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Title: The Flow of Time in the Connecticut Valley - Geological Imprints
Author: Meyerhoff, Howard Augustus, Bain, George William
Language: English
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[Illustration: Pl. 1. _The Connecticut Valley as it is seen from
Mount Sugarloaf._
_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.
_The River Works_
Nearer the bridge the land is lower, and it shows the effects of
frequent inundation, but not of scour. A great sand bar lies in the
curve of the stream, and the low parallel ridges suggest that they, too,
were awash in the Connecticut before its eastern bank encroached so far
upon the town of Hadley. The tongue of land which serves as
Northampton’s airport is a succession of bars and abandoned channels
which record the migration of the river away from its old bank along
Bridge Street. The Connecticut is robbing Hadley to pay Northampton, but
there was a time when Northampton was pilfered, too.
Swales line the landscape as far as Hadley; and each year, at the time
of high water, they must now be content with the meager overflow, where
once they sped the entire stream upon its southward course. But even
now, in flood, their original function may be restored. For the swale
just west of Hadley was a roaring torrent in 1938, 1936, and 1896.
Indeed, it threatened to appropriate the entire stream, and each of the
great curving hollows that furrow the lowland are scour-channels which
were made at other times.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. _The Connecticut River undercuts the Hadley
bank at Hockanum._]
[Illustration: Fig. 2. _Natural levees border the Connecticut River
south of the Sunderland Bridge._]
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. In the spring of that year high
water breached the narrow neck of land between the two ends of the
meander loop, and practically overnight the route to New London was
shortened by three miles. Although the event was not a source of
rejoicing to the landowners, Northampton declared a day of thanksgiving
because they were now, thanks be to Providence, three miles nearer the
sea. How often the river has changed its course may never be determined,
but the floodplain is grooved with swampy or silt-filled ox-bow lakes,
not only near Northampton, but all the way from Brattleboro, Vermont, to
Middletown, Connecticut. They tell of older shifts in the course of a
river which still displays its brute power within the limits of its
alluvial plain.
The inundation of 1936 did more than scour the river’s floodplain; it
left thick deposits of sand and silt upon many of the fields. Each
preceding flood has done the same sort of thing, dropping coarse sand in
greatest abundance on the banks where the river flowed straightest.
Flood by flood, the deposit has risen higher on these favored sites,
where the swift main current slackens as it spreads over the broad, flat
plain. Today the banks form natural levees sloping away from the river
at many points southward from the Sunderland Bridge.
Just when the river started to shift back and forth across its alluvial
plain is not revealed, but it was long before the white man penetrated
the country. Indian graves and campsites have been laid bare as the high
water of each new flood has removed the silt left during earlier
inundations. The sites rarely yield any implement brought by the
Europeans; they record long years of Indian occupation in the land
called Norwottock, a land in which the red man found a river which
temperamentally shifted its course in response to periodic floods.
The floodplain ends at a rise in the road not far east of Hadley. The
rise is a scalloped embankment, reminiscent of the high bank on the
river bend downstream from Hadley; even the long narrow swamp at the
base looks like a filled ox-bow, and the scallops look like bites which
the hungry river took from its banks. This embankment continues
northward past Mount Warner, following the present channel closely
through North Hadley, and it passes just east of Sunderland village.
Corresponding banks are present on the west side of the stream in South
Deerfield and Hatfield. Within the confines of those terraces the
Connecticut has had free play, but its course has never strayed east or
west of these well defined boundaries.
Wave-like hills of sand cap the embankments in several localities north
of Hatfield and North Hadley. Some, perched on the terrace edge, were
partly cut away when the river was establishing the limits of its
floodplain. Wherever the pine trees are cut down, or the grass plowed
under, the sand within these hills begins to drift. 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 Landscape Changes_
Fine sand, silt, or clay is found beneath the windblown sand wherever
the river banks undercut the dunes. The clays are especially widespread,
for each of the numerous local brickyards has its clay pit, and there
are many more clay banks which have no brickyard. The clays are
rhythmically banded. One band, composed of very fine material which
settles from suspension only after weeks of absolute quiet, retains
moisture tenaciously; adjacent bands dry more rapidly, are somewhat
sandy, and settle from suspension in less than a week. A large body of
quiet water in which so much fine clay could settle must have occupied
the valley before the river was there, and the only type of water body
which could have provided the proper environment is a fresh-water lake,
free from agitation during the long winter months when its surface was
frozen over. These thin clay bands are deposits of a winter season, when
streams are low and their load light. Then, even the finest particles
can settle, during the many weeks of quiet water, as a paper-thin layer
upon the lake bottom. 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. The sand which these freshets bring to the lake diminishes as
the spring floods subside, and the sediment becomes progressively finer
until next spring comes around.
Pl. 2. _Features of the landscape which originated during
comparatively recent time._
[Illustration: a. _Air view of the ox-bow lake between Northampton
and Mt. Tom._]
[Illustration: b. _Roches moutonnées of the Pelham Hills seen from
Hadley._]
[Illustration: Fig. 3. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central Massachusetts at the present time._]
[Illustration: Fig. 4. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central Massachusetts during the recession of the Ice Sheet._]
Each sandy layer is a spring; each clay band, a winter; and the two
together mark the passage of a year. High spring floods are rarely
local; floods on the Connecticut are usually matched by floods in the
Merrimack watershed to the east and along Housatonic to the west. Floods
of the past were much the same, and many of them can be identified
readily in the banded clays of the Connecticut Valley. Each one can be
traced in contemporaneous deposits which were formed in other parts of
the lowland and in neighboring lake basins.
Some of the winter bands, together with the layers below them, are torn
and folded, and the tops of the folds have been sheared off. Covering
them invariably is the sand layer of the spring break-up. Plain from
these features is a winter episode of freezing to the lake bottom, and
of ice contorting the clays as it expanded and contracted in response to
fluctuations in the surface temperatures. The normal cyclic repetition
of sand and clay was resumed when these particularly hard winters came
to an end.
At South Hadley Falls the lake clays rest upon a gravel bed, and the
bottom layer records the lake’s first year of life in that locality. The
overlying bands provide the evidence of a characteristic climatic
sequence which can also be recognized in the clays at Chicopee and at
other points still farther south in the lowland. But at Chicopee there
are many layers which are older than the bottom layer at South Hadley
Falls; and at Springfield many layers appear that are older than the
basal band at Chicopee. From the sediment deposited in its waters, the
story of the lake is not difficult to decipher. It existed at
Springfield years before it appeared at South Hadley Falls; in fact, it
flooded the meadows near Middletown, Connecticut, for nearly 6,000 years
before its waters existed near Northampton.
These beds of clay hold the moisture close to the surface throughout the
lowland, making it available to the fields of vegetables and tobacco.
Towards the valley margins these crops disappear because the fine
sediments end against the rocky shores of the adjacent hills which pass
into and beneath sloping terraces of sand and gravel. In the numerous
terraces which fringe the hills, the horizontal beds of gravel lie above
lakeward-dipping beds of coarse sand; they underlie broad flats furrowed
by channel-like depressions which radiate from the valleys at the apex
of each flat. On these terraces one can easily picture sand-laden waters
coursing through the channels and building deltas outward into the lake.
Deltas were built wherever streams from the highlands entered the
valley, and they mark the ancient level of the lake. Strangely, their
elevation drops from 315 feet at Montague to 300 feet at Amherst, and is
only 268 feet at South Hadley. The changing elevation shows either that
the lake surface sloped southward—and indeed this would be unique—or
that the shoreline was raised in the north and that the lake drained
southward. The latter surmise is plainly the more plausible.
Most deltas on the east side of the valley are pitted by numerous
conical depressions. In a depression on a delta plain near Montague, an
excavation, made to obtain road fill, disclosed a mass of disordered
gravel which must originally have been deposited in the horizontal
top-set beds of the delta, but which now lies in the bottom of a
depression mingled with the fine sand of the underlying fore-set beds.
The top-set beds seem to have been supported for some time and then
collapsed as if the underpinnings were removed. The crudely circular or
elliptical outlines of the depressions suggest that stray icebergs
drifted upon the delta slopes, where they were anchored or buried by the
sandy outwash. The buried ice-cakes survived until the lake was drained,
and the baselevel of the streams was lowered, for the depressions have
no outwash within them. They collapsed soon after the lake vanished,
because water soaking through the delta sands melted the ice, much as it
thaws the ground for dredging in the Yukon. 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; most are embedded
in soil. These “erratics” seem to have been left like unwanted objects,
picked up and carried for a time, and then dropped when the bearer
wearied of their weight. The scratches on the rock floor are parallel
grooves, all of which trend southward. They are unmistakable tracks left
by glaciers, and the boulders are like the stones perched on glacial ice
for a ride to the terminal moraine.
The land above the old lake shore is bare scratched rock or rocky soil
called boulder till. Every hill farm has been cleared of more stones
than trees, and it is only with the vogue of the rock garden that these
erratics have found any merit in man’s estimation. It has been said with
a considerable element of truth that the lake margin can be identified
by the stone fences heaped up by exasperated farmers at the line where
the water once lapped the slopes of the glaciated hills. Striations and
erratics decorate the tops of Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke, and those who
visit Mount Monadnock or Mount Washington will find they must inscribe
their initials over the signature of the great ice sheet.
The stranger rocks or erratics, stranded promiscuously over the
countryside, can be traced to hills farther north. Clearly the ice sheet
was moving southward, picking up debris and abrading the countryside
like a great sanding machine. Northern slopes were worn to long gentle
inclines and the southern slopes kept their original forms or were
steepened as the ice plucked fractured blocks from their moorings. One
imaginative writer likened the glaciated rock hills to the wigs of
sheep’s wool worn by the jurists of his day; the name stuck, and they
are still known as _roches moutonnées_. Look at the Pelham Hills from
the Coolidge Memorial Bridge and you will see the top of Jeffrey Lord
Amherst’s wig facing towards Canada.
Within the Connecticut Lowland the moving ice often picked up a load of
debris more cumbersome than it could drag along. It handled the
situation most satisfactorily by dropping the load and streamlining it,
and these piles of glacial debris with blunt north slopes and gentle
southerly sides are drumlins. When next you pass the apple orchards of
South Amherst, recall that the smooth elliptical hill east of the road
to South Hadley is a drumlin, a relic of an overloaded glacier.
_Just Before the Ice Age_
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 all New
England intermittently. This length of time transcends human
comprehension unless one considers years in terms of what has been done.
A million years is not too long for a sand-laden ice sheet, moving only
a few feet each year, to grind tens of feet of solid rock off the north
sides of the “everlasting” hills. To those who study the earth, “Before
the Ice Age” has about the same significance as “Before the Hurricane”
has to the average citizen of New England. It is in such terms that
geologic time must be considered.
The ice sheet simply modified the pre-glacial topography; it changed
symmetrical hills to asymmetric _roches moutonnées_ and left boulder
till spread over much of the bedrock floor. The greatest changes were
effected in the White Mountains, where the steep-walled river valleys
were changed to troughs with a U cross-section, as in the scenic
notches; or with steep headwalls like that in Tuckerman Ravine, a
typical alpine cirque. Within the lowlands boulder till was left as a
blanket, concealing the irregularities which were made in the rock floor
at an earlier geologic date. These irregularities may pass unnoticed
unless some construction project happens to reveal them. Bedrock is
rarely over seventy feet down at any point in the lowland, but work at
the Sunderland Bridge and the Coolidge Memorial Bridge encountered
masses of glacial debris in a deep fluvial channel more than three
hundred feet below the river surface and at least two hundred feet below
the present level of the sea. This deep trough is not over one hundred
yards wide, and if it were fully exposed to view, it would look like a
miniature Saguenay gorge. Similar trenches in every part of eastern
North America, from Hudson Bay to Cape Hatteras, show that the land once
stood higher than it does now, and that the main rivers flowed in deep,
narrow canyons, although the upland surface between the rivers had its
present characteristics. Thus, in Pliocene time, while primitive members
of the human race were entering old England, New England rose high above
sea level, and its lowlands were trenched by quickened streams.
The narrow gorges are an eloquent, if mute, record of rivers suddenly
rejuvenated, their current accelerated and the exuberant waters cutting
into freshly elevated rock. Massachusetts and the neighboring states
along the Atlantic seaboard formed a plateau-like upland, perhaps one
thousand feet higher than today, and the coastline lay fifty to one
hundred miles out under the present waters of the Atlantic.
The Pliocene episode of stream incision was of short duration. The
gorges are not wide, and only near the sea do they cut deep into the
coherent crystalline rock which gives New England its solid foundation.
Nowhere did the land remain elevated long enough to permit the rivers to
widen their canyons through the plateau-like country and to modify the
essential features of the landscape. The latter were acquired in an
earlier geologic epoch called the Miocene, and the scenic pattern carved
by running water in that relatively remote division of time still
dominates the region’s topographic form.
_Rivers Carried Off the Everlasting Hills_
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. 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.
The contribution which the tributaries make to the lowland rivers was
demonstrated only too conspicuously by the great fans of coarse debris
spread across the valley of the Deerfield River and the West River
during the floods that accompanied the torrential rains of the
hurricane. Parts of the village of Townshend, Vermont, nestling in the
flat floor of the West River valley, were buried in gravel wash, and the
hillside roads above were gullied ten feet deep. One harassed traveler
aptly remarked that the original road level could be recognized from the
few concordant remnants of pavement beside the trout brook.
The hill slopes at Townshend rise and end near Jamaica, about one
thousand feet higher in elevation. Here the roads are in good condition.
There are no signs of erosion, and the rolling uplands extend for miles
with no signs of gullying or wash by the heavy rains.
The debris handled by the West River now and for ages past has come from
the steep hill slopes along the main valley. Each load of sand has cut
these slopes back from the main stream and has widened the lowland
floor. So, for millions of years, the tributaries of the Connecticut
have pushed the valley walls farther from the main river, and their
tributaries in turn have pushed their hill slopes back, while the valley
floors have steadily widened. 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.
Flat valley floors are broadened in coherent rocks as well as in
unconsolidated sand—less rapidly, indeed, but just as surely; and every
region is worn down to the grade of the streams which drain it, except
for those rare masses of resistant rock which defy decay and yield
reluctantly to their inevitable fate. The rocks of the Mount Holyoke and
Mount Tom ranges, Mount Warner, the Pocumtuck Hills and the highlands on
both sides of the Connecticut Valley are made of tougher ingredients
than the lowland, and even millions of years of incessant onslaught by
running water did not suffice to level them by Miocene time, when the
lowland was excavated.
Pl. 3. _Erosion remnants or monadnocks surmounting base levelled
surfaces._
[Illustration: a. _Mt. Sugarloaf, a remnant of Triassic rocks
disappearing grain by grain down the Connecticut River._]
[Illustration: b. _Mt. Monadnock, a hill surmounting the New England
peneplain, seen from Mt. Lincoln._]
[Illustration: Fig. 5. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central Massachusetts during the excavation of the lowland._]
[Illustration: Fig. 6. _Block diagram showing main features of
central Massachusetts after the Triassic basins were filled._]
The lowland extends beyond our immediate region. It continues southward
with diminishing elevation to New Haven, where it joins another broad
depression, now flooded by the waters of Long Island Sound.
_Before the Rivers Cut the Valleys_
Those who would see the land as it was before the rivers carved the
lowlands must put back every grain of sand the waters carried away; they
must fill in these valleys to the level of the Jamaica upland. Then only
will the country be as it was before the streams were rejuvenated and
started to cut deep trenches and to widen them as the Deerfield has done
at Charlemont.
Broad, open valley flats or straths surmount the steep V-shaped notches
of both the Deerfield and Westfield Rivers. Surely, everyone who has
paused at the lookout on the east summit of the Mohawk Trail has seen
the upland sloping gently towards the Deerfield and then breaking
sharply at the top of the present canyon. The same view confronts the
motorist who drives from Adams to Cummington, just after he leaves the
village of Plainfield. Here the shallow bowl in front of him holds no
hint of the deep notch in which the Westfield flows. The gentle contour
of the land suggests only the slow but methodical sort of change which
comes with maturity. Those who favor air travel will see, as they fly
over Mount Tom, a similar but more dissected strath reaching into the
hills northwestward from Northampton. Aeroplanes flying the Boston-New
York route pass over straths which have been trenched by the Connecticut
along its course from Middletown to New London.
The straths are part of a mature, but ancient drainage system, which was
graded a thousand feet above the level of the present streams and only a
few hundred feet below the main upland. 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. Greylock’s summit
and the long chain of the Green Mountains attain greater elevations. The
West River and Deerfield basins are graded to the level of this higher
and older erosion surface, but farther north a chain of peaks including
Stratton and Okemo swing eastward towards Ascutney. They appear to have
formed a divide on this ancient land, as they do today; and beyond their
crests rivers have run to the Saint Lawrence and Hudson basins from a
time which antedated any of the familiar features of the New England
landscape.
Although this flat upland surface is more complex than it appears to the
eye, it dominates all of southern New England, and ramifying arms of it
penetrate northward into the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine.
Another great arm passes west of Mount Greylock and spreads out between
the Catskill Mountains and the Adirondacks. During the long period of
erosion when it was formed, New England was reduced nearer to the grade
of the main rivers than at any other time either before or since, and
only rocks which have effectively resisted all later assaults by the
geologic processes of destruction surmount the surface. To the eye, the
region appears so nearly planed that it has been called the New England
peneplane.
The upland continues southward through the Berkshire and Litchfield
Hills, descending in a series of almost imperceptible steps towards Long
Island Sound and the Atlantic. A few miles south of Litchfield,
Connecticut, its low angle of declivity increases abruptly, and the more
steeply inclined surface passes beneath the waters of Long Island Sound.
The sudden change in dip suggests that two erosional planes are present
and that each was formed under somewhat different circumstances and in
different periods of geologic time. The soundness of this surmise can be
demonstrated in Long Island where sediments laid in a Cretaceous sea
rest upon the older and more sharply inclined erosional plane and rise
approximately to the level of the New England upland. The deposits form
a wedge between the two planes, and their Cretaceous age supplies a
series of dates that would otherwise be difficult to establish in New
England’s geological history. Erosion fashioned the New England upland
in the early and middle epochs of the Tertiary period, immediately
following the deposition of sediments in the Cretaceous sea. And the
southward sloping plane upon which those sediments rest records an even
earlier episode of denudation—an episode lost in the shuffle of later
events in Massachusetts but preserved in fragmentary form in
Connecticut, thanks to the protection afforded by the sedimentary cover.
Had we lived in central New England when erosion of the upland and of
the younger straths was in progress, we would have noted that the valley
forms were well defined in the headwaters and lower reaches of the
streams, which made their way through a country of light-colored or gray
clayey soil. In the middle reaches the valley boundaries were blurred
and indistinct, and the country through which they flowed was surfaced
by red and sandy soil. The middle region is now the lowland, but even
then it formed a depression athwart the topographic and hydrographic
features of the country; and its distinctive red soil resembled alluvial
wash or fill in a long basin. Its low relief would have been as
impressive in early Tertiary time as its higher relief is today, for
then it had little topographic competition anywhere between the present
sites of New Haven, Connecticut, and Northfield, Massachusetts.
The land had one dominant characteristic—a relatively flat or faintly
terraced surface. But this surface concealed a mosaic made of an
infinite variety of rocks, each responding to the attack of weather in
its own particular way. Erosion has brought out the pattern of the
mosaic, and we have retraced the steps in its development. Viewing the
evolution of the countryside in retrospect, we see its features take
form much as a worker on an inlaid bronze might watch the design come
out when it is etched. The creation of the mosaic or inlay is another
part of the history, and the relief of the land now permits closer
scrutiny of the pattern than would have been possible in Cretaceous
time.
The Mosaic of Central Massachusetts
The great artisan incorporated three main features in the mosaic beneath
the New England upland, and from them erosion developed the major
pattern of the present landscape. The three units of the pattern
comprise a somewhat heterogeneous but durable foreground in the east, a
weak inlaid design in the center, and a moderately homogeneous and
durable background in the west. The foreground and background are simply
a suitable base for the younger, central feature of the design—an inlay
which was completed in Triassic time, while the mighty dinosaurs were
beginning to gain confidence as the new rulers of the earth. Skillful
artistry and complicated technique were expended on the Triassic inlay,
for in part it was rolled in, partly melted in, and some of it was cut
in amid the tougher materials now found on either side.
_The Red Rock Basin_
The youngest ingredients which were incorporated in the inlay are a
series of fine-grained red sandstones and consolidated clays or shales.
