800s, the Connecticut Valley Lowland, specifically refers to the elongate lowland underlain by sedimentary and volcanic rocks of Late Triassic and Early Jurassic age, extending from Greenfield, Massachusetts, to New Haven, Connecticut. Geologists refer to the main part of the Connecticut Valley as the Hartford basin and call the smaller northern extension the Deerfield basin, terms based on their particular rock types and geologic structures. The Connecticut River flows only through the northern and east-central part of the Connecticut Valley Lowland, from Gill, Massachusetts, to Middletown, Connecticut, where the river then cuts southeast through older Paleozoic-age crystalline rocks on its way to Long Island Sound.
Thus, the Connecticut River Valley and the Connecticut Valley, or Connecticut Valley Lowland, refer to separate but partly overlapping geographic features (see page 21). The northern part of the Connecticut Valley from Greenfield to Hatfield is known as the Deerfield Valley, a historic region of ancient towns and particularly fertile soils that support crops of high-quality tobacco. Although the Deerfield Valley shares a similar geologic origin, has a small area of traprock ridges, and is similarly rich in natural and cultural history, this work focuses on the main part of the Connecticut Valley, from Mount Holyoke in Amherst, Massachusetts, to East Rock in New Haven.
Although other traprock hills of similar geologic age and origin are found in eastern Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey and adjacent New York, the Southbury-Woodbury region of western Connecticut, and around the Bay of Fundy, none of those areas compare with the size, variety, visual interest, and cultural history of the volcanic landforms of the Connecticut Valley. Only the Palisades cliffs along the Hudson River are comparable in size and scenic qualities, but they lack the topographic complexity—the crags, promontories, notches, and mountain lakes—that make the Connecticut Valley so appealing.
Unlike the Berkshire, Green, and White Mountains, no common term was historically assigned to the chain of traprock ridges in the Connecticut Valley. Early writers including Silliman, Dana, and others, simply referred to the main series of lava ridges as the Greenstone Range, Main Trap Range, Mount Tom Range, Blue Mountains, and other indefinite geographic terms.
The name Metacomet Ridge has been used to refer to the major chain of lava hills since it was first popularized in Bell’s 1985 The Face of Connecticut; in 2008, the term was entered into the U.S. Board on Geographic Names database (GNIS—see http://geonames.usgs.gov). It remains a useful reference for the main trend of lava ridges, but the Metacomet Ridge does not encompass the series of diabase hills along the western side of the Connecticut Valley. In addition, the use of ridge causes confusion in the hierarchy of geographic names, since there are many local or subregional “ridges” in the Connecticut Valley, and the geographic term ridge refers to a local elevated feature of linear form. Raising its rank to “range” similarly causes problems, because there are a number of established “ranges” in the Connecticut Valley, including the Mount Tom Range and the Holyoke Range.
As the highest-rank geographic feature in the Connecticut Valley, the Metacomet