The Flow of Time in the Connecticut Valley

Part 1

Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

The western highland shows through the pine boughs at the extreme right. The eastern highland balances it on the far left. The Holyoke Range hems the basin on the south except at the gap where the river escapes to the Springfield area.]

The Flow of Time IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY

Geological Imprints

by GEORGE W. BAIN and HOWARD A. MEYERHOFF

The Hampshire Bookshop BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS NORTHAMPTON, MASS. 1942

COPYRIGHT, 1942, BY THE HAMPSHIRE BOOKSHOP

Contents

Introduction ix Today and Yesterday 1 The River Works 1 The Landscape Changes 4 Glaciers Came 8 Just Before the Ice Age 9 Rivers Carried off the Everlasting Hills 11 Before the Rivers Cut the Valleys 14 The Mosaic of Central Massachusetts 18 The Red Rock Basin 18 A Dinosaur Diary 21 Volcanoes 23 The Original Valley 28 Hot Springs in Central Massachusetts 30 The Marginal Uplands 30 The Eastern Upland 32 Coal Swamps in Massachusetts and Rhode Island 33 The Western Upland 34 The Story of Central Massachusetts 38 Interesting Places 51 Mount Lincoln in Pelham 51 Mount Toby 52 The Sunderland Caves 55 Mount Sugarloaf 56 Turners Falls 58 The French King Bridge 59 Titan's Piazza and Titan's Pier 60 Westfield Marble Quarry 61 The Old Lead Mines 63 The Dinosaur Tracks near Holyoke 66 Fossil Fishing 68 Calendar Beds 69 The Holyoke Range 70 Trips from Northampton 78 Northampton, Amherst, Pelham 78 Belchertown, Amherst and Northampton 82 South Hadley, Amherst, Northampton 83 Holyoke, Easthampton, Northampton 85 Northampton, Hadley, Sunderland, Hatfield 86 Northampton, Cummington, Plainfield and South Deerfield 88 Trips from Greenfield 91 Mohawk Trail, Adams, Plainfield and South Deerfield 91 Greenfield, Orange, Pelham, Amherst and Deerfield 96 Greenfield, Turners Falls, Montague, North Amherst 99 Greenfield, Turners Falls, Montague, Sunderland 100 Trips from Springfield 102 Springfield, Holyoke, Easthampton and Westfield 102 Westfield to the Westfield Marble Quarry 104 Optional Trips 105 Mineral and Rock Collections 106 The Minerals 107 The Vein Minerals 107 Minerals of Pegmatites and Igneous Rocks 109 Minerals of Metamorphic Rocks 111 The Minerals of Soils and Rock Decay 111 The Minerals of Sedimentary Rocks 111 The Rocks 112 The Sedimentary Rocks 113 The Igneous Rocks 114 The Dark Rocks 115 The Medium-Colored Rocks 116 The Light-Colored Rocks 116 The Metamorphic Rocks 117 Conclusion 120 Indexes 121

Plates

1. The Connecticut Valley as it is seen from Mt. Sugarloaf Front. 2a. Air view of the ox-bow lake between Northampton and Mt. Tom 4 2b. Roches moutonnées of the Pelham Hills seen from Hadley 4 3a. Mt. Sugarloaf, a remnant of Triassic rocks disappearing grain by grain down the Connecticut River 12 3b. Mt. Monadnock, a hill surmounting the New England peneplain, seen from Mt. Lincoln 12 4a. A dinosaur walked from the raindrop marked surface at the right to a shallow pond at the left 22 4b. Volcanoes ejected much ash and many bombs to form the Granby tuff 22 5a. Columnar lava rests upon red sandstone in the cliffs at Greenfield 32 5b. Fissures were filled with liquid rock that became solid and bonded wall to wall at the Windsor Dam 32 6. View of the Holyoke Range from Mt. Lincoln 52 7a. View of the Deerfield River gorge emerging on valley lowland as seen from Mt. Sugarloaf 58 7b. View of the French King gorge as seen from the bridge 58 8a. View of Titan's Piazza at Hockanum showing the columns resting upon the gently inclined sandstone 60 8b. View of the Springfield lowland from the Westfield Marble quarry 60 9a. The dinosaur track preserve at Smith's Ferry near Holyoke 66 9b. Varved clays or calendar beds on river bank south of Hadley 66 10. View of the Deerfield gorge from the east summit of the Mohawk Trail 92