They are horizontal layers, turned up slightly at the edges of the
lowland, but elsewhere they lie in almost horizontal beds that extend
from South Hadley through Chicopee (Chicopee shale), Springfield, and
Longmeadow (Longmeadow sandstone) to a point just south of Hartford.
Near the hills which form the eastern boundary of the lowland these
fine-grained sediments locally give way to coarse tabular deposits of
angular gravel, which appear along the base of the Wilbraham Mountains
and again in Mount Toby and northward. The deposits are isolated or
detached masses which resemble fans emerging from mountains, not unlike
the more modern sands and gravels which the Westfield River left where
it emerged from the western hills. But the Triassic gravels are red, and
they are firmly cemented into conglomerate; yet it is plain that this
part of the inlay was made by washing and rolling the red muds, sands,
and cobbles into a depressed basin waiting to receive them.
The southern part of the basin was deepened, and the highlands were
rejuvenated spasmodically from Springfield to New Haven. The sinking of
the lowland on the west and the rising of the highlands on the east took
place along a fracture plane, commonly called “the eastern border
fault,” near the eastern limits of the red sediments throughout that
part of the valley. 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 great fracture, which sharply delimits rocks of different origins,
and the deformation in the strata near Portland record, as surely as the
writings of any human historian, a tale of periodic rock compression and
paroxysmal release that must have been accompanied by violent tremors.
Connecticut and Massachusetts had their earthquakes and had them as
violent as any now originating in the western ranges of the United
States and Mexico; but happily they shook a land which was overrun by
the dinosaurs, and which was not yet ready for human habitation.
[Illustration: Fig. 7. _Map of Mount Toby showing gorges filled with
conglomerate._]
Near the northern terminus of the Triassic basin the eastern boundary
was not subject to intermittent and violent movements during the later
stages of sedimentation, as it was in the south. Instead, the youngest
part of the red-rock inlay consists, in some places, of unfractured
boulder beds which were washed far out towards the center of the
lowland; elsewhere, landslides brought masses of rock debris upon soft
red and gray shales, which may have accumulated in shallow lakes; in
still other localities, long stringers of red sediment reach far back
into the eastern highlands. Many boulders in the conglomerate at the
south end of Mount Toby are eight feet in diameter, and torrential
mountain streams brought them to their resting place. A few are
scratched and grooved, much like the boulders in the till left by the
ice sheet; perhaps they signify the presence of snow fields and glaciers
in the mountain range, but the scratches may have been acquired by
avalanching. The landslide masses buried in the shales at the Sunderland
caves show that the mountain front was steep, and the ancient talus or
slide rock near the Central Vermont Railroad south of Roaring Brook
shows plainly that the mountain front was a precipitous cliff of
granite. The stringers of conglomerate extending eastward into the
granite upland south of Montague, north of Leverett station, at Amherst,
and again near Granby, are alluvial fill in ancient mountain gorges.
This old mountain mass stood out as a long, straight range extending
from a point east of New Haven northward into New Hampshire. It was of
moderate height in Connecticut, but it became higher and more rugged to
the north; glaciers may have nestled around its crest east of Deerfield,
and its front was an impressive slope of slide rock. Granite gorges with
tapering gravel plains, dry one day and raging torrents the next,
fingered eastward into the mountain block. At that time the Connecticut
Valley was much like the land east of the Sierra Nevada in California,
where greater contrasts in heights and depths are to be found than in
any other part of the United States.
_A Dinosaur Diary_
Like the valley east of the Sierras, the depression in central
Massachusetts contained playa lakes and intermittent streams. Sand
brought by the mountain torrents clogged the channels and spread into
broad alluvial plains, while silt accumulated in muddy lake basins.
Black sandy shales now mark the sites of the lake beds, and their black
color comes from the coaly remnants of Triassic plants. Some swampy lake
margins supported peat bogs, which have been preserved in coal seams two
to three inches thick between Granby and South Hadley. Many of the lakes
lasted long enough to become stocked with half a dozen species of fish.
But the fish led a precarious existence, and their skeletons were buried
in great numbers in the upper lacustrine layers when the lakes dried up,
and dust and sand drifted over the parched basins at Durham,
Connecticut, and at Sunderland, Massachusetts. The remains were interred
even more effectively when cloudbursts in the hills brought thick layers
of gravel out over the ancient lake beds.
Most of the lakes and ponds were ephemeral, but the fact that their
presence was more than a mirage in a Triassic desert is clear from the
ripple-marks retained on their sun-hardened surfaces, and from the
impressions of objects which touched them while they were still soft.
Stray series of parallel furrows record the passing of drifting shrubs,
and the abrupt disappearance of rain-drop imprints at a well defined
line in the hardened mud marks the exact position of the water level in
a few of these Triassic water bodies. Footprints register the activities
carried on by a bizarre animal population. Beside the road to the French
King Bridge and in the river bed at Turners Falls the ripple-marked
surfaces contain the impressions of many feet, and the dinosaur tracks
at “the Riffles” beside the Northampton-Holyoke highway are known
throughout the country. In Connecticut, Middletown and Durham are famed
for their tracks, and the impressions left in the playa beds by muddy
feet are so widely distributed throughout the lowland that it must have
taken a lot of walking by many generations of dinosaurs to leave such an
ample record.
Pl. 4. _Rocks of the Triassic basin and their record._
[Illustration: a. _A dinosaur walked from the raindrop marked
surface at the right to a shallow pond at the left._]
[Illustration: b. _Volcanoes ejected much ash and many bombs to form
the Granby tuff._]
Some of these three-toed animals were like the modern lizards and walked
on all four feet; but the great majority walked on two feet and, like
the kangaroos, used their tails to balance their bodies, and their short
fore limbs to support them when they crouched. In any single playa
deposit, variations in the sizes and kinds of footprints reveal that
many individuals made them; yet strangely, most of the tracks at any one
place are headed in a single direction. Apparently the herd instinct
must have been strong in these reptiles, as it is in kangaroos or in a
flock of turkeys, all following a leader, with only an occasional
individual going off to one side or back-tracking in a display of
independence. 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.
_Volcanoes_
Red is the predominant color in the central inlay of the New England
design, but greens and blue-black lines have been worked into the
pattern. The dinosaur-ridden basin has a rim south of Middletown in
Connecticut, and another north of Holyoke in Massachusetts; it lies just
west of the dinosaur-track ledge near Holyoke, and the tracks themselves
are only thirty feet above the bottom of the basin. The rim is an odd
ensemble—now red and now green; here solid and hard and black, there
soft and fragmental and crumbly. The fragments may be angular or round;
sandy or glassy; dense and solid, or full of bubble holes like molasses
taffy. The whole looks like the spread-out ash dump from a giant power
plant. And not only does it resemble an ash heap—it _is_ the ash heap of
a volcano; and the hard black layers within it are lava flows
interspersed with the heavy falls of ash.
[Illustration: Fig. 8. _Map showing agglomerate burying a fault
scarp on the power line through the east gap of the Notch._]
The ancient ash heap grows thicker east of the Connecticut River, and it
is more than 3,000 feet from top to bottom around a series of massive
blue-black rock-columns southeast of the Mount Holyoke Hotel. These are
the lava-filled necks of craters which became quiescent with the dawn of
the dinosaur days. The ash deposit, called the Granby tuff, grows
thinner eastward away from the craters and disappears completely
northeast of Granby, where a stream deploying from a valley in the
eastern mountains washed it away as fast as it fell and left coarse
gravel in the form of a huge fan.
The floor on which the ash came to rest was not everywhere the same.
Where now it crosses the Northampton-Holyoke highway and the
Amherst-South Hadley road it was a lava flow; but north of Granby and at
numerous places between the Hockanum and Amherst-South Hadley roads the
ash lies on conglomerate. Along the Amherst-Springfield power line, a
block of the conglomerate floor was pushed up five hundred feet above
the same beds farther west, forming a small block mountain which was
entirely buried beneath the ash. Similar block mountains can be observed
under the blanket of ash, especially on the south side of the Holyoke
Range; and renewed movement subsequently affected many of the blocks
north of Granby, where the ash deposit and even some of the sediments
laid down in the earlier days of the dinosaurs were fractured and
displaced. As a rule, along any one fault, the block on the east was
pushed up and moved southward; and the block on the west was pressed
down: as a group, the fractures may form the beginning of the great
eastern border fault which bounds the basin farther south.
The volcanoes which made the Granby tuff or ash bed erupted
intermittently for a long period of time. Usually, the river which
emerged from the eastern mountain range brought so much fluvial debris
that ash is not in evidence except in the immediate vicinity of the
craters located between the Notch and the summit of Mount Holyoke. Even
though alluvial sands and gravels supplant the tuff here and there, the
river did not succeed in closing or quenching those fiery vents. The
rocks now present recount a struggle in which, at times, the river
encroached upon the cinder cones; at others, the ashes choked the stream
and buried its alluvial wash.
While the volcanoes rumbled and erupted, earth forces intermittently
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;
the easterly ones were piled against the westerly, and their eastern
edges were pushed down into the basin floor and the western borders rode
up on their neighbors. Through all this tremendous disturbance the great
stream pouring out of the mountain pass kept the elevated blocks cut
down and the small basins filled in. Earthquakes, erupting volcanoes,
and shifting rivers made life for the dinosaurs troubled and a bit
uncertain.
Only once did the volcanoes dominate the situation in the valley, and
that was very early in their history. A group of vents, localized along
a southward trending zone about a mile west of the Notch, and another
group along the present course of the Connecticut River from Turners
Falls to Sunderland poured out billions of cubic feet of black basaltic
lava into the center of the lowland. Eruptions followed in such rapid
succession that the rivers never scoured the surface of the earlier
flows. Lava piled up 400 feet thick in the center of the basin east of
the Mount Tom Range; it moved eastward in a flow which thinned against
the fans of rivers issuing from the eastern mountain, and it ended in a
formidable wall of scoria confronting the mountain streams. Lava buried
the northern basin from Sunderland to Turners Falls and beyond, while
the southern basin filled from Northampton to New Haven. But lava
dominance was short-lived, and even before its bubbly surface reddened
to the weather, streams had covered it with gravel.
The lava flows are the most resistant materials used in the lowland
design. They form the ridge east of Greenfield in the northern basin.
The Holyoke and Mount Tom Ranges are remnants of these flows, tilted at
moderate but varying angles by the recurrent movements which enlivened
the epoch of dinosaurs and volcanoes.
[Illustration: Fig. 9. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central Massachusetts during volcanic stage._]
[Illustration: Fig. 10. _Block diagram showing the Triassic basins
of central Massachusetts._]
The most spectacular episode of lava extrusion was localized in a small
volcanic center situated about one mile west of the Notch in the Holyoke
Range. All flows in the range moved away from this center, and before
the great outpouring took place, minor explosive outbursts had built
cones of ash with bases up to a mile in diameter. Small lava tongues are
interspersed with the ash beds, and mixtures of sand and lava tell of
breaks through the 1,500 feet of sandy fill which was rapidly
accumulating in the basin. Throughout this early period of volcanic
activity the streams brought out so much wash from the eastern mountains
that they soon dominated the scene in Massachusetts, and in Connecticut
volcanoes gained ascendancy for one brief moment of geologic time, when
an early flow covered much of the valley from Hartford south.
_The Original Valley_
The first and oldest ingredients in the central design are entirely red.
The materials are fragments of older rocks—granite and gneiss, schist
and pegmatite, feldspar and quartz. They are invariably coarse, for
every layer of inwashed sediment has pieces over an eighth of an inch in
diameter, and only the coarser particles were smoothed. The finer
particles were not moved about enough to have their sharp corners worn
away. The pebbles and clay in the thick layers of conglomerate at the
French King Bridge were dropped by rushing, overloaded torrents
deploying on a lowland—a situation not unlike the one at Townshend,
Vermont, during the hurricane deluge. Only fine debris was transported
across the fans to the far side of the basin. The western hills made
small contributions of sediment; but their streams brought particles
which never exceeded an inch in diameter, and in quantities so moderate
that the fragments underwent some sorting and sizing as they were spread
over the lowland. From the very start the valley was deeper near the
east wall than the west; and the eastern mountain block was greatly
elevated, whereas the western block was simply a hilly upland.
[Illustration: Fig. 11. _Map of the old volcanic region near Mount
Hitchcock and west of the Notch._]
The edge of the eastern mountain mass is located at the French King
Bridge and passes half a mile west of Montague. Its location beneath the
younger fill is known less perfectly farther south, but it seems to
extend through Amherst, certainly west of South Amherst and Granby and
probably east of the Notch. At least two mountains rose above the
ancient lowland floor; the northern one is a long ridge of schist
between Bernardston and Mount Hermon, and the other is Mount Warner.
Mount Warner is an island of highland rocks in a sea of red sandstone
fill. The Bernardston ridge resembles a peninsula in somewhat analogous
sedimentary surroundings. The two eminences reveal the form of the
valley floor and the western hills at the dawn of the Triassic period,
for they were spared from destruction by burial, until deep erosion
exposed them again in Miocene time.
_Hot Springs in Central Massachusetts_
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.
It is the vein which was worked in the old Loudville lead mine. There
are other veins in the western and eastern highlands at Hatfield, at the
Northampton reservoir near Whately, and at Leverett. All are in
fractures which were still partly open when the valley first took form.
_The Marginal Uplands_
The rocks which formed the high eastern mountain range of Triassic time
and the rocks which made the old western hills and underlay the basin
floor comprise essentially a single group characterized by its
complexity. At one place the rock resembles sandstone, but the layers
stand on end; at another, it looks like shale, but the stone breaks
across the color banding instead of parallel to it; and at a third place
a fissure seems to have opened and had a crystallizing melt poured into
it. These tabular, filled fissures can be found nearly everywhere,
coursing in every direction and at all conceivable inclinations to form
a network that binds the older rocks into a firmly knit whole. The
fillings, or dikes, are like reinforcing rods, holding the rocks
together and withstanding the agents of destruction. Thus, the story of
the highlands has three distinctive phases,—a relatively young phase
when the interlacing reinforcements were poured into fractures; a
somewhat more remote stage, when the bedded rocks were crumpled into
their inclined positions; and an earlier stage, when the bedded rocks
were deposited. The geologic dates of these three events may vary from
one locality to another, and they certainly are different in the Eastern
Upland as compared with the Western Upland; but the events always
occurred in this sequence and constitute the broader aspects of the
story at all places.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. _Block diagram showing topography during
formation of the lead veins._]
_The Eastern Upland_
The Eastern Upland includes the land between the Connecticut Valley and
the Atlantic Ocean. At present, it has the general form of a broad
rolling highland with ridges and valleys that have a north-south trend.
Close inspection shows that the rocks in the ridges are different from
those in the long valleys. Also the layering of the materials ranges
from a vertical attitude, as at Ware and Brimfield, to undulating and
almost horizontal positions, as at Spencer and Worcester.
Through vertical and horizontal beds alike run those reinforcing
sheets—some tabular and vertical, called dikes; others also tabular but
horizontal, called sills; and some are just huge, irregular masses
without visible bottoms, called stocks and batholiths. Some of them,
composed of uniform, small, light-colored minerals, are granite; others
are made entirely of large minerals over an inch across and are called
pegmatite; a few, with cuneiform intergrowths of a dark mineral in a
light one, arranged like Arabic writing, are known as graphic granite.
Pl. 5. _Intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks._
[Illustration: a. _Columnar lava rests upon red sandstone in the
cliffs at Greenfield._]
[Illustration: b. _Fissures were filled with liquid rock that became
solid and bonded wall to wall at the Windsor Dam._]
Every one of these masses flowed into the rocks along fractures and
other zones of weakness, crystallizing as they lost their heat and
solvents to the hot springs of that ancient time. They are all invaders,
or intrusives, which inserted themselves into the older beds. Whether
they were squeezed into the fissures by the pressures that crumpled the
original beds into their upturned positions, or whether they, like the
liquid in a hydraulic press, transferred pressure from a deep reservoir
to the walls of the fissures and so pushed the beds into their distorted
forms, is unknown. Two features are clear; the distortion of the beds
and intrusion of the liquid bodies were almost simultaneous, and the hot
springs associated with them were still active at the dawn of Triassic
time. These profound disturbances transformed the land into a series of
elevated, wave-like folds, and rains promptly began to tear away at the
summits of the newly raised mountains. From them was carved a serrate
and rugged landscape, part of which was later buried beneath the
Triassic fill.
_Coal Swamps in Massachusetts and Rhode Island_
Among the strata of the Eastern Upland which were folded, intruded,
baked hard, and stewed in hot spring water, one group stands
pre-eminent. It forms a broad band starting north of Worcester and
reaching to Providence and beyond. Nearly everywhere it carries coaly
material or impressions of plants which are now extinct, but which
flourished in the Coal Age or Carboniferous period. Some of the coal
seams were mined in the Providence basin, but they had been so heated by
intrusive granite that they are partly graphitic and proved difficult to
burn. The great extent of some of the coal seams suggests a panorama of
immense swamps, and of land so flat that, for long periods, streams
brought no sediment, and the trees and water-loving plants furnished the
only fill. 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; and farther to the northwest they were bounded by a chain of
rolling hills.
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. And in the Western Upland across the red-rock inlay, it is
possible to see some of the land as it was before trees took root in the
swamps, and rivers brought sands and muds from the vegetated hills that
hemmed in the coal basin.
_The Western Upland_
Many years ago, when transportation facilities were not what they are
now, New England settlers mined iron ore from the hill north of
Bernardston and smelted it in local charcoal furnaces. The rocks
containing the iron are creased into sharp, close folds, and they came
into such close contact with a hot granite intrusive that their minerals
were changed by its action. This granite, however, is older than the one
which is associated with the disturbed Carboniferous beds, for it was
intruded when the Devonian sediments from Gaspé to Connecticut were
deformed. It was this profound disturbance that turned the red rocks of
Roche Percé from a horizontal to a vertical position and raised a
mountain range which stretched through all of northern New Brunswick,
Maine, the lowland section of New Hampshire, and a belt extending for
some miles east and west of the Connecticut Valley. The eroded remnants
of these Shickshock Mountains formed the backdrop for the great
Carboniferous coal swamps in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Acadia.
The iron ore was a hot spring replacement of a limestone containing
shells of sea organisms which lived when chordate animals first became
abundant. This was the Devonian period in geologic history—the time when
a backbone appeared essential in every really high-grade animal. The
limestone rests upon a beach gravel, now consolidated into a quartzite
conglomerate. The gravel consisted of small white quartz pebbles which
came from the many veins in the steeply inclined slates of the adjacent
coast.
Marine deposits of Devonian age are found as far south as Leverett, and
scattered outcrops indicate that the old seaway reached northward up the
Connecticut, entering Canada east of Lake Memphremagog. Thence it spread
eastward to Gaspé and westward to Montreal, and around the north and
west side of the Adirondack Mountains into New York State. A low rolling
land where the Green Mountains stand today formed the western shore of
the Devonian sea for many miles northward into Quebec. The Adirondack
and Taconic Mountains were a fused aggregate of undulating uplands which
limited the seaway on the south along the International Boundary. Its
eastern shore lay far beyond the horizon of the region described in this
brief account.
The rocks of the old Devonian coast in Massachusetts were chiefly
slates, cut by many quartz veins. They are exposed along the Mohawk
Trail in the ascent from Greenfield to Shelburne Summit, and they
continue northward in an almost unbroken band through Bernardston,
Brattleboro, and Northfield (Vermont) to Lake Memphremagog. They contain
casts of planktonic life which inhabited the Ordovician seas in these
northern latitudes, and the Ordovician strata, together with still older
Cambrian sediments found below them, meet the Devonian beach deposits at
a sharp angle, just as the slates along the coast of Maine meet the
modern beach sands and gravels. Like the slates of Maine, they were
eroded deeply before the beach existed, and their slaty structure and
their steeply inclined attitudes were acquired in a still more ancient
epoch of deformation.
The folded rocks of Ordovician age flanked the highland area which now
constitutes the axis of the Green Mountains. West of the Green Mountains
they make the Taconic Range, and to the east they appear in ranges that
go under a variety of names, including the Northfield and the Lowell
Mountains. In the Taconics the folds have the shape of waves advancing
westward from the center of disturbance in the Green Mountain axis;
within the Connecticut basin the Ordovician folds have wave-fronts which
advance from the same axis eastward across the Memphremagog sea. Along
the eastern margin of the old land a series of dark green intrusives
called peridotite welled up from the depths of the earth, and they now
cut through the rocks extending from Chester, Massachusetts, to Thetford
Mines, Quebec; they are like giant boundary posts marking the ancient
line of demarcation between sea and land in Cambro-Ordovician time.
Originally the folded strata in the Taconic region were deposited in
clear marine waters, where calcium carbonate accumulated rapidly. But
the sediments of the same age east of the Green Mountain land represent
an unbroken succession of hardened muds, which rest on sandy muds, and
on fine and coarse products of violent volcanic eruptions—tuffs and
agglomerates—and lava flows. No lime-secreting animals could thrive in
this sea, although they numbered billions in the western waters; for
only floating plankton could escape the interminable mud, and they
drifted up and down the coast from Quebec to Connecticut. One or two
straits may have connected the clear waters of the west with the muddy
waters of the east, for some of the planktonic organisms have been found
in the muddier sediments of the westerly waterbody.
The Cambro-Ordovician sea lapped even older rocks, contorted and cut by
intrusives which bonded them precisely as much younger invading liquid
rock bonded the younger sediments of the Eastern and Western Uplands.
The older rocks were also laid in a sea—a sea so much more ancient than
the Cambrian and Ordovician seaways that its shoreline and even its form
and extent are at best conjectural. And when we study these oldest
marine beds, we find that their ingredients were in part derived from
still more ancient sedimentary rocks, which accumulated in the sea, and
that these old beds were elevated into the land that supplied the waste
now found in the oldest coherent section of rocks in western New
England. Indeed, the dawn of the Cambrian period, when life first became
abundant, was merely a half-way mark through geologic time. Although
half a billion years have elapsed from the Cambrian to the present,
another half a billion years reach still farther back towards the
beginnings of earth history, beyond which science has not yet peered
successfully. These billion years are but a finite segment of history,
bounded by the infinite past and the infinity of the future.
It seems appropriate, therefore, to end our journey down the fourth
dimension at this point, and as we retrace our steps, we can profitably
survey the chronologic succession of events and scenes which followed
each other from Cambrian time to the Twentieth Century A.D.
The Story of Central Massachusetts
The protracted story of central Massachusetts might be that of many
another section of eastern North America, except for minor details. In
Cambrian time an inland sea, well stocked with simple marine organisms,
washed the shores of an archipelago which extended north and south
through the Berkshire Hills, the Green Mountains, and the Notre Dame
Mountains. Composed of rocks which themselves had had a long and
involved geological past, the islands rose intermittently as streams and
waves wore them away. Clear water and sandy beaches stretched along
their western shore, and the original Adirondack Mountains were just
visible from the summits of the higher islands. Swift streams raced down
their eastern slopes, carrying gravels, sands, and silts into the
eastern arm of the sea, and only free-swimming animals could survive in
its turbid waters. For a time, volcanoes erupted and fumed along the
entire eastern coast from Thetford Mines, Quebec, to Plainfield,
Massachusetts, but their activity was short-lived. Only the streams
which drained the broad islands endured, and they never ceased to pour
mud into the eastern ocean. Gaps in the island chain permitted some of
the free-swimming organisms to migrate to the western sea, where
bottom-living plants and animals were actively secreting the limy shells
and skeletons which helped build thick deposits of Cambrian limestone.
These conditions continued into the ensuing Ordovician period of
geologic time, but gradually the situation changed. Again the volcanoes
renewed their activity, and masses of dark peridotite were intruded
along the eastern shore; the island chain rose rapidly, and the straits
closed. The elevated land began to expand outward, and folds spread
eastward on the east and westward on the west, like waves from a center
of disturbance. So great was the pressure that portions of the old land
were sheared outward over the folded sediments. The Taconic disturbance
was on from the city of Quebec to the city of Washington; and the
streams, like ants, kept at their endless task of carrying sand and
gravel into any and every depression they could find. They piled up
great thicknesses of Silurian sandstone in Maine and New York, and so
effectively did they tear down the Taconic Mountains that the Silurian
sea was ultimately able to penetrate the region from Thetford Mines,
Quebec, almost to White River Junction on the Connecticut River.
[Illustration: Fig. 13. _Block diagram showing main features of
central New England during middle Ordovician time._]
[Illustration: Fig. 14. _Block diagram showing main features of
central New England at the end of Ordovician time._]
[Illustration: Fig. 15. _Block diagram showing main features of
central New England during the Devonian period._]
One period later a Devonian sea followed in the wake of the Silurian
sea, but its waters penetrated even farther south to Leverett,
Massachusetts. The quartz gravels of its advancing beach covered the
worn flanks of the Taconic folds. Sea animals left their shells to form
a bed of limestone which may be seen today at Bernardston. But again the
sea was shouldered aside by the restive land, which rose from Gaspé to
Virginia. Much of the region affected by the Taconic disturbance was
elevated again, and a broad band of Devonian sediments was folded
closely through northern New Brunswick, southern Quebec, northern Maine,
northern and central New Hampshire, and central Massachusetts. Granites
welled up into the sediments, and dikes filled all the fissures. The
baking, stewing, and reinforcing they gave to the older sediments made
them so firm that they are still one of the most coherent and resistant
series of rocks in New England and maritime Canada. This was the
Shickshock or Acadian disturbance. Meanwhile the first forests took root
on the long piedmont plains that spread from the rising mountains
westward into the Catskill Plateau of New York State (Catskill
sandstone) and eastward to the coast of Maine (Perry formation).
The margins of the piedmont plain sank. Vast, luxuriant swamps succeeded
the old forests in Pennsylvania on the western piedmont, and in Rhode
Island, Massachusetts, and Acadia on the eastern piedmont. The swamp
vegetation later became the coal seams of eastern North America, and
well does this time merit its name—the Carboniferous period. The
Shickshock Mountains remained in the hinterland forming highlands from
Spencer, Massachusetts, westward into New York State; but they were
shorn of their crags, and only on rare occasions were the streams swift
enough to carry silt into the swamps and to bury the accumulated peat.
[Illustration: Fig. 16. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central New England during the Carboniferous period._]
[Illustration: Fig. 17. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central New England in early Triassic time._]
[Illustration: Fig. 18. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central New England during late Triassic time._]
Torn and twisted as New England had been by the two previous
disturbances, it was to suffer yet again. The entire northern section of
the eastern coal swamps began to rise, and the movement spread southward
through New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the
Carolinas, and Georgia. Granites insinuated themselves once more into
fissures in the elevated landmass; the rocks were pushed outward from
the raised block; and the sediments of the coal fields were thrown into
folds which diminished in magnitude towards Ohio on one side and Cape
Breton Island on the other. This was the Appalachian Revolution. When it
was over, even the youngest sediments were interlaced with granite
sheets and dikes; they were cooked hard in hot spring waters; and they
were crumpled into close, long north-south folds. The landscape was
changed completely: mountains had replaced the peat swamps; and from
their summits alpine glaciers were plucking rock fragments which they
dumped into the Boston basin. Streams, too, cut deeply into the
mountainous upland, but there were no other local basins in which the
fluvial debris could come to rest.
This was, in brief, the course of events which transpired in that era of
geologic time called the Paleozoic. Twice as long as all ensuing time,
the era was one of kaleidoscopic change, with placid seas, eruptive
volcanoes, swift streams, and towering mountains competing for the lead
roles in three rather similar historical cycles. When the Paleozoic era
was over, the matrix of tough, resistant rocks was ready for the
delicate inlaid design which was imposed upon it in the Triassic period.
There was nothing tranquil about Triassic time. While hot springs, born
in the cooling granites, still oozed from rents in the mountainsides, a
tremendous 100-mile-long rift tore through the east margin of the old
Shickshock Mountain foundation. The rift was a clean break at some
places, but elsewhere it was splintered and offset. Each northern sector
of the break invariably ended west of the beginning of a southern one,
and the intervening rock is characterized by multiple fissures with more
or less displacement of their walls.
The block east of the rift moved south and rose, while that to the west
was depressed into a tilted and asymmetric basin. Mountain streams
flowing eastward to the Atlantic were caught at the base of the rift,
and a new set of torrents dashed down the west-facing scarp of the
elevated block. After every cloudburst these new streams left their
contributions of boulders in screes along the east side of the basin.
The gravels steadily increased in thickness, covering the hills and
valleys that furrowed the lowland floor. Much of the ancient relief
still lies buried beneath the fill, but some of the eminences were
exhumed one hundred and fifty million years later and have received
man-given names like Mount Warner and Bernardston Ridge. As the basin
subsided vertically for more than a mile, the mountain streams spread
fans westward across most of its floor, restricting the contributions of
the western rivers to a zone which is now less than two miles wide. The
largest of the eastern rivers wore a valley three miles wide where it
entered the lowland northeast of Granby.
Then volcanoes broke loose in the basin floor. Lava oozed through the
sand west of the Notch in the Holyoke Range, and it frothed out of the
openings or was blown violently from them. But by sheer persistence the
rivers still dominated the scene as volcanic activity waxed and waned,
and 1,500 feet of alluvial wash piled up around the volcanic cones. The
energy of the volcanoes was ultimately spent, but for some time lava
poured out of craters along a line extending southward from the main
eruptive center, and from a second center which approximates the course
of the Connecticut River from Sunderland to Turners Falls. It flowed
westward into the middle of the basin in a series of sheets until it was
400 feet deep; it pressed upward against the sand plains along the
western hills; it surged east up the fan slopes where it ended in a
frothy wall; and it spread southward from these two centers and from
others to New Haven. The lava, now tilted, gives substance to the
Greenfield Ridge, the Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom Ranges, and the long
line of hills that pass through Hartford and Meriden.
Spectacular was this outburst in its time, and profound was its
influence upon later scenery, but short was its duration. Before weather
could redden the lava surface, streams washed gravel over it; and only
at the main centers between the Mount Holyoke Hotel and the
Amherst-South Hadley road were the volcanoes able to hold out against
the relentless activity of running water.
The block east of the rift continued to move southward and to rise,
while the streams draining it entrenched themselves in an effort to
remain at grade with the basin floor. The moving mountain mass pushed
the lava flow up on end and twisted its eastern edge around, dragging it
along to the south. The rock splinters which were formed in the process
sliced the basin sediments into small blocks, some of which can be seen
north of Turners Falls and also at the Holyoke Range. Ultimately the
upward and southwestward movement along the rift piled the eastern
blocks against the more westerly ones, pushing the west side of each
eastern block up on the east side of the adjacent western one, and
depressing its eastern side more deeply into the basin floor. The many
fractures which were made weakened the basalt lava sheet along certain
zones where, in recent time, the elements have worn the notches in the
Holyoke Range.
[Illustration: Fig. 19. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central New England at the opening of the Cenozoic era._]
[Illustration: Fig. 20. _Block diagram showing the main features of
central New England at the present time._]
Streams from the eastern highland stubbornly filled up the holes and
planed off the raised blocks during the entire period of intermittent
movement. In the midst of the tussle between earth forces and fluvial
agents the volcanoes again broke into explosive eruptions, and volcanic
ash filled many of the block-like depressions all the way from Granby to
localities south of Holyoke. Then the fiery vents cooled, and the earth
movements diminished in their vigor. But they left a mountain front so
steep that talus and landslide deposits accumulated at its base near
Mount Toby; and the block mountain range was so high that glaciers may
have wreathed its summit. The mountain mass descended southward, and it
was penetrated by at least one low pass northeast of Granby.
In the basin itself, alluvial fans encroached from the eastern mountain
front, but out in the middle of the valley ephemeral playas and shifting
lakes were numerous. Rushes fringed the lake shores; fish stocked their
waters; and dinosaurs lumbered over the adjacent flats. The region was
one of violent rains and seasonal droughts, of hot days and frosty
nights—a semi-desert country lying in the lee of the Appalachian ranges,
somewhat as the intermontane valleys of the West lie in the rain shadow
of bordering mountains. Eight thousand feet of sediments poured into the
Triassic trough while these conditions lasted, but the situation altered
slowly as the Jurassic period dawned.
Throughout earth history, vulcanism and mountain-making have been
spasmodic events; but so long as rain has fallen and water has run
downhill to the sea, the unspectacular rivers have never relinquished
their task of reducing the lands to the lowest grade on which water will
flow. During all of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and even into
the Eocene epoch of the Tertiary, New England’s rivers worked towards
this end, and they came as close to attaining their goal as the restless
earth has ever permitted them to do. The region from the Atlantic to the
bases of the Green Mountains and the White Mountains was reduced to a
broad, faintly terraced erosional plain. Not all of it was leveled, for
Mount Wachusett, Mount Monadnock, the summits of Mount Greylock and
Mount Ascutney resisted the wear and tear of the weather and of running
water, and retained some of their original stature. At the headwaters of
the streams the Green Mountain chain and the White Mountains also
withstood reduction to the common level, forming the divide between St.
Lawrence and Atlantic drainage. Such rivers as the Merrimack, the West,
the Deerfield, and the Farmington followed somewhat different courses
than they do today, for some of the drainage heading in the Western
Upland of New England flowed straight across the red-rock valley to the
sea.
During Tertiary time the entire region rose vertically as a unit. The
rise was intermittent, punctuated by long stillstands of the upland with
respect to the sea. One of the earlier uplifts carried the land some 200
feet higher; and although the rivers maintained their courses, they
deepened their valleys and ultimately widened them into broad, open
plains far back towards their headwater reaches. In the resistant rocks
on either side of the red-rock basin the valleys were sharp and well
defined, but in the soft Triassic sediments the rivers cut wide swaths,
nearly eliminating the low divides which kept them in their independent
courses.
In Middle Tertiary time renewed uplifts occurred, and ultimately the
strathed surface was elevated 1,800 feet inland at the Green Mountain
divide. Once more the rivers started busily cutting down; but in a
protracted stillstand, while the New England upland still lacked 700
feet of its present elevation, the Atlantic Ocean planed off the hills
in southern Connecticut as far north as Middletown, and the Farmington
River adopted a more direct route across the marine plain to the sea.
Before the West, Deerfield, and Westfield Rivers could lower their
channels to grade in the reinforced rocks of the Eastern Upland, a
tributary of the Farmington worked headward along the poorly
consolidated red rocks of the basin and diverted the waters of the
northern streams into its own channel. This was the birth of the
Connecticut River, and in late Tertiary time, the energies of the
new-born stream were effectively expended widening the whole of the
Triassic basin. Even some of its larger tributaries developed wide
valley floors with steep walls in the hard crystalline rocks of the
uplands. Only the lava flows and the buried old-rock mountains withstood
planation in the red-rock basin. The flows form such trap ridges as
Greenfield Ridge, the Mount Holyoke Range, the Mount Tom Range, the
Hanging Hills of Meriden. Exhumed mountains are typified by Mount
Warner.
All of northeastern North America was raised to great heights in late
Pliocene time, and the Atlantic Ocean withdrew at least fifty miles
southeastward from the present shoreline. The rejuvenated rivers
deepened their valleys, forming narrow, sharply incised canyons like the
gorges of the Hudson and the Saguenay; and the Connecticut made a deep
groove in the lowland floor, cutting to depths which have been partly
disclosed by drilling at the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Bridge and the
Sunderland Bridge.
While the land stood in this high position, one winter’s snow in the
White Mountains failed to melt before the next began to fall. Snowfall
accumulated upon snowfall, covering not only the White Mountains, but
all of Canada and New England; and the Ice Age was here to stay more or
less continuously for a million years. The ice piled up against the
highest mountains and ultimately rose so far above them that it slid
over their tops without attempting to detour around them. Its surface
may have been 13,000 feet above sea level in northern New Hampshire, and
its surface slope, which is estimated at 150 feet per mile, would give a
thickness of 10,000 feet at Northampton. The continent yielded slowly
under this great load, and it sank until all of the elevation gained in
the Pliocene movement was wiped out, and more besides. The ice radiated
from the centers of maximum accumulation—at first from the White
Mountains, and then from northern Ontario, and finally from Labrador.
The continental glacier crept southward to Long Island and Martha’s
Vineyard, where its front melted in the waters of the Atlantic as fast
as new ice came up behind. It dragged and pushed and carried debris,
only to dump it in a hummocky ridge, like a rampart, to mark its
farthest advance.
At last the glaciers started to melt even faster than new masses moved
down from the north, and the ice front began to recede 400 to 700 feet
per year. The sea followed it, up the Hudson, up the St. Lawrence, in
over the coastal lowlands for a short distance; and everywhere pounding
waves made beaches at the water line. And in the path of its slow,
deliberate retreat, the glacier left rock debris—boulders on the hills
and in the valleys, boulders everywhere; all the landscape was marred
and desolate.
The ice had weighed the pre-glacial valleys down more deeply in the
north than in the south. One such valley was the Connecticut Lowland, in
which water gathered to overflow-height at Middletown. Thus Lake
Springfield came into being, and it spread northward as the ice front
receded. North of the Holyoke Range another lake formed, and this
northern body of water has been named Lake Hadley. Streams flowed off
the ice, off the hills—flowed with unimpeded vigor, for there were no
trees or grass to retard the run-off. Deltas grew out from the shores,
and annual layers of clay settled on the lake bed.
The ice grew thinner, its area smaller, and its load lighter; and as
Mother Earth lost her heavy burden, the land rose, more in the north
than in the south. The differential rise decanted the water southward
out of the lake basins, and the seas retired from the coastal lowlands.
Old shores and sea beaches remained as flat terraces sloping gently
southward. The rivers raced down the steep beach slopes to the old lake
floors and sea bottom. They cut their channels deeply into the
unconsolidated deltas and meandered back and forth over the flat,
ungraded lacustrine plains, as if uncertain where to flow. 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, 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.
Interesting Places
Books and periodicals supply dinner menus for the hostess and list
theatrical offerings for the habitué. Surely suggestions of places for a
picnic or an evening drive are equally in order. Experience, some of it
painful, soon reduces the number of pleasant picnic sites: poison ivy or
a deceptive bog may linger in the memory and automatically eliminate
some otherwise delightful spot. 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; but places to stop, meditate, and conjure up
the past appeal to others. The Valley and its environs have something
for every temperament and every mood.
_Mount Lincoln in Pelham_
Mount Lincoln is remote enough from highways to offer some measure of
retreat, yet it is not discouragingly inaccessible. The summit rises
about 300 feet above the nearest road, which lies a mile away by
woodland trail. It is Pelham’s highest eminence, and its height is
enhanced by a fire tower which affords a magnificent view in every
compass direction.
The gently undulating New England upland stretches off to the north and
east for miles. The innumerable hills which compose it integrate to form
a horizontal skyline, which suggests a flat erosional plane, originally
formed at, or near, the level of the sea. To the northeast Mount
Monadnock in New Hampshire rises prominently above the general level,
for its extremely resistant rock withstood reduction by weather and
water more effectively than the weaker bedrock on every side.
The valley lowland begins but three miles to the southwest. 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.
Mount Lincoln and the surrounding hills are strewn with boulders. Every
slope is dotted with large irregularly shaped rocks, many of which have
smoothed facets marred by minute scratches. The boulders were left by
the Great Ice Sheet when it melted off New England, and the scratches
were made when the ice dragged the boulders over hard rock surfaces.
These stones came down from the north, and among them you may recognize
types which you have seen in the ledges around Orange and Northfield.
Early Pelham settlers found the boulders as much in their way as the
trees; so they burned or used the trees, and they piled the stones in
long rows to fence their fields. Stone fences characterize all glaciated
regions, and here they follow the roadsides for miles, reaching to the
edge of the deposits in glacial Lake Hadley.
_Mount Toby_
“Let’s go to Mount Toby” usually means to go to the camp ground along
Roaring Brook at the east base of the mountain, or to one of the sugar
camps on the west slope, or to the Sunderland Caves at the north end.
All of these places are worth knowing, but the view from the mountain
top deserves at least one trip, and the wood road from Roaring Brook is
replete with interesting sights.