Figures

1. The Connecticut River undercuts the Hadley bank 2 2. Natural levees south of the Sunderland Bridge 2 3. Block diagram showing main features of central Massachusetts at the present time 5 4. Block diagram showing main features of central Massachusetts during recession of the Ice Sheet 5 5. Block diagram showing main features of central Massachusetts during excavation of the lowland 13 6. Block diagram showing main features of central Massachusetts after Triassic basins were filled 13 7. Map of Mount Toby showing gorges filled with conglomerate 20 8. Map showing agglomerate burying a fault scarp on Notch power line 24 9. Block diagram showing main features of central Massachusetts during volcanic stage 27 10. Block diagram showing the Triassic basins of central Massachusetts 27 11. Map of old volcanic region near Mount Hitchcock and west of the Notch 29 12. Block diagram showing topography during formation of the lead veins 31 13. Block diagram of region during Middle Ordovician time 39 14. Block diagram of region at end of Ordovician time 39 15. Block diagram of region during Devonian period 39 16. Block diagram of region during Carboniferous period 41 17. Block diagram of region in early Triassic time 41 18. Block diagram of region in late Triassic time 41 19. Block diagram of region at opening of Cenozoic era 45 20. Block diagram of region at the present time 45 21. Map showing location of interesting places 53 22. Meander scarps at edge of flood plain, Sunderland 57 23. Map of the Leverett lead veins 65 24. Diagrams showing development of Notch and Notch Mountain 74

Introduction

In every region there is an evening drive which lures the city dweller from the cramped vistas of the office, the home, and the dingy streets to the limitless expanse of hills and valleys, where mental tension relaxes and vision broadens as the physical horizon expands and acquires depth. 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. A good road may take some credit for its popularity, but there is a deeper cause than this which brings him back; for, if there is drama in scenery, he finds it here. The road leads out of Northampton, and from the graceful arch of the Coolidge Memorial Bridge he views the flood-scarred lowlands that border the river, and across the flat plain into Hadley he sees visible reminders that river and farmer periodically struggle over ownership of the land. Then a rise in the road constricts the view but offers a promise of something different. Ahead, rolling fields stretch to the beckoning hills beyond Amherst, but the hills appear and disappear in tantalizing cadence as the car tops each rise and drops into the ensuing hollow. Soon West Pelham comes into view, and the rise to the highland begins. Beside the road a brook tumbles into the valley; and as the car climbs the heights to Pelham, and miles of wooded land are suddenly spread before the eye, the wayfarer realizes that here is the dramatic climax to his trip and to the murmured story of the brook. But the long ridges reaching out to the north and to the south, the deep valleys between them, and the sky which meets the farthest ridge do not enclose the panorama. It has a fourth dimension--time--a dimension as limitless as the horizon.

With just a dash of imagination, the wayfarer may journey backward through time; through scenes of infinite variety; through countless years of unceasing change; through situations so different that he would scarcely have recognized his New England. The scarred plain of the river, the brook, the soil, the rocks, the upland and the valley,--all tell a fascinating and a logical, if surprising, geological tale. A detour down this fourth dimension promises as much interest as a journey through the other three.

Today and Yesterday

From the Coolidge Memorial Bridge the broad lowland seems to reach out in all directions towards the encircling hills. Far down the river, the distant bank rises a sheer thirty feet from the water and is high enough to surmount even the worst of floods. Yet each year this bank recedes as the unconsolidated sediment at its base is sapped by the stream and is carried away. Three times the river road has been moved back from the insatiable Connecticut, and today the main Hockanum highway takes the long route far from the water's edge.

Continue reading The Flow of Time in the Connecticut Valley free in the Wunder reader →