[Illustration: Pl. 6. _View of the Holyoke Range from Mt. Lincoln._]
[Illustration: Fig. 21. _Map showing location of interesting
places._]
1. Davis pyrite mine
2. Plainfield manganese mine
3. Lithia spodumene pegmatite
4. Chesterfield tourmaline locality
5. Westfield marble quarry
6. Williamsburg galena vein
7. Hatfield lead mine
8. West Farms lead mine
9. Loudville lead mine
10. Westfield trap quarry
11. Bernardston magnetite mine
12. Gill dinosaur track quarry
13. Mount Toby
14. Sunderland Caves
15. Roaring brook
16. Whittemore’s Ferry fish quarry
17. Mt. Sugarloaf
18. Leverett lead vein
19. Notch quarry
20. Northampton granite quarry
21. Titan’s Piazza
22. Titan’s Pier
23. Ox-bow lake
24. Smith’s ferry dinosaur tracks
25. Varved clay pits
26. Mt. Grace
27. French King bridge
28. Mt. Lincoln
29. Pelham asbestos mine
The side road to Roaring Brook leaves the highway east of Mount Toby
just north of the old cemetery, and the camp site is on the west side of
the Central Vermont Railway tracks. The gray rocks east of the tracks
are part of the ancient mountains of Triassic time. Their lofty summits
have been worn away by the unceasing activity of weather and running
water, and they are now lower than the fans of waste which was
discharged from the ancient valleys. Roaring Brook is continuing the
work of erosion as it tumbles down from Mount Toby, and frost has
loosened the great boulders that lie on the mountainside.
The rock along Roaring Brook is very different from that east of the
railroad. It looks a great deal like concrete, with a large assortment
of aggregate materials mixed in with the cement. The rock is
conglomerate, a mass of coarse stones washed out of the ancient Triassic
mountains, deposited at their base and in contemporary stream valleys,
and then cemented during the ensuing ages. Many of the pebbles in the
conglomerate cannot be found in the old rocks east of the railroad
tracks. Actually these rocks change in character at different levels in
the uplands of today, and still higher changes which were present in
this mountain group during Triassic time have been destroyed, though the
record of their presence has been retained in the fragments which
compose the conglomerate.
The woodland trail starts up the mountain about 100 yards north of the
picnic grounds. The rock beside it is red granite, and the streams of
Triassic time flowed over it as they carried the gravel which now makes
the Mount Toby conglomerate. The latter first appears about 100 feet
uphill, and it is virtually the only rock exposed from this point to the
summit. Interspersed sandstone beds disintegrate easily and form quiet
pools and basins in the adjacent brook; the pools end a few feet
upstream where the water cascades over the edge of the next higher
conglomerate stratum.
Mount Toby’s summit rises above any other eminence in central
Massachusetts east of Ashfield and south of Mount Grace near Northfield.
From it the entire country to the south appears low and flat, except for
the teeth of the Mount Holyoke Range and the long ridge extending
southward from Mount Tom. A slope rises westward from the lowland to
meet the edge of the flat New England upland along a line that passes
through Shelburne, Conway, Goshen, and Granville. East of Toby this same
upland comes so close that it seems but a step across to it.
Many peaks may be seen rising above the New England upland. The one far
to the east is Wachusett. Up there to the north-northeast are Monadnock
and Mount Grace. Over in the northwest are Stratton and Glastenbury in
Vermont, and much nearer and lower is Bald Mountain at Shelburne Falls.
Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts, is almost due west.
The lowland was excavated after the New England upland was elevated, and
the main features which distinguish the present landscape were carved
out before the end of the Miocene epoch of Tertiary time. The high
points which surmount the upland are monadnocks which, like their
prototype Mount Monadnock, successfully resisted the ravages of time and
New England’s changing but rigorous climate.
_The Sunderland Caves_
The Sunderland Caves are on the northwest side of Mount Toby, just a
short walk and an easy climb from State Highway 63. They penetrate a
cliff made of conglomerate overlying a shale which accumulated in a
Triassic lake. The shale makes the floor of the cave. Joints, forming a
right angle with the cliff, break the conglomerate into giant blocks.
Frost, smooth shale surfaces, and gravity have caused the two end pieces
to creep away from the other conglomerate blocks. The second block from
the end has fallen against the end block, forming a high-roofed cave
about 100 feet long.
Directly southwest of the lower entrance to the cave, the shale beds are
highly distorted along the borders of a trough-like mass of angular
conglomerate or breccia, in which boulders up to six feet in diameter
are numerous. It is believed to be the record of a Triassic landslide,
which avalanched down the mountain front immediately to the east, and
into the old lake at the mountain base. It plowed up the clays in the
lake bed, carried some of them away, and furrowed the others into the
crumpled forms that are clearly visible along the path to the caves.
_Mount Sugarloaf_
Mount Sugarloaf does not offer Mount Lincoln’s retreat from crowds nor
Mount Toby’s expansive landscape, but it is accessible, and it provides
an unrivaled view of the valley between South Deerfield and the Holyoke
Range. Its red sandstones and conglomerates rise almost sheer for 500
feet above the Sunderland-South Deerfield road. On the northwest and
southeast sides the cliffs are determined by nearly vertical joint
planes. During the Ice Age, the southward-moving glacier plucked away
the loosely attached blocks facing the South Deerfield and Sunderland
sections of the lowland, leaving Sugarloaf as a remnant between the
joint surfaces.
The great bites which the meandering Connecticut River has taken out of
the lowland are visible east of Sunderland village and south towards
Hatfield. Each arc in the edge of the scalloped flood plain is the
extremity of a meander loop which the wandering river carved in its bank
and then abandoned by breaking through the narrow base or tongue, as it
did at the Northampton ox-bow.
An area of low, rolling, sandy hills extends through the pine woods for
a mile southward from South Deerfield. The hills are dunes which formed
when the Connecticut was picking its channel across the newly exposed
and barren bed of glacial Lake Hadley.
[Illustration: Fig. 22. _Meander scarps form a margin to the
Connecticut River flood plain at Sunderland._]
The panorama from the west side of Mount Sugarloaf centers about the
deep gorge of the Deerfield River. The top of the gorge widens out into
a broad strath and affords a glimpse of the more remote upland. The
river, emerging from this canyon during post-glacial time, built a huge
delta into glacial Lake Hadley, and much of the delta still remains in
the terrace which is utilized by the Boston and Maine Railroad as it
descends into Greenfield.
_Turners Falls_
Rushing water has a fascination which was frankly recognized by the
highway engineers who made the parking place facing the Connecticut
where Route 2 passes along the north side of Turners Falls. Here the
river drops over a series of sandstone ledges into a deep and narrow
channel at the east base of the trap ridge. 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. It was
turned southward once again by the trap ridge near Turners Falls. The
river soon cut through the unconsolidated lake beds and found that it
was out of its pre-glacial channel. The delta of Millers River had
diverted the water from the old rock valley beneath the Montague sand
plain, across a rock divide, and into the pre-glacial valley of Falls
River. The lake-fill in Falls River has been almost completely removed,
and Turners Falls now mark the spot where the Connecticut pours over the
bank and into the channel of its pre-glacial tributary. The falls have
receded upstream several hundred feet and have cut a deep gash in the
Triassic rocks.
Pl. 7. _Gorges, in highland and lowland alike, were formed when the
rivers were superimposed on coherent rock._
[Illustration: a. _View of the Deerfield River gorge emerging on
valley lowland as seen from Mt. Sugarloaf._]
[Illustration: b. _View of the French King gorge as seen from the
bridge._]
Turners Falls are the product of a series of coincidences. First, the
ice sheet and Lake Hadley buried all established drainage lines and
forced the streams to adopt new routes over the bared lake bottom. While
the lake existed, Millers River threw a weak obstruction in the path of
the Connecticut, diverting it to that part of the lowland where one of
its pre-glacial tributaries had excavated a slender rock gorge along a
fault plane. The river washed the lake deposits out of the gorge,
exposed the old bank of Falls River, and was busily cutting a new gorge
back into this bank when the dam was constructed and its erosive
activities were suddenly arrested.
_The French King Bridge_
The highway from Greenfield to Athol and Fitchburg passes Turners Falls
and crosses the Connecticut River near Millers Falls by way of the
French King Bridge. Here the roadway is more than 130 feet above the
water level. A picnic ground and parking place at the west end of the
bridge make it a particularly attractive place to stop and enjoy the
view upstream towards Northfield.
The river occupies a narrow rock gorge for a mile north of the bridge,
but at that point the valley widens out. This entire section of the
river’s course was established on the old bed of glacial Lake Hadley;
but after the unconsolidated deposits were washed away, the stream found
itself flowing along the weak contact between the Triassic conglomerate
on the west bank and the metamorphic rocks of the highlands on the east
bank. The river deepened its channel on the weak contact zone and made
the scenic cut over which the bridge was built.
The pre-glacial valley lies beneath the sand plain east of the river.
Millers River crosses this old valley between Millers Falls and its
confluence with the Connecticut, at the east end of the bridge. The
rapids at the junction can be traced to the ridge of crystalline rock
between the east bank of the present Connecticut and the west bank of
the pre-glacial Connecticut. The resistant ledge forms a barrier which
Millers River has not yet eroded to its grade.
The conglomerate beds on the west wall of the gorge dip steeply eastward
towards the river and end against the crystallines. The beds were
originally laid down with a gentle westward inclination. They were
tilted steeply in the opposite direction against the crystallines by
faulting, which elevated the ranges and pressed down the adjacent basin
during Triassic time.
_Titan’s Piazza and Titan’s Pier_
Not so long ago, giants and the devil received the credit or the blame
for such oddities in nature as rock-masses broken into six-sided
columns. Ireland has its Giant’s Causeway, and Yellowstone National Park
its Devil’s Post-pile. Titan’s Piazza and Titan’s Pier were likewise
attributed to activities of the leader of fallen angels and were given
names appropriate to such an origin by the early settlers. Dr.
Hitchcock, in characteristic fashion, undertook the task of correcting
the errors of puritanical psychology by renaming these places during one
of the early Mountain Day trips from Amherst College. The entire college
body sojourned to the west end of the Holyoke Range to hear the cliffs
renamed and their true nature explained.
Devil or no devil, those huge columns had a hot origin. The dark rock in
them is part of the main lava sheet which stretches across the valley in
the Holyoke Range and swings southward in the Nonotuck—Mount Tom Range.
The lava poured out of a series of volcanoes which were strung out along
a fissure about three miles to the east, and the molten mass had a
temperature of 1200° to 1300° C. The hot lava radiated its heat to the
sandstone below and to the air above; and, as it cooled, it contracted
like any other substance. The shrinkage was so great that series of
cracks formed in regular pattern, with each crack perpendicular to the
cooling surface. The stresses producing the fissures were equal in all
directions and would have made circular cracks and cylindrical columns;
but cylinders have non-cylindrical spaces between them, and the pattern
in which the columns are most nearly cylindrical and yet completely
occupy all space is hexagonal. So contraction broke the lava into
hexagonal columns perpendicular to the cooling surface. The columns are
parallel where the lava floor is regular but are curved or radial where
the floor is rolling.
Pl. 8. _Trap ridges, near and far._
[Illustration: a. _View of Titan’s Piazza at Hockanum showing the
columns resting upon the gently inclined sandstone._]
[Illustration: b. _View of the Springfield lowland from the
Westfield marble quarry. The Wilbraham Mts. appear in the distance.
The trap ridge extends through the middle and is breached by the
Westfield River._]
The columns on Titan’s Pier lie across the river from the
Northampton-Holyoke road in the narrow gap at Mount Tom station. The
basalt flow is inclined 15° southeastward, and the columns stand
perpendicular to the surface—hence they are inclined with respect to the
water level. Doubtless the devil docked his boat on the gently inclined
rock surface of the cove on the downstream side of the pier.
Titan’s Piazza is situated east of the road to the Mount Holyoke House.
It is an extremely narrow ledge backed by a stockade of columns. The
front of the piazza is literally strewn with wreckage from the house,
for a slope over 100 feet high is covered with angular pieces of basalt
which have fallen from the back wall. The lower ends of the columns
break off into shallow hexagonal saucers with the concave sides up. Many
have slid down the slope, to the delight of the birds that bathe in
them. Higher up the cliff, the saucers become deeper, and towards the
top the columns scale on into bullet shaped masses.
_Westfield Marble Quarry_
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. It follows the canyon brink about 500 feet above
the stream. Near the hilltop, a side road turns north to the Westfield
Marble quarry, which provides a vantage point overlooking fifty miles of
country to the north, east and south.
The Westfield River meanders eastward across the flat lowland. Its banks
are terraced, each level cut in the lake beds or in the delta which the
river built in glacial Lake Springfield. The scalloped margins of the
terraces are the extremities of meander loops which developed when the
river was not entrenched as deeply in the unconsolidated deposits as it
is today.
The flatness of the twenty-mile strip of lowland is impressive, for it
ends only at the Wilbraham Mountains, eight miles east of Springfield.
Beneath the lowland lie soft and gently dipping sandstones and sandy
shales, capped by a thin veneer of lake clays and river sands. The
shales are the youngest Triassic beds remaining in the region, and they
outcrop between Thompsonville and Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Younger
shales above them succumbed to Tertiary erosion.
The Wilbraham Mountains are granite and gneiss which formed the roots of
the ancient Triassic ranges. Their present accordant summits are a
tribute to the leveling activities which running water performed on a
quiescent land, whereas the deep V-shaped valleys incised in the level
summits record uplift and quickened erosion in Tertiary and glacial
time. Indeed, the lowland itself owes its existence to the power of
rejuvenated streams working on non-resisting rocks.
The Holyoke and Mount Tom ranges are visible far to the northeast, and a
chain of low hills connects Tom with the ridges between Hartford and
Avon, Connecticut. These linear hills surmount the lowland because they
are made of basaltic lava, which is better able to resist the rain and
the weather than the sandstones and shales above and below. Scattered
flat-topped hills between Southwick and Granby are sheets of basalt-like
rock called diabase, which was inserted between a sandstone roof and
floor. Nowhere can one better appreciate the highly individualized
imprint which each geological element has made upon the central New
England landscape.
_The Old Lead Mines_
The colonial period in our nation’s history was characterized by an
ignorance of its mineral wealth and a dependence upon Europe for most
raw materials, especially essential metals. During the War for
Independence, European supplies were cut off, and Yankee ingenuity had
to make the most of local deposits of metallic minerals. It was not long
before mines were in operation on several lead veins in the Connecticut
Valley, yielding a supply of lead for the duration of the war. But the
mines were small, and most of them were soon abandoned, remaining only
as historical sites, or as collecting localities for the mineralogist.
Five of these old deposits are still accessible: four lie west of the
valley at Loudville, West Farms, Hatfield, and Williamsburg; an
important one is situated east of the valley at Leverett. All are very
similar in geology and mineralogy, yet each possesses its own
individuality.
The Loudville vein was worked intermittently as late as 1861. It follows
a fault fracture between walls of gneiss, but at the southwest end of
the vein some of the minerals are disseminated through the Triassic
sandstone and conglomerate. This feature indicates that the sediments
were unconsolidated at the time of mineralization. The fault zone
resembles many analogous fissures which give forth hot mineral-bearing
waters in the Basin and Range region of Nevada, for the charged waters
have impregnated the sands which cover the fissures.
The Loudville vein contains numerous well-formed crystals. Barite was
the first mineral deposited, and it is readily recognized as a heavy,
easily scratched substance with one set of cleavage planes at right
angles to two others. Gray metallic galena and resinous cleavable
sphalerite or zinc blende occupy much of the space between the barite
plates. Hard hexagonal crystals or white masses of quartz coat and even
replace the barite plates. Spike-shaped crystals of calcite and siderite
line many of the cavities and coat the quartz. A patient search will be
rewarded by the finding of other minerals, including pyrite,
chalcopyrite, pyromorphite, wulfenite, malachite and azurite.
The old shaft has been closed and the tunnel at the river level has
collapsed, hence the only exposures are in the open cuts. The most
interesting is the one at the south end, where the barite plates are
disseminated through the sandstone.
Another series of pits can be found easily about 100 yards west of the
road to West Farms and about one mile north of the Loudville deposit.
The vein attains a maximum width of three feet between walls of gneiss,
and it occupies a fault fracture which seems to be continuous with the
Loudville zone. Included in the vein are many fragments of a black
phyllite resembling the Leyden argillite, as well as pieces of gneiss.
The minerals are identical with those found in the Loudville deposit,
but the specimens of quartz, galena and sphalerite are more spectacular.
The Hatfield vein occurs in a rock of igneous origin, known as the
Williamsburg granodiorite. It is exposed at the west edge of the valley,
about 200 feet from Federal Highway 5, at the northern limit of the
settlement called West Hatfield. The workings are full of water, and the
very thorough mining activities carried on by mineral collectors and by
Smith College and Amherst classes have reduced the waste pile to
negligible proportions. Early collections and records reveal that the
vein is essentially like those farther south. At Hatfield, West Farms
and Loudville the fractures do not parallel the systems in the Triassic
sediments and lavas.
A galena-bearing vein outcrops near the Whately-Williamsburg town line
at the north end of the Northampton reservoir. Leyden argillite forms
the walls of a fault fissure. Barite is absent from this vein, but fine
quartz, pyrite and chalcopyrite coat the walls. Coarse comb quartz
encrusts the older minerals, together with breccia fragments and cubes
of galena. The vein is remote from the valley and differs in mineralogy
and texture from those within the valley. Other deposits like it have
been found in the nearby hills.
[Illustration: Fig. 23. _Geologic map of the region in the vicinity
of the lead veins near Leverett._]
1. Only barite in these veins
2. Best mineral locality
3. Best place to see fault
4. Slickensides and tension cracks show direction of movement on
fracture making opening for vein
5. Best place to see quartz replacing barite along crush zones in vein
The Leverett lead vein is the most interesting of the group because it
is so well exposed that the nature of the vein system is admirably
displayed. The deposit lies in a series of overlapping, nearly vertical
fault fissures in gneiss. Slickensides and tension cracks on the walls
of the veins indicate that the movement was nearly horizontal from
northeast to southwest. Wherever a fracture begins to narrow and close
up, another begins to widen and become conspicuous a few feet to the
northwest of it. Several different fissures appear along the length of
the mineral zone.
The same minerals are present as are found in the Loudville, West Farms
and Hatfield veins, but barite is more abundant and quartz less so.
Numerous cavities lined with crystals indicate that the vein formed
close to the earth’s surface. Apparently the minerals entered fractures
situated near the front of a range that bordered the basin in Triassic
time. A fault zone so located would lack the great thickness of rock
that once lay over the gneiss and would be free from any appreciable
overburden of outwash within the Triassic basins.
_The Dinosaur Tracks Near Holyoke_
People still write from as far away as the Rocky Mountains to ask if the
dinosaur footprints beside the Connecticut River are still in place.
They are. Anyone may see them in that triangular area between the Boston
and Maine tracks and Federal Highway 5 about one-quarter mile north of
the entrance to Mountain Park. Marvelous as their preservation from the
assaults of man may seem, it is even more amazing that they should have
been preserved in rock at all.
[Illustration: Pl. 9a. _The dinosaur track preserve at Smith’s Ferry
near Holyoke._]
[Illustration: Pl. 9b. _Varved clays or calendar beds on river bank
south of Hadley._]
The footprint beds are shaly sandstones about thirty feet above the
Granby tuff—a bed of volcanic ash formed in late Triassic time. They are
inclined 15° towards the river, and even the higher strata which form
the “Riffles” are footprint-bearing. The sandstones are ripple-marked,
and they contain worm trails and a few casts of salt crystals. Some beds
have impressions of reeds. The footprints range from half an inch to ten
inches in length, and the stride of the larger animals was from five to
eight feet. Most of the tracks are headed up the present slope, but a
few are going in the opposite direction.
The sandstones were laid down as almost horizontal beds of sand which
were occasionally covered and rippled by moving but rather shallow
water. Rushes and reeds, which have left stray impressions in the rock,
grew seasonally in the shallow waters, but in between the periodic rains
and floods, the local climate seems to have been quite dry—and probably
very warm. The sedimentary record suggests a lowland much like some of
the tropical valleys in the West Indies, lying in the rain shadow of
adjacent mountains.
The large tracks invariably have impressions of three toes. Even a
careful search does not disclose the double tracks which would have been
left by quadrupeds, and for years the bipedal impressions were called
bird tracks. But birds have spurs which leave a mark behind the middle
toe; these animals had no spurs and were not birds, but reptiles.
Gregarious animals generally follow a leader, and only an occasional
individual strays from the beaten path. The tracks at Holyoke suggest
that these Triassic reptiles traveled in small herds.
The modern silts of the Connecticut Valley are not a good medium for the
preservation of tracks because they lack coherence, and they drift with
the wind as soon as they dry. 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 found in the shales where the tracks are
clearest, not only in this locality but elsewhere in the neighborhood of
Holyoke and West Springfield. These precipitated salts helped hold the
clays together until they were effectively buried, and afterwards a
firmer cement was deposited around the particles.
Footprints are known near South Hadley, at Turners Falls, at Gill, and
along the highway to the French King Bridge; but they do not portray the
character of the animals, their habits and the mode of preservation of
their tracks as effectively as the tracks north of Holyoke. Certainly no
occurrence of tracks _in situ_ is as accessible, and no geological
exhibit in New England has received so many visitors.
_Fossil Fishing_
Many years ago men were excavating to lay a foundation for a waterwheel
at what was Whittemore’s Ferry, three miles north of Sunderland. They
made a catch of some of the most ancient fish ever taken in New England,
but the fish were petrified and did not put up a fight.
They were found in layers of black shale, in which skeletons and
carbonized tissues were well preserved. Of the five genera identified,
all but one were ganoids.
The shale accumulated as mud on a Triassic lake bottom, and it was
covered by a coarse stream-laid gravel which has since been cemented
into rock. The mud was not eroded by the stream which washed down the
gravel, and the pebbles are not even impressed into the underlying
shale. Apparently the fish perished as the waters evaporated and the
lake became a playa flat. The limited variety of fish suggests that the
connections with outside regions were restricted, and that living
conditions within the basin were rigorous. The situation may have been
like that found in the fresh water lakes along the western margin of the
Great Basin in Nevada and eastern California.
Other lake deposits with fish remains appear at different levels from
Whittemore’s Ferry up to the Sunderland Caves. Each is covered by a
conglomerate layer, and at each place the lake clays had been partially
hardened before the pebbles were washed over them. Seemingly dry
alluvial plains followed transient lakes in kaleidoscopic but cyclic
succession.
_Calendar Beds_
The lakes in which the fish lived and died date back to late Triassic
time. Much younger were the lakes that followed the continental ice
sheets, and in many valley localities these younger water bodies have
registered their brief span of geologic life. For they, too, were
settling basins for clays, which are characterized by annual
depositional bands like the growth rings in a tree. These clays may be
examined best in the clay pits at any of the brickyards, particularly at
South Hadley Falls, or beside the high river banks rising above the
Connecticut flood plain just south of Hadley.
The clays consist of alternating thin, dark, fine bands and thick,
light, coarser ones. The coarser bands are sandy, and some of them have
ripple-marks. The total number of pairs of beds is the number of years
that glacial Lakes Springfield and Hadley inundated the valley, but it
is not a simple matter to count them. Actually the lake bottom deposits
are but a small fraction of the total volume of material brought to the
lake. Lake shore deposits and deltas grew outward and buried the bottom
deposits after a few hundred years had passed. Thus in the pits at South
Hadley Falls, the clays rest upon glacial gravels, and a scant hundred
layers intervene between them and the sands above. Shore encroachment is
not encountered at Hadley, but the shallow depth of the present water
table hinders deep exploration, and the Fort River has removed many of
the upper beds.
Long winters result in thick winter deposits, and heavy spring floods
cause thick sand layers. If the winter of any year is long at
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. 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 disturbance can be attributed to ice
which froze to the lake bottom and dragged the clay layers as it
expanded and contracted with changes in temperature.
Locally the clays are exceptionally hard about certain centers, forming
clay stones or concretions. A willow twig or shell or some organic
substance is commonly present at their cores. Groundwater has deposited
calcium and iron carbonate about the adjacent clay particles and
cemented them into rock.
_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 trip is somewhat less arduous from west to east than it
is in the opposite direction, and the view from Bare Mountain is a
pleasant climax for those ending their hike at the Notch.
At the toll booth the trail leaves the road which ascends to the Mount
Holyoke Hotel and angles upward along the mountain slope. Overhead the
dark basaltic lava columns rest upon red and white Triassic sandstone,
and the path soon crosses the contact between the two types of rocks. A
short distance above the contact the trail takes advantage of a col and
climbs to the top of the ridge. Down the steep southeasterly slope Mount
Holyoke College appears in the distance through a screen of oak trees.
The remainder of the climb is gentle, and soon the path enters the
clearing around the hotel. The view is arresting. 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.
The path continues along the crest of the range and descends gradually
to the toll road level at Taylor’s Notch. Here it is on sandstone, and
the lava-sandstone contact is exposed on both sides of the gap.
Sandstone cliffs rise fifty feet high a few yards down the road; and the
fine arenaceous character of the rock and its bedding are visible at
some distance.
The trail climbs steeply from this col and soon skirts the edge of an
abrupt cliff, in which are carved the initials of many hikers who paused
on the ledge to rest and to enjoy the panorama. Eastward the path might
well serve as the model for a roller coaster in an amusement park. “The
Sisters” are a series of hills separated by sharp, deep valleys; and no
sooner has one attained a summit than a drop down the other side is in
order. Abrupt 30-foot cliffs trending north and south form many of the
valley margins; they are smooth joint surfaces where the rock is weak,
and where blocks were plucked out by the great Ice Sheet. Each of “the
Sisters” has a cleared lookout which affords a new picture of the
Hadley-Deerfield lowland to the north.
The last lookout is some distance below the succession of summits, and
it affords a view to the east. A cliff drops 200 feet vertically, and
about one-quarter of a mile farther east other cliffs of red-weathering
basalt face towards it. Almost all of the broad, low gap between the
cliffs is underlain by a complicated mixture of volcanic ash,
agglomerate and irregular lava flows. The cliff itself is thick columnar
basalt, and at its base is a coarse sandstone. But the sandstone is thin
and disappears in the depression, whereas the agglomerate and lava
become very thick and extend northward to the top of “Little Tinker” and
the “Tinker.” They are part of an ancient volcanic cone, buried in
sandstone both to the east and to the west. Flow structures in the main
sheet move away from this center, which is believed to have been one of
the volcanoes on the line which supplied the basalt for the great lava
field.
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 best lookout on the Range between the Mount Holyoke Hotel and Bare
Mountain is on top of Mount Hitchcock. A side trail leads out to a
promontory, from which one may peer along the face of the Range, look
down upon the “Tinker” and “Little Tinker,” and gaze over the lowland
which the Connecticut has excavated in the New England upland through
the long course of geologic time.
The east slope of Mount Hitchcock descends steeply, and many a hasty
hiker has made the trip in less time than he intended. The path drops to
a flat which measures about 1,000 feet across, and in which the
sandstone lying below the lava sheet is sporadically exposed. Here the
thick basaltic lava has been worn away; and erosion ceases both east and
west at conspicuous fracture surfaces which locally become fault planes.
Beyond this low notch the trail leads irregularly upward and eventually
comes out on Bare Mountain. The top is bare indeed; even scrub oak is
absent from the summit. The long south slope of the Range is clearly
visible, and to the west is the Mount Holyoke Hotel where the hike
started. The Mount Tom Range, with the Connecticut River at its foot, is
just to the left. Due south are the towers of Mount Holyoke College and
the cities of Holyoke and Springfield. 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. Farther to
the east, Mount Norwottock rises to the greatest height in the Range,
and the view from its summit is at least the equal of that from Bare
Mountain. The Hadley lowland stretches northward between the Pelham
Hills on the east and the Berkshire Hills on the west, and protruding
above its relatively flat surface are Mount Warner, Mount Sugarloaf and
Mount Toby. The Deerfield gorge trenches the western upland just west of
Sugarloaf, and on the skyline is Glastenbury far off in Vermont.
[Illustration: Fig. 24. _Diagrams showing the stages in development
of topography in the vicinity of the Notch._]
[Illustration: a. _The New England peneplain stage at the Notch._]
[Illustration: b. _The incoherent rocks are removed from the lava
flow._]
[Illustration: c. _The contours of the cliffs are smoothed out._]
The downward trail follows the cliff above the highway. The drop is
rapid but not precipitous, and soon the western half of the trail is
behind.
The east end of the Range, especially beyond Mount Norwottock, is less
commonly visited, but it offers much more of the valley’s story. Here
the Range is more broken than it is in the western half, and the trail
winds through valleys for much of the distance. Long gentle slopes from
the west lead to mountain summits, and steep eastern descents take the
hiker into the valleys. Plainly the walk is much easier from west to
east than in the opposite direction.
The trail leads from the crusher scales around the north base of Notch
Mountain and thence up the power line to the crest of the ridge. The
path lies on conglomerate below the lava sheet through most of the
distance and returns to the lava only where it bends eastward along the
crest line. Faulting east of Notch Mountain has moved the base of the
lava southward until it abuts on the sandstone above the lava occurring
west of the fracture. Thus, the entire backslope of the Range along the
power line is coarse sandstone, whereas in the woods to the east it is
vesicular basaltic lava.
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. Far to
the east Mount Wachusett rises above the general level, and there in the
northeast is Monadnock’s sharp cone. On the western skyline Mount
Greylock’s summit, with the fire tower at the north end, attains
prominence as Massachusett’s highest peak. The long ridge of Glastenbury
and the point of Bald Mountain are clearly visible in the northwest. Far
to the south stretches the lowland, and on a clear day Hartford’s towers
stand sharp and clear against the sky.
The north face of the Range is a sheer 250-foot cliff. The south side is
a half-mile-long, 20-degree slope. Eastward the crest terminates in a
precipitous drop, and the trail winds down the corner between the north
face and the cliffs at the east end. It crosses the contact between the
lava flow and the red Triassic conglomerate about 150 feet below the
summit. The conglomerate beds are separated by shaly sandstones, many of
which have weathered out to make rock shelters; these are the so-called
“Horse Sheds” and are said to have been used during Shays’ Rebellion.
The great cliff at the east end of Norwottock was caused by the rapid
erosion of the sandstones below the lava sheet, which has receded
steadily westward as it was undermined. Recession started at a fault
plane about halfway between Norwottock and Hilliard Knob, for here
displacement pushed the lava down and southward on the east side until
the subjacent sandstone was exposed west of the fault. Exposure led to
erosion and to recession of the lava cap.
The trail passes through the “Horse Sheds” to the south base of the
Range, following the contact of the lava with the overlying sandstone
for about one-half mile on the way towards Hilliard Knob. This eminence
lies over half a mile north of the crest of the Range, for it has been
offset by faulting, much like the displacements near Mount Norwottock
and Notch Mountain, and the trail passes suddenly from the conglomerate
above the lava flow to the conglomerate below it. Trail markers must be
observed closely through this section because many wood roads cross the
path.
Eastward the way again leads upward to the lava and follows the crest of
a low section of the Range, but soon another fault breaks the continuity
of the ridge, and the high top of Flat Mountain stands out on the far
side of a deep hollow. The hollow is underlain by sandstone below the
lava sheet, and the trail follows down the steep dip slope of the beds,
only to ascend again towards the reddish basalt cliffs of the mountain.
At the base of the flow, the bed of a dry brook exposes a mass of frothy
lava.
The best views from the top of Flat Mountain are those along the south
slope of the Range towards Mount Tom, and northward across the Hadley
lowland. The path then turns down the north face of the mountain some
200 yards along the crest from the west end and, passing over a series
of conglomerate ledges underlying the lava, it continues along a wood
road beside a steep-sided brook until it comes to the Bay Road at the
fork to Dwight and Belchertown.
Any nature lover will find the trail very interesting. The views from
the western half are unexcelled. Wild flowers and birds abound along the
less frequented eastern section. Anyone wishing to see how molten lavas
and earth movements in the distant past have influenced the topography
of the present will find the far eastern walk a veritable revelation.
Trips from Northampton
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; or, via Cummington and West Chesterfield, one
may come back by way of Huntington and Westhampton. 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.
In the following pages only a few of the possibilities which are
available to the motorist are described. And for each one chosen, the
striking views and the significant geological features are indicated, in
the hope and belief that the traveler may turn explorer and, in
following other byways, may reconstruct for himself many additional
details of the region’s geologic past.
_Northampton, Amherst, Pelham_
The route leaves from the Court House corner on Highway 5 and the
excursion follows Route 9 eastward across the Coolidge Memorial Bridge
(1.3),[1] where a panorama of the floodplain with its many channel scars
and terrace levels is spread out below (see pp. 1-3). Beyond Hadley
(3.0) the road tops the highest river floodplain at a conspicuous
terrace (4.9) and rolls gently over the ancient bed of Lake Hadley. The
shore line of this glacial lake appears as a broad flat between Orchard
Street and Lincoln Avenue in Amherst (6-9). (See pp. 5-7.)
The route turns left at the traffic intersection (7.2) and continues to
the north end of the common (7.4), where it turns right on the Pelham
road. This road crosses the lake bottom from the Central Vermont
Railroad tracks (7.9) to the Orient (9.9), where the delta of glacial
Orient Brook made a conspicuous gravel terrace at the farthest limit of
the lake. Stone fences make their appearance (see pp. 8-9); rocky ledges
and erratics abound at higher elevations, but perched shore lines of
ice-margin lakes occur at many levels up Pelham Hill. The road to Mount
Lincoln (see pp. 51-52) turns right (11.2) just west of the Amherst
reservoir (11.4). As the road approaches the hilltop (12.9), an opening
westward through the trees reveals an unusual view of the Holyoke Range;
and the broad lowland valley from Mount Tom in the south to Mount
Sugarloaf in the north spreads out below. On the hilltop (13.3) the road
enters the Daniel Shays Highway (13.9). Mount Wachusett (see p. 15) lies
straight ahead and projects above the great expanse of the New England
upland (see p. 46); Mount Monadnock rises even higher in the northeast,
and everywhere, deep valleys furrow the highland and break its otherwise
monotonous surface.
The Daniel Shays Highway runs north to Athol, where it joins the Mohawk
Trail; but on this trip we shall turn to the right, or south, at Pelham
and follow Federal Highway 202 along the valleys in the Quabbin
reservoir watershed. Pelham gneiss is the most abundant rock along the
highway, outcropping west of the road (14.1) in a series of
eastward-dipping layers that resemble sandstone. Mount Lincoln’s fire
tower stands high above the skyline directly west from the power line
crossing (16.1). The country has a gently rolling form, which was
imposed upon it by the ice sheet (see p. 9), and the miles of stone
fences represent glacial debris piled up by the early settlers in an
effort to bring agricultural order out of geological chaos. Blossoms on
the wild cherry trees along these fences and the flowering dogwood make
this a particularly attractive drive in the spring. A ledge of gneiss
with large eye-shaped crystals of reddish feldspar lies east of the
highway at 16.3 miles. As the road begins to descend (18.1), a panorama
of the broad lowland between Belchertown and Palmer spreads out below.
View succeeds view as the road drops to lower levels: At one place it is
Holyoke and Springfield; at another it is Belchertown; and finally the
highway comes to the corners (21.1) where routes lead right to Amherst,
left to Worcester, and straight ahead through Belchertown to Palmer,
Springfield and Holyoke.
The Granby-Holyoke road (Federal Highway 202) turns right at the south
end of the Belchertown common (22.0). After crossing the railroad
(22.4), it passes out upon the plain of glacial Lake Springfield (25.3)
where the stone fences cease to line the roads, because the lake
deposits cover the glacial boulders. Rocky islands in glacial Lake
Springfield surmount the flat lacustrine plain (26.9). Granby is
situated on a long rolling point (28 to 31.6) that is underlain
principally by flat-lying arkosic conglomerate, but more ancient
crystalline rocks appear just a little farther east. In this section the
lake plain is very narrow, and the drop to the Connecticut River Valley
begins at 32.3 miles and continues to the junction with the South Hadley
road (33.2), where varved clay (see pp. 4-7) makes its appearance in the
pits to the right of the highway.
The itinerary of this excursion continues on Federal Highway 202 through
Holyoke in preference to the alternate routes through South Hadley and
thence either by way of Hockanum (p. 85) or via Amherst (pp. 83-84) to
Northampton. The Holyoke road crosses the Connecticut River (33.8 to
34.1) where the Longmeadow or youngest Triassic sandstone appears in a
series of serrate ledges between the bridge and the dam at the right.
Mud-cracks on some layers and ripple marks on others tell of wet and dry
seasons at the time they were formed. The route turns right just south
of the Holyoke post office (34.6) and right again into Federal Highway 5
(36.2), which parallels the river.
The road has been built on a terrace which was once the flat bottom of
glacial Lake Springfield (37.8), but at the north end of the city it
descends towards the Connecticut River, utilizing the contact between
the red layers of Longmeadow sandstone and the massive, dark green
Granby tuff with large volcanic bombs that are visible from the road.
The twin entrances to Mountain Park (38 and 38.2) may tempt the motorist
to indulge in an attractive side trip, but there is enough to occupy him
on the main highway. Nearer the river (38.5), a ledge slopes from the
roadway to the railroad tracks and to a series of riffles in the stream.
This is the Smith’s Ferry footprint locality (pp. 66-67), and the
widened highway and the entrance to the ledges offer an invitation which
cannot be declined (38.6).
North of the dinosaur tracks, road, railroad and river run parallel.
Lateral roads are few, but there is a gateway (40.2) into the Mount Tom
Reservation. The Granby tuff, which has outcropped persistently on the
west side of the road, rises to a high bluff and then passes eastward
beneath the river (40.6). The underlying second lava replaces it in the
road cuts and is especially conspicuous along the railroad (40.9). The
next dark gray bluff west of the road (41.4 to 41.6) is part of the
Holyoke flow which caps the Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke ranges (see pp.
26-27). Soon it, too, crosses the river to Titan’s Pier (pp. 60-61), and
old residents say that a ledge of it outcropped in the river bed at low
water before the Holyoke dam raised the water level. Directly ahead,
southward-dipping beds of conglomerate outcrop on either side of the
road (41.0); these beds underlie the lava forming the gentle southern
slopes of the ranges, and their position beneath the trap can be seen
plainly on the steep northern slopes.
The road through the Mount Tom Reservation rejoins the highway (42.2)
just south of the outlet from the Oxbow Lake (42.3), the upper end of
which also loops ’round and abuts against the highway (42.7). (See
p. 3.) Annual floods inundate most of this section, and even the
banked-up road and railroad periodically go under the swirling waters of
the swollen river. A sign (43.5) announces that the roadway was 13.5
feet below water at the height of the 1936 flood, but it is hoped that
the new dike at the southern limit of Northampton will hereafter turn
the floods away from the lower sections of the city. Federal Highway 5
bears right (44.0), and the road ahead continues into the Berkshire
Trail. Of passing interest is the fact that a well drilled near this
junction penetrated 3,700 feet of Triassic arkose without reaching the
crystalline rock floor. The road crosses the unused bed of Mill River
(44.2) and comes once again to the Court House corner in Northampton
(44.6).
_Belchertown, Amherst, and Northampton_
In our first tour we noted that a road (Route 9) turns right to Amherst
at the south end of the Daniel Shays Highway (21.1), and if we will
return to this junction, it will be worth our while to make the Amherst
run. Just beyond the intersection the highway traverses the level gravel
plain of a nice margin lake (see p. 7) before it descends (22.0) toward
the Lake Hadley plain. Erratic boulders and stone fences are abundant on
the slope, and the bedrock is part of the pre-Triassic complex. One very
interesting pegmatite contains inclusions of contorted schist (23.2).
The road soon leaves the rocky slopes for the gravel plain of Lake
Hadley, but only a short distance northward and westward lie the
Belchertown Ponds, which seem to occupy a large and deep kettle hole
area (see pp. 7-8).
The road winds through pine-clad kame terraces, left on the margin of
the ice which filled the Lake Hadley basin; and where it emerges from
the woods (24.4), the line of hills making the Holyoke Range may be seen
stretching westward in a series of sharp points. These are the
projecting edges of the Holyoke lava flow which resisted erosion after
all the softer sediment and volcanic debris flanking it were removed.
The road to Mount Lincoln turns right at Pansy Park (24.9), and north of
this point the Amherst road follows a kame terrace between the Pelham
Hills on the right, and the former ice-filled bed of glacial Lake Hadley
on the left. Ultimately (27.1) the highway leaves the terrace and drops
to a delta which was deposited in Lake Hadley. The view northward shows
Mount Toby and Mount Sugarloaf outlined sharply, and to the east near
the Orient, the sharp V-shaped notch of the north fork of Fort River
cuts one of the kame terraces. The delta deposit (27.5 to 27.7) shows
excellent fore-set beds in the gravel pit (27.7), and its entire surface
is dotted with ponds which occupy irregular kettle holes (see pp. 7-8).
The highway continues down the delta slope and crosses the Fort River
(28.4). This river established a meandering course upon the bed of Lake
Hadley, but its floodplain is now excavated below the level of the lake
deposits, which form a terrace above the stream. The road passes through
Amherst (30.2) and returns to Northampton (37.4) by the outbound route.
_South Hadley, Amherst, Northampton_
The route 116 north from the road junction at South Hadley Falls (33.2)
also has its points of interest. After it passes over the deeply
dissected deposits in Lake Springfield, it rises above the old lake
level at the Mount Holyoke campus (35.1) and continues at this higher
elevation beyond the Hockanum-Amherst fork (35.9) in the center of South
Hadley. Along the right fork (State Highway 116), which leads to
Amherst, horizontal Longmeadow sandstone outcrops west of the road
(37.1) where the slope to the valley of Bachelor Brook begins. The flat
lake plain extends from Moody’s Corner (37.4) to the base of the Holyoke
Range. A gravel road turns right from the highway (38.2) and crosses the
brook one mile east, and from this locality were excavated many of the
excellent dinosaur footprints in the Amherst College collection.
The lake plain ends at ledges of Granby tuff and agglomerate (38.5). The
outcrops east of the road are grooved with glacial striations, and the
fragmental nature of the rock is clearly revealed in the smooth surface.
Lava lies on the tuff west of the road (38.7) and also at the bottom of
the volcanic series at the Aldrich Lake road (39.0). Coarse
conglomerates make recurrent ridges as far as the base of the Range
(39.5), where the road follows a shelf cut into the Holyoke lava flow
just west of the Notch fault. The conglomerate east of this fault was
displaced downward; and as it disintegrates easily, a depression has
been cut into the Range east of the road. The quarry situated at the top
of the Range (39.8) just north of the Amherst town line, has brought to
light many fault fractures that have served the mineral collector well
for almost a century. The Range trail (see pp. 73-75) westward leaves
the highway at the town line marker, and the path eastward follows the
old trolley line northeastward from the scales house.
The route begins its descent (40.2) through a cut in conglomerate, and
the entire northern valley is spread out below: Sugarloaf and Toby close
the eastern side of the view, and hills far up in Vermont form the
background in the northwest. The road quickly reaches the flat plain of
Lake Hadley (40.7), with apple orchards stretching along its gravel
shore line. The Bay Road crosses the highway (41.1) and parallels the
Range from end to end.
The lake deposits fail to conceal many earlier features. Two drumlins
(see p. 9) rise to the east of the road (41.8) near South Amherst. South
Amherst (42.7) is on an island in the old lake; erratic boulders cover
the hilltop, and bare rocks mark the old wave-washed shore. The highway
crosses Fort (or Freshman) River (43.8), and at the railroad tracks
(44.6) it rises to the old lake beach, which is continued in the flat
land on the south side of the Amherst College campus. The route turns
left at Northampton Road (Route 9) and continues to Northampton (52.2).
The Hockanum Road (State Highway 63), which follows the left fork at
South Hadley (33.2), crosses the Lake Springfield sand plain (34.1) and
rises above the lake level beyond Bachelor Brook (34.3), staying at this
higher altitude beyond the junction with the Moody’s Corner road (35.3).
The hills directly ahead are tuff, agglomerate and lava, and are
products of the last volcanic episode in this region. Dry Brook (35.6)
flows on the sandstone overlying the Holyoke lava sheet, and the latter
outcrops in the road cuts (35.8) and to the left in Titan’s Pier (see
pp. 60-61). The road to the Mount Holyoke House and Titan’s Piazza (see
p. 61) turns right (36.0) where the highway breaks through the last of
the lava mass.
The 1936 flood inundated this highway (36.5 to 37.2), and the old
watermark may still be identified by debris caught in the bushes and
left on pasture land. The view upstream from the floodplain (37.0) shows
where the Connecticut is cutting into its eastern bank and causing it to
recede (see pp. 1-2). Soon it will penetrate the valley of Fort River.
The road passes through a woodland on the dissected lake-shore deposits,
but it soon emerges upon the lake bottom and early river silts (38.6).
The Bay Road (39.8) enters from the east just south of the bridge over
Fort River (39.9). The road joins the outbound route at Hadley (41) and
returns to Northampton (44).
_Holyoke, Easthampton, Northampton_
The return from Holyoke (36.2) by way of Easthampton leaves Federal
Highway 5 and rises westward across a ridge of Granby tuff. Several
small lakes (36.7) occupy basins on the friable “second” sandstone
between the “second” lava and Granby tuff, which lie immediately to the
east, and the Holyoke lava, which lies below and to the west. The
sandstone is very thin, and the road shortly begins to climb up the dip
slope of the Holyoke lava sheet. Sandstone crops out below the sheet at
the west base of a low cliff (38.1) which continues northward to the
south face of Mount Tom. The Christopher Clark road through the Mount
Tom Reservation enters from the north at the summit (38.5); it follows a
scenic route under the west cliffs of the Range to its north end at
Mount Nonotuck, where it drops abruptly in a series of hairpin curves to
Mount Tom Junction on Federal Highway 5.
At the junction of the Easthampton and Christopher Clark roads, a
turn-out offers an opportunity to view the Western Upland, within which,
as it makes its way from Goshen and Williamsburg to Northampton, the
Mill River has cut an impressive valley. On the long descent to the base
of the mountain (39.5), the Easthampton road is cut out of coarse
arkosic sandstones, but then it levels off abruptly on the flat plain of
glacial Lake Hadley. The lake sediments continue into the center of
Easthampton (41.3), broken only by the shallow valley of the Manhan
River. From Easthampton the route utilizes the College Highway (State
Highway 10) to Northampton; and its position on the lake beds affords
good views of the Range and of the abnormally broad floodplain of the
meandering Connecticut River in the vicinity of the Oxbow. Just north
and east of the New Haven Railroad’s underpass, the river has cut away
the terrace followed by the road, and this low stretch, like the rest of
the floodplain, is subject to frequent inundations.
The road enters Northampton east of the Smith College campus (45.5) and
joins the Berkshire Trail. A right turn at the traffic light leads to
the Court House corner (45.7).
_Northampton, Hadley, Sunderland, Hatfield_
This tour also leaves Northampton by the Coolidge Memorial Bridge, but
at Hadley (3.0) it turns north on State Highway 63 and follows the river
to Sunderland. Here the route recrosses the river, joining Federal
Highway 5 at South Deerfield, and from this point south to Northampton
the road lies almost literally in the shadow of the western upland.
In Hadley (3.0) the road turns north along Center Street and then swings
right at the curve in the Connecticut (3.5). The river bank is lined
with riprap to resist the current and to prevent the river from washing
away a substantial section of the town. Across the stream in Hatfield
the Connecticut very nearly achieved the type of destruction which the
residents of Hadley are trying to escape, and the flood-channel, or
“washout,” which was gouged by the swollen stream in the spring of 1936,
may be seen (4.3) on the way to North Hadley. The road approaches Mount
Warner, whose crystalline rocks appear at the south end of a long, low
spur (4.8) on the edge of the river floodplain. Elsewhere along the base
of the eminence, which scarcely merits the name “Mount,” the crystalline
rocks are hidden by a terrace, but they crop out on the higher slopes.
The younger red Triassic sandstones are present, too, and they may be
seen dipping steeply westward in the brook bed between the bridge (5.9)
and the dam (6.1) at North Hadley.
Sand dunes appear near the river on the outskirts of North Hadley (6.3)
and extend north beyond Mount Warner (7.0) to the point where the road
drops from the terrace to the floodplain (8.2). Here the former bed of
the river is occupied by a puny brook, which enters the mainstream on
the left. The terrace marking the edge of the floodplain lies close to
the east side of the road for a long distance (8.2 to 9.8) and then
swings a half mile eastward. The road follows a high area between two
abandoned channels formerly used by the river (11.3), until it joins the
Amherst-Sunderland road (11.8) at the southern edge of Sunderland. The
route turns left in the center of town (12.4), crossing the river
beneath Mount Sugarloaf, and it continues on to Federal Highway 5 at the
traffic light in South Deerfield (14.2).
On the trip south from the junction, sand dunes appear east of the
railroad between the Boston & Maine (14.6) and the New Haven crossings
(14.9). The highway is situated on the flat bed of Lake Hadley from this
point to Hatfield. The road to Whately, which turns west at 16.7, offers
some attractions. It forks two miles beyond Whately, and the right
branch leads to the Northampton reservoir and to Haydenville (see
p. 89). The left branch follows West Fork Brook and comes back to
Federal Highway 5 at North Hatfield (19.1). Either route provides a
scenic drive over little-frequented gravel roads.
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). The view south (22.3)
shows the water gap between the Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom ranges. At
the State Police barracks (23.4) the Hatfield road turns left, and a
short distance beyond (23.9), on the west side of the road, is the
abandoned City Quarry. The granite exposed in the quarry contains a
black, radio-active mineral called allanite, and each glistening black
crystal is surrounded by a reddish halo caused by bombardment of the
feldspar by alpha particles.
A road to Florence branches right (24.5) near the railroad crossing, and
one to the Coolidge Bridge turns left across the Boston & Maine tracks
(24.7). A by-pass to the Berkshire Trail (25.6) goes west, and the tour
returns to the Court House corner (26.1).
_Northampton, Cummington, Plainfield, and South Deerfield_
This tour includes a representative section of the Connecticut Lowland,
traverses rugged valleys on the western margin of the lowland, and
crosses a wide remnant of the New England upland. The trip is 58.6 miles
long, and all of it except the last twelve miles moves through rapidly
changing scenery.
The route leaves the Court House corner on State Highway 9, the
Berkshire Trail, following Main and Elm Streets past Smith College. At
the Cooley Dickinson Hospital the road rises from the bed of glacial
Lake Hadley to the Mill River delta, which, despite some dissection,
maintains the same general level through Florence (2.6) to Look Park
(3.4), where a ridge dotted with glacial erratics rises through it. The
road follows the delta margin past the Veteran’s Hospital and shortly
(4.3) climbs to the land of erratics and stone fences. The road from
Whately (see p. 88) enters from the right in Haydenville (7.1), and the
Trail continues up Mill River to Williamsburg (8.1). Not far beyond the
center of Williamsburg the road forks left for Chesterfield and right
for Cummington.
The right hand route climbs a long wooded hill with a deep valley on the
right and occasional cliffs of schist intruded by reinforcing granite
dikes on the left. The view back near the hilltop (12.5) offers, through
a frame of trees, a panorama of the Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom Ranges
surmounting the Connecticut Lowland. The New England upland begins at
the hilltop (13.1) in Goshen. Just past Goshen Pond (13.6), a road
continues straight ahead to Ashfield, and the hard surface of the
Berkshire Trail curves left. Ledges of flaggy Goshen schist outcrop from
Goshen to Swift River (18.4); the banding of the ledges is almost
horizontal at one place (14.6) and makes excellent flagging for garden
walks. The west-flowing Swift River tumbles into the deeply entrenched,
east-flowing Westfield River at Swift River village, and the combined
streams flow due south through a “door” in a vertical wall of Goshen
schist so narrow and inconspicuous that the water appears to run
downhill and then up again. The Berkshire Trail follows up the north
bank of the Westfield River as far as the lower bridge (19.5), at
Cummington, where a road to Chesterfield turns left (19.6).
The Plainfield road branches off to the right across the river at the
center of Cummington (20.5), and it climbs almost continuously from the
Westfield valley to the summit of the New England upland at the
Plainfield corner (24.5). Here the broad, gently rolling expanse of
country offers no suggestion of the deep valley only three miles away.
The tour takes the road right (Route 116) to Ashfield (33.0), Conway
(40.2), and South Deerfield (46.6), where it turns south on Federal
Highway 5, returning to Northampton (58.6) over ground that is covered
in another tour (see pp. 87-88). 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. Rugged as some of the topography may
seem, prolonged erosion has greatly softened and tamed it. (For more
details of the features which can be seen along this route, see pp. 94
-95.)
Trips from Greenfield
The most popular drive from Greenfield is westward over the Mohawk
Trail, but the eastward continuation of this highway to Orange, combined
with the Daniel Shays Highway to Pelham, offers almost equal attractions
and should not be missed.
_Mohawk Trail, Adams, Plainfield, and South Deerfield_
The Mohawk Trail (State Highway 2) heads west from the center of
Greenfield and crosses the Green River (0.6) before climbing out of the
valley. A lookout (2.1) affords an excellent view of the north end of
the Connecticut Lowland, and the observation tower on Shelburne Summit
(3.2), situated on a shelf cut out of black Ordovician slate (see pp. 35
-37), provides a broader sweep of central New England scenery. Beyond,
the upland is gently rolling, trenched by one deep valley at Shelburne
Center (6.8). The descent into this valley (5.6) offers a glimpse to the
south across the Deerfield River gorge, but the road soon rises again,
hovering 300 feet above the sharply incised stream. The Sweetheart
Teahouse (9.9) makes use of one of the ideal sites overlooking the gorge
and river. The highway to Colrain (10.2) continues straight ahead, but
the Trail turns left across the Deerfield River (10.6) and then right in
Shelburne Falls. The road left leads to Conway and South Deerfield.
Thick, almost horizontal bands of gray granite gneiss are exposed in the
road cuts (11.6) along the south bank of the Deerfield River, but the
entrenched stream has left so little room for the highway that the
latter soon crosses to the relatively low and more hospitable north bank
(11.9). For many miles the road follows the stream so closely that
spring floods occasionally cover its surface with ice cakes. The drive
along this stretch to the next bridge (21.0) contains the most restful
scenery on the trip, though the flat open valley is hemmed in by abrupt
slopes which rise for 800 feet. Nor does the flatness of the valley
harmonize with the mountain-structure of the platy Goshen schist, which
stands on edge all along the roadside. Davis Brook (18.7) crosses the
route, and the road beside it leads up to the Davis Mine, which once did
a thriving business extracting iron pyrites for the manufacture of
sulphuric acid.
Once more the highway crosses the Deerfield River (21.0) and enters
Mohawk Park, which invites the motorist to linger. A mile farther on
(22.0) the road leaves the Deerfield River (22.0) and follows the narrow
gorge of Cold River, which seems scarcely wide enough to accommodate it.
A shady picnic ground and auto camp (23.6) lie just below the narrowest
and deepest part of the gorge (24.5), where the crowding summits seem to
tower high above the puny cars.
The road crosses to the north bank of Cold River (25.8) and climbs a
shelf cut into green volcanic schists (25.8 to 27.6). Leaving the gorge
(26.6), it ascends to the upland (29.0), while in view below is the
laborious route of the Boston and Maine Railroad along the Deerfield and
thence through the east portal of the Hoosac Tunnel near Zoar.
A lookout (29.4) affords a memorable view of the sharp V-shaped gorge of
the Deerfield River cut deep into the highland surface, which stretches
unbroken to the horizon, with only a few divides rising to greater
elevations in the west and northeast. A set of broad rock benches, about
200 feet lower than the upland, forms a strath terrace (see pp. 46-47)
which closely follows the river’s course. Great landslide scars, caused
by the heavy rains accompanying the 1938 hurricane, mar the valley walls
far to the north and again eastward from Zoar.
The road to Zoar (30.2) turns right a short distance east of the
Whitcomb Summit (30.6), where lookout towers at an elevation of 2,240
feet enhance the excellence of the view westward across other straths to
Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts. From these same
vantage points, one may survey the deceptively smooth slope of the New
England upland eastward down the course of the Deerfield towards the
Atlantic coast.
[Illustration: Pl. 10. _View of the Deerfield gorge from the east
summit of the Mohawk Trail._
_The high level flat to the extreme right and extreme left is the New
England peneplain. The terrace bordering the steep walls of the gorge is
a strath._]
The road crosses a series of strath heads, which drain into the Cold
River, and ascends to the west summit (33.2). At first it seems possible
to throw a stone into North Adams, so abrupt is the western slope. The
city lies deep in a limestone valley, and beyond it the Taconic ranges
rise steeply west of Williamstown, over six miles away.
On the long descent into the valley, the roadway is cut into
albite-biotite schists with horizontal cleavage. Above and below the
sharp hairpin turn (35.2), there is a beautiful view to the south along
the strike of the limestone trench and along the route (State Highway 8)
which is to be followed from North Adams (37.8) to Adams. Not far south
of North Adams the road passes the west portal of the Hoosac Tunnel
(39.4). Boulders on the mountainside east of the highway are glacial
erratics which were left above the level of the valley trains and above
the surface of glacial Lake Bascom. The limestone which outcrops on the
slopes of Mount Greylock west of the road is used for lime (41.6), and
the quarries provide ideal exposures for a study of the rock. The
burning plant (42.2) is at the roadside. The road branches in the center
of Adams (43.6), one route (State Highway 116) continuing ahead to Savoy
and Plainfield, the other veering right to Mount Greylock, Dalton, and
Pittsfield.
The Savoy road follows a broad valley eastward into the hills. A
perceptible steepening of the slope occurs where it crosses from the
dolomitic limestone below, to the albite-biotite schist above, at a
thrust fault (47.5). Hard white Cheshire quartzite (48.2) and arenaceous
limestone (49.0 to 49.6) overlie the schist and outcrop by the roadside,
and in places the arenaceous limestone has weathered to a white
glistening sand.
The road soon drops into a wide and open valley (50.1) which seems to
slope interminably southeastward; this is the head of the Westfield
drainage, and it has occupied this position in the Westfield system far
back in geologic time (see p. 14). The little village of Savoy (51.8)
nestles near the eastern edge of the valley, and once beyond the
settlement, the highway tops a divide (52.7) comprised of rolling hills.
It skirts Plainfield Pond (56.0 to 56.4) and then comes out upon a
panorama of the upland which embraces the entire Westfield basin (57.5).
This section is underlain by the Savoy schist, which is characterized by
its many large red garnets. At the hilltop (59.7) in Plainfield the road
forks, the route to the right descending to the Berkshire Trail and the
road ahead proceeding to Ashfield. This portion of the New England
upland lies so far back from the main streams that the small tributaries
have not yet cut deeply into its gently rolling surface, and no hint of
hidden valleys can be detected in the peaceful landscape.
The Ashfield road traverses woodland country that is almost flat. The
stream valleys are broad and are rarely more than a hundred feet below
divides. Even Swift River (63.9), which crosses the road about two miles
above the end of its entrenched gorge, has not deepened its valley,
despite the long span of years since New England was raised to its
present elevation (see p. 47). Past the alternate road to Cummington
(64.0), the route continues across the flat country above Ashfield; but
where the road to Goshen turns south (66.4), deep dissection of the New
England upland begins. An opening in the trees (66.6 to 67.1) discloses
the valleys along the South River in the vicinity of South Ashfield, as
well as the level skyline in the highlands east of the Connecticut
Valley. The road drops into the South River valley at Ashfield (68.2),
where a choice of routes to Greenfield is presented. The road that
follows the South River to Conway (75.4) is the more interesting.
The river is joined by a tributary from the north at South Ashfield
(69.9), and the streams occupy deep but open valleys. Kame terraces
flank the rivers and are a source of gravel for road ballast. The old
dam (73.9) near Conway is a picturesque spot, and the deep, shady pool
below is not neglected by anglers. Glacial erratics (see pp. 8-9) dot
the hill slopes, but ledges are rare and consist of the locally named
Conway schist where the rock does appear at the surface. The road
branches again at Conway: the left fork goes north along the dissected
brink of the Deerfield gorge to Shelburne Falls, but our choice falls
upon the eastward route to South Deerfield.
The highway climbs through a cut (75.8) in contorted, gneissic Conway
schist, which seems to be lined with twisted white quartz veins from
this point to the margin of the Connecticut Valley. The road levels off
just before it reaches the New England upland, and then it drops through
rolling hill country to the shaded valley of Mill Brook (77.4), which it
follows to the edge of the lowland (80.1). Rocky ledges are common along
this swiftly flowing stream. A good view of the Pocumtuck Hills appears
on the left (79.7), with the flat plain of the old Deerfield delta
stretching to their base. The road crosses this plain and enters South
Deerfield (81.8).
The tour turns north on Federal Highway 5, which is built on the
deposits spread in glacial Lake Hadley by the Deerfield River from its
mouth eastward to the foot of the Pocumtuck Hills of Triassic
conglomerate. Bloody Brook (82.2) drains this part of the plain. North
of the road which goes through the notch between the Sugarloafs (82.6),
the delta deposits continue as a terrace along the base of the Pocumtuck
Hills as far as Cheapside. But the Deerfield has excavated its
post-glacial delta, and the roadway descends to the meander-cut
floodplain (84.4 to 88.1), though it rises over one of the meander
scarps (85.1). Remnants of the Deerfield delta form a terrace due west
across the valley and on the margin of the hills. The entire lowland
north of the meander-cut terrace was inundated in 1936, and the water
level may still be identified by debris on the railroad embankment on
the right. Old Deerfield (86.1) itself is on a meander-scarp terrace,
and the 1936 flood line is well marked along it. After the road crosses
the Deerfield River (88.3), it leaves the floodplain as it climbs to the
center of Greenfield (89.8).
_Greenfield, Orange, Pelham, Amherst, and Deerfield_
Route 2 also leads eastward from Greenfield to the French King Bridge
and Millers Falls. The highway out from Greenfield turns north (0.3)
along the west front of the trap ridge, near the summit of which several
individual lava flows are represented by separate sets of columns
superimposed one upon the other (see p. 26). The underlying bedded
sandstones outcrop in the lower wooded slopes. A road branches right
(1.7) to Turners Falls and crosses the lava ridge, but the main highway
continues straight to a sharp curve near Falls River (3.4).
Pillow-shaped masses of lava characterize the bottom of the lava flow
and lie above conglomerate in the bluff to the right. The valley of
Falls River is a fault zone slicing across the lava sheet, which
reappears at the lookout-parking place at Turners Falls (3.5). The
extent to which the waterfall has receded (see pp. 58-59) may be judged
from the length of the gorge.
The route continues left past the bridge entrance (3.6). Ripple-marked
red shales—once Triassic muds in which stray dinosaurs left their
tracks—outcrop by the roadside (4.6 to 5.7), and coarse conglomerate
beds (5.9) overlie the shales and dip steeply towards the river.
Somewhat farther east a broad sand plain (6.0 to 6.8) of glacial outwash
(see p. 59), which ends at the French King gorge, buries the Triassic
bedrock, but once again conglomerate appears and forms the west wall of
the gorge. Pre-Triassic crystalline rocks (6.9) likewise outcrop on the
western cliffs, and form a narrow ridge between the present course of
the river and the pre-glacial channel, which lies below the glacial
delta (7.0 to 7.9) of Millers River.
The road to Northfield turns left (7.9) and another (8.7) leads right to
Millers Falls, but Route 2 continues east, climbing high above the river
(9.9), which flows through a narrow gorge. Gneiss with horizontal
banding outcrops (11.2) in mesa-like hills north of the highway, which
descends to a point (12.5) that was 5.5 feet under water during the 1936
flood. The road continues near the water’s edge for almost half a mile,
and the narrow gorge through gneiss ends at Erving (13.8). Here the
valley widens out into a hilly lowland which has been developed on
schist with occasional bands of gneiss. The road follows the north bank
of the river across this lowland to Orange (17.9). Route 2 continues to
Athol where the Daniel Shays highway enters from the south, but an
alternate route, which turns right in the center of Orange and crosses
Millers River (18.0), provides a preferable short-cut to the Daniel
Shays Highway (21.8). This section of road is lined with stone fences
which memorialize the combined labors of the great Ice Sheet and the
early settlers.
Route 32 from Petersham and Worcester enters from the left (22.7) just
before the highway dips into the creek bottom at the edge of the Quabbin
basin. Thence it ascends to the New England upland level, where a
lookout (25.5) affords an expansive view to the east and north, with
Mount Monadnock rising prominently on the distant skyline. New Salem
(25.8) is on the hilltop. Hornblende schist outcrops at intervals across
the broad ridge, and especially near the descent (28.4) southwestward to
another stream (30.3) which empties into the Quabbin Reservoir. Once
again the highway climbs rather steadily for three and one-half miles,
passing the Shutesbury road (31.0) on the right, until it reaches
another lookout (34.6) from which the trenched New England upland
spreads out to the east. Pelham gneiss is the main rock on the broad
ridge west of the Quabbin basin, especially in the vicinity of Pelham
(35.2), which gave the rock its name.
The tour turns east to Amherst (41.7), following a section which has
been described elsewhere (see pp. 78-79). The principal sights include
the panorama of the Connecticut Lowland and the ice-margin lake
deposits. The drive from Amherst to Northampton (see pp. 78-79) and from
Northampton to South Deerfield (see pp. 87-88) on Federal Highway 5 has
likewise been covered in other tours, but some new features may be seen
along the shorter route from Amherst to Sunderland.
The Sunderland road turns right at the north end of the Amherst common.
It descends, first, from Amherst Island, in glacial Lake Hadley, to the
old beach at Massachusetts State College (42.6), and then from the beach
to the lake bottom (43.2) north of the campus. The route takes the left
fork in North Amherst (44.2), traverses part of the old lake bed, swings
west around the Long Plain delta (45.5), and crosses its entrenched
brook (46.1). Most of the stream’s water seeps through the delta sands
and gravels, and emerges in springs at the Fish Hatchery (46.3). Gravel
pits across the road furnish an excellent section of the fore-set and
top-set beds of the delta. The road right (46.8) goes to the delta top
east of Mount Toby, Montague and Turners Falls, but the main highway
continues north.
The road turns left and then right (47.2), cutting through a beach bar
in glacial Lake Hadley, and passing a sand dune area (47.6) which
developed from the sandy braids in the channel of the Connecticut when
it first established its course on the lake bed (see pp. 4-6). The route
drops down from a terrace (47.9) to the highest floodplain level of the
Connecticut. Swales (48.3 and 48.5) on this flat represent former river
channels, and the scalloped embankment to the east records the lateral
swing and undercutting of the meandering river. The North Hadley road
(48.7) enters from the south along a low ridge between two swales, and
after the sharp right turn into Sunderland (49.2), the road divides, one
fork going north to Montague, the other west across the Sunderland
Bridge to South Deerfield.
The Sunderland Bridge (49.4 to 49.6) offers a good view downstream along
the natural levees (see p. 2) and westward to the cliffs of Mount
Sugarloaf (see pp. 56-58). The road rises above the floodplain (49.9)
and passes the Sugarloaf trail (50.0) on the right. A right turn into
Federal Highway 5 at South Deerfield (51.0) brings the motorist back to
a section of country already described in connection with the Mohawk
Trail tour (see pp. 95-96), and another eight miles of driving brings
him to Greenfield (59.1).
_Greenfield, Turners Falls, Montague, North Amherst_
A variant of the drive east from Greenfield is available in the route
that turns right across the Turners Falls Bridge (3.6 to 3.8) and
follows the east side of the Connecticut Valley southward. The road
turns left in the center of Turners Falls (4.2) and climbs the
embankment which the river excavated in the old lake beds. On the sand
plain above (4.9), the left fork goes to Millers Falls and the right, to
Montague. The Montague road skirts the west side of a low line of hills
which terminate at a depression (8.6) on the pre-glacial course of the
Connecticut. The road goes over Saw Mill River (9.4), in the bed of
which Triassic conglomerate is exposed. Conglomerate also appears in the
hills directly south, but the older crystalline rocks crop out in an
exhumed ridge to the southwest and in the highlands eastward. The
conglomerates form the south end of a Triassic basin extending from
Mount Hermon and Northfield farther up the valley (see p. 26). Beyond
Montague (9.7) Triassic conglomerate appears along the roadside (10.1)
as far as the forks to Sunderland and Millers Falls (10.8).
The Millers Falls road follows the foot of a terrace which rises to the
old delta level, and at the next fork (11.0), the route keeps right and
continues southward to North Amherst. The delta of the glacial stream
buried many ice cakes which left numerous kettle holes (11.0 to 11.5)
when they melted. The stratification of the deposits is displayed in the
many road cuts. The route crosses the Central Vermont Railroad (11.5)
and follows an old outwash plain southward past the road to Roaring
Brook (13.1) (see p. 54). The tour continues through a narrow stretch in
which crystalline rocks predominate, as far as the Long Plain delta
(15.6). Mount Toby rises steeply on the west side of the railroad. A
third of the way up the mountainside can be seen (13.9) a conspicuous
bench, which consists of an exhumed remnant of the ancient, sloping
granite mountain front on which the Triassic sediments were laid (see
pp. 20-21). The bench level drops northward to the railroad at Roaring
Brook, and southward it crosses the road (14.9). The conglomerate east
of the road (14.9 to 15.3) fills an old mountain valley. A road east
(15.3) goes to Leverett, and the lead vein is located just south of it
at the hilltop.
The route skirts the margin of the crystalline rocks and crosses the
railroad again (15.6). Just beyond the road to Leverett station (16.1)
the motorist may exercise the option of returning to the Sunderland road
(17.3) by going right across the Long Plain delta and thence to
Greenfield (29.6) via South Deerfield (see p. 95). Or he may extend his
trip by taking the left fork of the Mount Toby road, which follows the
boundary between the Long Plain delta and the glaciated eastern
highlands. Boulders and bare ledges feature in the landscape to the
east, whereas the flat delta and the level beach margin (17.9) lie to
the west. Beyond the limits of the delta lies a series of bare ledges of
gneiss. After crossing Factory Hollow Brook (19.1), the route joins the
Sunderland road (19.2) at the center of North Amherst, returning to
Greenfield (34.1) by way of Sunderland and South Deerfield, as before
(see p. 98).
_Greenfield, Turners Falls, Montague, Sunderland_
The Sunderland road (10.8) just beyond Montague turns right and climbs
the terrace along the floodplain of Saw Mill River. The plain is the
delta which this stream built into Lake Hadley. A few rock ridges
project above it; buried ice has melted to form kettle holes (11.4) (see
pp. 7-8); and post-glacial streams have cut valleys in it; yet it
preserves its deltaic form to the old lake margin (11.6). Low shed-like
cliffs occur east of the road (11.9); the overhanging rock is Toby
conglomerate, and the excavated shelter is a gray shale which was laid
in a Triassic lake bed (see pp. 22 and 68). These cliffs recede from the
highway and end (12.3) at the Sunderland Caves (see p. 55). The route
continues downhill and joins the river road on the floodplain of the
Connecticut (14).
The road rises over a promontory (14.1) formed by the resistant
Deerfield lava sheet (see p. 26) and then descends to the river
floodplain and meander-cut terraces (see p. 22), which cross to the east
side of the highway and continue south beyond Sunderland (15.5). In
Sunderland junction is made with the longer tour through Amherst (see p.
98), and the return to Greenfield may be made by that route (25.4).
Trips from Springfield
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. Almost
any trip will include this entire suite of geological phenomena. The
distances which are given in the following tours have been taken from
the west side of the North End Bridge.
_Springfield, Holyoke, Easthampton, and Westfield_
This route follows north on the floodplain along the river bank via
Federal Highway 5, and the heavy retaining wall is designed to keep the
river out. The sand promontory which comes to the left side of the road
(0.6) is a remnant of the old lake—bottom deposits. Past the junction
with the road through West Springfield (0.8), the highway utilizes the
old lake beds, which form a terrace above the present floodplain; but
ultimately (1.6) it drops again to the floodplain level, with its many
abandoned channels, although it discreetly stays on one of the higher,
and older, meander-cut terraces. A cut-off to Chicopee turns right
(2.4), but Federal Highway 5 continues north across the meander terraces
to the forks (4.6) which lead to the residential (left) and business
(right) sections of Holyoke.
Here the main highway climbs steeply from the floodplain to the top of
the lake deposits. The view north shows the Holyoke Range rising above
the roofs and chimneys of Holyoke. Lake deposits form a broad flat
between the Triassic volcanic ridges which lie to the west and the
trench cut by the Connecticut River.
The road from Westfield and the airport (Federal Highway 202) from the
left, and the road to Easthampton (7.6) turns left from the main
highway, which continues north. The north route, described under the
tours from Northampton (see pp. 80-82), features the dinosaur tracks and
the succession of Triassic rocks. The Easthampton road goes past the
south end of the Mount Tom Range, and its scenic attractions have been
dealt with elsewhere (see p. 85). Its most interesting sights are the
line of lakes between the two volcanic series and the view from the
summit of the ridge. Easthampton (12.7) lies on the old lake bottom,
from which an impressive view of the palisade of massive columns
comprising the tilted lava flow of Mount Tom can be obtained.
At Easthampton the tour turns south on the College Highway (State 10)
towards Southampton and Westfield. The road follows the gravel plain
which was spread into Lake Hadley by streams flowing out of the western
highland. The plain is dissected locally by the Manhan River (15.2 and
18.0) which crosses the road twice, and one small valley near
Southampton (17.1) discloses Triassic arkose buried by the sand. The
road rises above the lake deposits (17.4) near the Manhan River, and at
once glacial erratics become numerous. The “land of stone fences” forms
a narrow divide between the Lake Hadley basin and the Lake Springfield
sand plain (21.1), which extends south to the valley of the Westfield
River. The Holyoke road (22.5), which enters from the left, came over
the trap ridge and across the lake plain.
As the College Highway approaches the edge of the Westfield valley
(23.6), it slopes steeply down to the level floor cut by the river. It
crosses the Westfield (24.5) and comes to the junction (24.9) with the
Jacob’s Ladder route (Federal Highway 20), which offers another
interesting sidetrip into the Western Upland.
The route continues south to the center of Westfield (25.2), leaving the
College Highway at the south end of the common. The Springfield road
goes around the central square and starts east in the valley which the
meandering Westfield River carved out of the Lake Springfield sediments.
The terrace levels and the scalloped pattern of the meander scarps are
conspicuous along the lowland. The highway crosses the Little Westfield
River (26.1) and then the Westfield itself (27.0) just beyond the
entrance to Robinson State Park.
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).
Actually there are two flows separated by an amygdaloidal band in the
upper lava series at this place. The highway crosses the Boston and
Albany tracks (29.3) and leaves the river. After passing the junction
with the Holyoke road (31.0), the highway drops to the upper terrace
level on the bed of glacial Lake Springfield (31.4). The upper terrace
is narrow here, and the road soon descends to the meander-cut terraces
of the floodplain (32.1). The road to Memorial Bridge turns right (32.3)
and our route returns to the North End Bridge (32.8).
_Westfield to the Westfield Marble Quarry_
This is a short drive of 5.7 miles each way from Westfield, with a mile
walk from the Little Westfield road to the marble quarry. The view of
the Little Westfield gorge and the entire Connecticut Lowland from
Meriden to Amherst makes this trip well worth taking.
The tour leaves Westfield on the Jacob’s Ladder road and soon reaches
the terraced margin (1.6) of the Westfield valley. The numerous benches
along the stream banks represent temporary flood-plain levels of the
Westfield. The route turns left from the Jacob’s Ladder highway (4.0)
and parallels the base of the western highland to the Little Westfield
road (4.9). Throughout this distance the marble quarry derrick appears
on the highland skyline. Our road turns right at the next crossing and
winds along the edge of the Little Westfield gorge (see pp. 61-62). The
narrow hill road to the marble quarry turns right (5.7), but it is
inadvisable to drive. The walk is an easy one, and the view at the top
is worth the moderate physical exertion.
Optional Trips
It must be plain, even to the casual reader, that the foregoing pages
have been written with self-restraint. Many of the luring side roads
were passed without so much as a pause; trips to the Cobble Mountain
Reservoir west of Westfield, and to the Quabbin Reservoir east of
Belchertown have not even been suggested; some of the main highways were
slighted. For anyone who knows the byways and the hidden beauties that
can be found in reasonably accessible places, this chapter will seem
inadequate and incomplete.
But it would take a volume far beyond the scope of this brief guide to
do justice to the scenery, the geography, and the geologic detail of the
Connecticut Valley and its bordering uplands. The authors can merely ask
the indulgence of those who would like to know more.
Mineral and Rock Collections
Travelers are inveterate collectors of mementos, and those who travel up
and down and across the Connecticut Valley and who delve into its
geologic history may well be interested in gathering records of its
past. The best records are not in notes or printed pamphlets—not even in
this volume on the subject; they are to be found imprinted in the rocks
and minerals themselves. But the value of records is measured solely by
their utility, and utility is achieved by systematic arrangement. So the
authors will venture a few suggestions on collecting and arranging the
minerals and rocks which are present in the valley and in the bordering
uplands.
One mineral may come from a vein, which is the record of a fissure
beneath a hot spring; another comes from a dike, which was a molten
igneous rock. This specimen is a conglomerate or consolidated gravel
washed into place by an ancient stream; that is a slate which was
transformed from clay by intense squeezing and shearing. And if these
four specimens were to constitute the nucleus of a collection, the need
for classification is apparent. The first two are minerals, which are
substances of limited chemical composition and well defined physical
properties. The last two are rocks, which are aggregates of minerals or
of mineral grains. And the minerals may be further classified according
to their separate modes of origin. So, too, with the rocks. Their
mineral composition indicates some of the conditions which existed where
the minerals originated; the shapes of the mineral grains reveal the
process which moved them to their present site; and the arrangement of
grains discloses the conditions existing during aggregation at this new
locality. Mineral make-up, size, shape, and arrangement of the grains
provide means of recognizing major rock varieties—namely, sedimentary,
igneous and metamorphic types,—and also of reading each rock’s history.
THE MINERALS
The vein minerals, which are deposited in conduits for hot spring water,
commonly possess attractive crystal forms; they include barite, quartz
and amethyst, fluorite, calcite, datolite, galena, sphalerite, pyrite
and others almost too numerous to list. Almost equally attractive
crystals may be obtained from some metamorphic rocks, in which they have
formed as heat and pressure abetted the growth of certain minerals at
the expense of their less favored fellows; this group contains garnet,
kyanite, chlorite, amphibole, epidote and many others. Less spectacular
are the minerals resulting from the decay of rocks by percolating
surface water, such as kaolin, limonite, some calcite, and the
bright-colored copper carbonates. Two additional types of minerals are
formed as the result of normal sedimentary and igneous processes, which
will be described at length in connection with these two kinds of rocks.
So, after the rock specimens are sorted from the minerals, the latter
may profitably be arranged into five groups:
1. The Vein Minerals.
2. The Minerals of Pegmatites and Igneous Rocks.
3. The Minerals of Metamorphic Rocks.
4. The Minerals of Soils and Rock Decay.
5. The Minerals of Sedimentary Rocks.
_The Vein Minerals_
The mineral list which follows is far from complete; it contains only
those minerals which are most commonly found in casual visits to the
localities discussed in connection with the local tours of the
Connecticut Valley. Additional species are listed and described in any
textbook on mineralogy.
QUARTZ is a hard, white or colorless mineral which will scratch glass
easily. In the technical language of the crystallographer, crystals
are hexagonal or six-sided prisms, terminated by hexagonal pyramids;
and the six flat faces which make the sides, together with the six
triangular faces which form the apex, are readily recognized. Massive
forms break with a curved or conchoidal fracture and were used by the
Indians to make arrow-heads. The mineral is very abundant in all the
lead veins and trap quarries; and in some of the latter, specimens of
the purple variety of quartz, amethyst, are common. A black, smoky
variety has been discovered in the pegmatite dikes of the highlands.
Chemically quartz is the dioxide of silicon (SiO₂).
CALCITE breaks along three smooth surfaces or cleavage planes. Each
surface is rhomb-shaped, and the six rhombic faces fit together into a
characteristic rhombohedral form. A knife will scratch the mineral
easily. Calcite is abundant in the white veins of the trap quarries
and is the principal constituent of the crystalline limestones in the
Hoosac Valley between North Adams and Pittsfield. Calcite is a
carbonate of lime (CaCO₃).
BARITE resembles calcite because it can be scratched with a knife and
has three smooth cleavage planes. It differs in having one cleavage
perpendicular to the other two, which intersect at angles of 78°. The
mineral is more than four times the weight of an equal volume of
water, and it feels heavy. It is found in the lead veins at West
Farms, Hatfield and Leverett. In large quantities it has commercial
value as a source of the element barium, for it is the sulphate of
barium (BaSO₄).
GALENA is the chief metallic mineral in the veins at Leverett,
Hatfield and Loudville. It is very heavy and has a metallic gray
color; it breaks into perfect cubes. A knife scratches it easily and
crumbles it to a black powder. The mineral is a lead sulphide (PbS).
SPHALERITE is a lustrous, resinous brown mineral in these same veins.
It cleaves into multi-faced fragments and is softer than a knife.
Chemically it is the sulphide of zinc (ZnS).
PYRITE is the deceptive golden-colored, metal-like mineral which has
earned the name of “fool’s gold.” It will scratch glass, and it
crushes to a black powder. The materials in it are iron and sulphur
(FeS₂).
CHALCOPYRITE resembles pyrite but will not scratch glass and has a
greenish yellow color. It is a compound of copper, iron and sulphur
(CuFeS₂).
The veins in the Connecticut Valley region contain many other minerals,
among which must be mentioned datolite, natrolite, apophyllite,
thomsonite, fluorite and babbingtonite in the lavas; and siderite,
rhodochrosite, rhodonite, wulfenite and pyromorphite in the older veins
of the highlands.
_Minerals of Pegmatites and Igneous Rocks_
The minerals found in pegmatites are legion. More than thirty can be
collected on any trip to Collins Hill near Portland, Connecticut, or to
the Ruggles Mine near Grafton Center, New Hampshire. Only the minerals
appearing most commonly in pegmatites are described, but a list of
others is appended as an aid in consulting a textbook. Igneous rocks
contain practically the same suite of minerals as pegmatites, but in
smaller grains.
MICROCLINE is a white to flesh-colored feldspar with two almost
perpendicular cleavages. It will scratch glass or a knife. One
cleavage face shows a grid of translucent and transparent lines
intersecting at 90°.
ALBITE is the second most abundant feldspar. It is white and may
generally be recognized by its two cleavage surfaces at 86°. Its
growth may be likened to piling a series of plates with their surfaces
parallel to one of the cleavages; during growth the plates are laid
alternately face up and face down, so that the 86° cleavage edges
zigzag in and out, forming a surface which, on the average, is
perpendicular to the growth cleavage surface. The separate plates can
usually be detected as fine bands or striations. The mineral scratches
either glass or a knife.
MUSCOVITE is the white mica found in tabular crystals that can be
cleaved into flexible and elastic sheets. It can be scratched and cut
easily with a knife or shears.
BIOTITE is an amber-colored to black mica. Like muscovite it is
flexible and elastic, but it is slightly more brittle.
TOURMALINE crystals occur in triangular prisms with the corners
bevelled so as to give them a rounded appearance. They lack cleavage,
are very brittle, and will scratch glass. Black is their usual color,
but red and green varieties are present in many pegmatites.
SPODUMENE crystals are white to pale rose in color, and they occur as
flattened prisms with bevelled corners. They cleave parallel to the
surfaces bevelling the corners. The mineral is much harder than a
knife, and the cleavage surfaces have a lustrous, slightly satiny
appearance.
RADIOACTIVE MINERALS occur in many pegmatites and metamorphic rocks of
this region. The species which have been formed as a result of recent
alteration are brilliant golden or green encrustations in cracks or on
a pitchy-black nucleus. The most abundant ones are uranite, autunite
and torbernite. Older primary or source minerals are pitchy-black and
are surrounded by a narrow rusty red zone or “halo,” ¹/₁₆ to ⅛ inch
wide; an elongate species resembling a rusty hand-made nail is
allanite; the more pitchy, irregular-shaped mineral is usually
uraninite or pitchblende.
Other minerals found in pegmatites in the Connecticut Valley region
include beryl, apatite, zircon, garnet, fluorite and lepidolite.
Most of the minerals in normal igneous rocks are too minute to be
recognized easily, but a few have distinctive characteristics which
serve to identify them. QUARTZ is a hard, dark, glassy-looking mineral
without cleavage. ORTHOCLASE and MICROCLINE feldspar are hard,
flesh-colored (occasionally white) minerals with flat cleavage
surfaces. The minerals making the white lathlike mosaic on the
weathered surface of the Range at the Mount Holyoke House are
LABRADORITE feldspar. They are about ¼ inch long and ¹/₅₀ inch
thick—too small to permit testing by ordinary physical methods,
although unweathered pieces have essentially the same physical
properties as orthoclase and microcline. The MICAS are flaky and
reflect light like minute pieces of tinfoil; muscovite is white, and
biotite is amber-colored to black. CHLORITE resembles mica but is less
lustrous and is dark green.
Some minerals of igneous rocks do not appear in pegmatites. Among them
is OLIVINE, which has almost the same color as chlorite but is harder
than a knife and is massive or granular. It is commonly associated
with massive green SERPENTINE, which is softer than a knife. These
three minerals are especially abundant in rocks found in the vicinity
of Blandford, Massachusetts, and Dover and Chester, Vermont.
AUGITE is a dark brown to black pyroxene which occurs between the
mosaic of whitish labradorite feldspar prisms in the weathered diabase
near the Mount Holyoke House.
AMPHIBOLE crystals are dark green to black, “match-shaped” crystals.
They have almost the same hardness as a knife and are characterized by
two cleavages parallel to their length and intersecting at 56°. The
mineral is also abundant in metamorphic rocks and is frequently
reported as a “fossil fern” from ledges at Charlemont and Shelburne
Falls.
_Minerals of Metamorphic Rocks_
The principal minerals of metamorphic rocks include many which are
likewise present in pegmatites and igneous rocks, such as microcline,
albite, quartz, muscovite, biotite, amphibole, serpentine and
tourmaline. But there are others which are more exclusively metamorphic:
GARNET occurs in twelve- or twenty-four-sided red crystals. It is much
harder than a knife. The geometric form is diagnostic, and crystals up
to an inch thick are obtainable in Plainfield, Massachusetts, and at
Grafton, Chester, and Gassetts in Vermont. They occur in a muscovite
schist, in which the muscovite flakes are wrapped around the
individual crystals.
TALC is a white to pale-green mineral found around the margins of
intrusive rocks that are rich in olivine and serpentine. It is
foliated and is so soft that even solid masses will rub off on cloth.
It is present in the green marble quarry near Westfield.
KYANITE is a sky-blue, bladed mineral, with two excellent cleavages at
nearly 90°, and a good smooth fracture at almost 90° to both. One face
is harder than a knife and the other two are softer. It is very
abundant in the country rock southeast of the Westfield marble quarry.
_The Minerals of Soils and Rock Decay_
Aluminous minerals decay to KAOLINITE, and those with a high iron
content alter to LIMONITE. Both these products of decomposition form a
sticky paste in their original forms. Kaolinite is white to yellow, and
limonite or ochre is yellow to orange. Limonite also appears in
orange-colored or brown balls, in icicle-like masses, and in thin beds.
Specimens have approximately the hardness of a knife. Quartz does not
decay easily and remains behind in solid granules.
_The Minerals of Sedimentary Rocks_
Most sedimentary rocks are formed by the cementation of deposits of
transported waste, derived from older materials. They may contain
anything. The minerals which undergo rapid decay break down to limonite,
kaolinite and quartz, leaving only the more resistant varieties, which
include, in order of decreasing resistance, quartz, microcline,
orthoclase, albite and muscovite. Less abundant constituents are garnet,
tourmaline, zircon and magnetite.
Certain kinds of sedimentary rocks may be formed through other
agencies—for example, limestone, which is composed of calcite, initially
precipitated by lime-secreting organisms or by the evaporation of
lime-charged waters. The effects of organic activity may be seen in the
limestone near Bernardston, but most of the calcite now present in the
rocks of western Massachusetts is of vein or metamorphic derivation.
Salt (halite) and gypsum are formed by the evaporation of saline waters,
but only the vacated casts of salt crystals have been detected in the
Triassic sediments of the valley.
THE ROCKS
Rocks record three distinct methods which nature employs in the
aggregation of minerals. The sedimentary rocks register the work of
wind, water and ice. Deposits left by wind and water are generally
stratified or bedded, and they, together with glacial deposits, are
composed of fragments which touch one another and are cemented at the
points of contact. Igneous rocks record the solidification of hot
liquids which injected themselves into older rocks or filled crevices,
and which, upon cooling, formed masses of closely fitting crystals. The
third group includes types which are crystalline like the igneous rocks,
and which may be laminated somewhat like the sediments; they show
effects of heating and squeezing until their original forms and even
their minerals were changed. These are the metamorphic rocks.
Anyone who wants an orderly record of geologic history will arrange his
rocks into these three groups—the sedimentary, the igneous, and the
metamorphic. In the Connecticut Valley the metamorphic rocks reveal the
ancient phases of earth history, and the sediments contain the details
of younger or later geological episodes. The igneous rocks have a wider
historical range; and, like the other types, they record a long period
of violence and upheaval which seems out of harmony with the placid
countryside for which they now provide a solid foundation.
_The Sedimentary Rocks_
The sedimentary rocks are built from the disintegrated wreckage of older
ones. The products of rock decay are picked up and dragged, or carried
in suspension or solution, by wind, running water, or moving ice. They
are deposited when and where the transporting agent can no longer
function. Such rocks are usually layered because the transporting power
of the carrying agent fluctuates. Bands of one kind of material,
separated by dissimilar materials above and below, are called beds.
The bedded or stratified rocks of the Connecticut Valley vary greatly,
from the coarse bouldery deposits in Mount Toby to the fine-textured,
red and black laminated beds at Whittemore’s Ferry. Conglomerate,
arkose, graywacke, shale and even limestone are represented, but there
is little true sandstone. Sandstone is an even-textured, granular rock,
most commonly composed of cemented quartz grains. Its uniformity of
grain-size and composition reflects prolonged weathering of the original
rock and good sorting of the fragments as they were transported to their
new resting place. The sequence of exposure, transportation and
deposition was too rapid in the ancient Connecticut Valley to permit
appreciable decay and sorting; hence sandstones are absent. Limestones
and salt beds are likewise rare, but the metamorphosed limestones which
are found in the western highlands and in the Berkshire valley
demonstrate that limestone-forming processes played a significant, if
intermittent, part in the history of the region.
CONGLOMERATE is consolidated gravel. Pebbles and boulders of all sizes
are packed together by the stream which was moving them, and the
spaces between the larger fragments are filled with the sand that
settled in from the stream bed. The entire mass is cemented by silica,
limonite, carbonates or some other substance deposited by percolating
ground-water. The Devil’s football near the Mount Holyoke House is a
famous piece which was dislodged from the hillside above; and
excellent specimens may be collected on Mount Toby, on Mount
Sugarloaf, and in the cut at Mount Tom Junction.
ARKOSE resembles conglomerate, but the individual grains consist of
mineral fragments, among which reddish feldspar is prominent. Quartz
and mica may be present, too; and all the pieces are
characteristically angular, commonly ranging from ¹/₁₆ to ⅛ inch in
size. The rock is red and crumbles easily. Beds of arkose alternate
with conglomerate on the steep sides of Mount Sugarloaf.
GRAYWACKE is light to dark gray in color, and the fragments composing
it are sand size pieces of older rocks. A few mineral grains, such as
quartz, may be present, but mica is rare. Graywacke occurs interbedded
with arkose in some parts of the valley.
SHALE is a thinly laminated sediment composed of microscopic quartz,
feldspar, mica and kaolinite grains. Most shales in the Connecticut
valley were deposited as muds in old lake beds. Some are red and
record ephemeral pools, but others show from their black color, their
coal layers, and their fish skeletons, that the water bodies in which
they accumulated remained in existence for a comparatively long time.
LIMESTONE is a rock composed of calcium carbonate, and it consists
essentially of an aggregate of calcite crystals or calcite fragments.
It will give off gas bubbles in a very dilute solution of hydrochloric
acid, and it exhibits other properties peculiar to the mineral
calcite. A thin, sandy limestone bed has been identified in several
sections of Holyoke.
_The Igneous Rocks_
Igneous rocks were once molten, and in this hot fluid state some were
extruded at the surface as lava flows. Congealed flows reveal the
motion, which brought them to their present resting places, in the
banding and streaks that are so evident in the patterns of steam holes
and minerals; but their massive structure bears witness to stagnation as
they hardened. Other molten masses insinuated themselves into
underground openings, where they solidified as intrusives, varying in
size from small dikes less than an inch wide, to huge masses that can be
measured in miles in any direction. Most of the igneous rocks in the
highlands of western and central Massachusetts are massive intrusive
types; light-colored varieties predominate, but some dark-colored dikes
cut the older rocks both east and west of the valley. Dark-colored,
massive and banded lavas are conspicuous in the ranges within the
valley.
Igneous rocks may be divided into three general groups for practical
classification, and each major group may be further subdivided. Rather
conveniently each of the major groups may be recognized by the prevalent
color of its rocks—whether dark, medium-colored, or light. And within
each major classification there may be flows, characterized by banded
structures and fine textures; small intrusives composed of well formed
crystals in a fine-grained groundmass; and large intrusives consisting
of goodsized, equi-granular crystals. Not all of these types can be
found in central Massachusetts, but the variety of igneous rocks is
surprising and offers some excellent possibilities for the collector.
_The Dark Rocks_
The dark rocks owe their color to iron-bearing minerals like olivine,
pyroxene (augite), amphibole and biotite. All of these minerals weather
to a rusty red surface, which is typical of their outcrops at many
places.
BASALT is a black rock, dense in some places but perforated with
bubble holes or vesicles, at others. It occurs throughout the length
of the Holyoke, Tom and Pocumtuck Ranges; and fragments of basalt are
abundant in the Granby tuff and agglomerate.
DIABASE resembles basalt but is distinguished by the thin, short
crystals embedded in it. These crystals of labradorite feldspar
resemble pieces of clipped thread, and they sparkle in reflected
light. Almost all dark-colored dikes and the slowly cooled central
portions of thick lava flows consist of diabase.
PERIDOTITE is a dark green, coarse, granular rock composed of olivine
and subordinate amounts of pyroxene. It occurs near Westfield and
Blandford, and at many places in Vermont.
_The Medium-Colored Rocks_
The medium-colored rocks contain approximately the same proportions of
light- and dark-colored minerals. The dark iron-bearing minerals are
relatively stable, but the light-gray feldspars decompose to kaolin and
give the weathered rock a chalky white surface. Surface flows of this
group are unknown in central Massachusetts, but the coarsely granular
intrusives are well represented.
GRANODIORITE PORPHYRY is a greenish-gray rock occurring in many dikes
in the western highlands. It has rectangular crystals of andesine
feldspar up to ⅛ inch across, and these have a dull porcellaneous
luster. A few dark-green amphibole crystals are only slightly smaller.
Both feldspars and amphiboles are embedded in a very fine-textured,
pale greenish groundmass.
GRANODIORITE is a gray equigranular rock containing flesh-colored
microcline feldspar, white andesine feldspar, greenish flakes of
chlorite, needles of amphibole and sparse grains of brown biotite. All
crystals are about ¹/₃₂ inch thick and commonly display a parallel
arrangement. This rock forms huge irregular masses at Williamsburg,
Whately and Belchertown.
_The Light-Colored Rocks_
The light-colored rocks are well represented by dikes and large masses
but not by recognizable surface flows in central Massachusetts. Their
exposures have rarely weathered much, because the predominant minerals
are quartz, microcline, orthoclase and albite, which resist decay.
QUARTZ PORPHYRY is a light gray rock that is found in dikes. It has
porcelain-white cleavable feldspars up to ⅛ inch thick, and dark
glassy quartz of equal size in a granular mass of very fine-grained
crystals. Intrusives of this type are numerous in the vicinity of
Whately.
GRAY ALBITE GRANITE occurs in many dikes and small irregular masses
throughout the highlands. All crystals have approximately the same
size and rarely exceed ¹/₃₂ inch in thickness. They consist of white
orthoclase and albite, dark sugary quartz, and brown to black biotite.
RED MICROCLINE GRANITE is found in very large, irregular intrusives in
the highlands. The crystals are ¹/₁₆ inch or more in thickness. The
red color is due to the flesh-colored microcline. Quartz is dark and
glassy, and muscovite is the typical mica.
_The Metamorphic Rocks_
Metamorphic rocks were once sedimentary or igneous rocks which have been
changed by intense pressure, by heat, or by solutions moving through
them. Pressure usually produces a sheeted or foliated structure along
which the rock exhibits a tendency to part—somewhat like the pages in a
book that was bound before the ink was dry. Percolating solutions may
produce chemical alterations in the original materials and even
crystallize new substances along the foliated surfaces within the rock,
much as water circulating through cooled soil may solidify to ice and
cause heaving. Many of the rocks in the highlands bordering the
Connecticut Valley are highly foliated or banded in consequence of the
mechanical deformation they suffered when the ancient upland mountain
system was created. They include the slates, schists and gneisses. A few
massive types, like marble, serpentine and soapstone, owe their origins
chiefly to the effects of heat or of the hot, chemically charged
solutions which permeated them.
SLATES are fine-grained rocks characterized by flat, parallel cleavage
surfaces which usually cross the original sedimentary structure. They
were formed from shales, by shearing and compression during ancient
mountain-making movements. Slates crop out beside the station platform
at Brattleboro, Vermont, and at many places southward along Federal
Highway 5 to Greenfield.
SCHIST is foliated, too, but it is composed largely of cleavable
minerals, such as chlorite, muscovite, biotite and amphibole, which
are distributed along the cleavage surfaces. These minerals result
from the chemical activity of hot solutions circulating along a slaty
cleavage, re-crystallizing old materials, and bringing in new to make
these coarse mineral flakes. The schist receives its specific name
(biotite schist, chlorite schist, etc.) from the mineral which
accentuates its cleavage structure.
A few schists contain large crystals which bulge the schistose
surfaces outward around them. Garnet is characteristic in this role,
and a muscovite schist with garnets in it is called a GARNETIFEROUS
(or garnet-bearing) MUSCOVITE SCHIST. Other minerals with occurrences
similar to the garnet are microcline, albite, staurolite, amphibole,
tourmaline, pyrite and magnetite.
GNEISS is a banded rock containing cleavable minerals, but it lacks
the cleavage structure of schist. The cleavable minerals (biotite,
muscovite, amphibole, etc.) may give the gneiss its specific name, but
as often as not, the name is derived from the whole mineral
assemblage, or from an assumed origin, as in the case of granite
gneiss. As in the igneous rocks, the mineral ensemble is held together
by interlocked quartz and feldspar grains. Black-banded biotite gneiss
and hornblende gneiss are the most abundant varieties in the
neighborhood of the metropolitan reservoir east of Pelham.
MARBLE is a granular rock composed of calcite crystals. It is formed
when heat volatilizes the bituminous coloring agents of ordinary
limestone and simultaneously causes enlargement of the calcite grains.
It is the principal rock in the Berkshire Valley in which North Adams,
Adams and Pittsfield are located.
OPHICALCITE is a lime-silicate rock. It is formed by the chemical
reactions of hot solutions on limestone or marble at considerable
depth within the earth. The original calcite is converted into
diopside, garnet, vesuvianite and tremolite, forming a rock that may
be massive, or which may preserve some of the original bedded
structure. It is found in association with the crystalline limestone
and magnetite at the old iron mine, located one mile north of
Bernardston.
SERPENTINE is a dark-green rock made almost exclusively of the mineral
serpentine. It results from the reaction of hot solutions on olivine
and pyroxene rocks (peridotites). Serpentinite is present in the
Westfield marble quarry and at Zoar on the south side of the Deerfield
River.
SOAPSTONE is composed principally of talc. It, too, results from the
chemical activity of hot solutions ascending through serpentine and
causing the mineral transformation. Bodies of this material are
associated with the serpentinite at Westfield and Zoar, and northward
in sections of Vermont. It is mined for talc, but in colonial days it
found many uses. The colonists used cross-cut saws to make blocks for
foot warmers in their sleighs, to control the heat in the old
wood-fired ovens and to make water pipes before iron and lead were
available in adequate quantities. Many soapstone articles may be
seen—and purchased—in Wiggins Country Store and in other good antique
shops through the valley. One of the most primitive Indian cultures in
this region utilized soapstone pots, and exhibits are on display at
both the Springfield Museum of Natural History and the Amherst College
Museum.
Conclusion
To anyone who has had the patience to read through the preceding pages
and to reach these concluding remarks, it must be obvious that geology
is not merely a pastime for specialists. 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.
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. Let it not be thought that this little volume tells the
whole story. On the contrary, its authors expect to have a difficult
time justifying their sins of omission, more particularly because many
of the omissions have been conscious and deliberate. But they trust they
have left for the reader a wealth of features which he can make his own
by right of discovery. For it will not take him very long to penetrate
the fourth dimension of geologic time more deeply and intimately than is
possible in the pages of a book.
Footnotes
[1]The figures denote the distance in miles from the starting point to
the feature mentioned.
General Index
“P” indicates plate following page number indicated
A
Agglomerate, 22 P, 24, 36, 72, 84
Albite, 109
Albite granite, 116
Allanite, 88, 110
Alluvial fans, Triassic, 19, 28, 43, 46
Alluvial plain, 3, 21
Alluvial wash, 25, 43
Amphibole, 110
Appalachian disturbance, 42
Argillite, Leyden, 64
Arkose, 114
Arkose, “first” sandstone, 86
Ash, volcanic, 28, 66, 71
Augite, 110
Autunite, 110
Azurite, 64
B
Bank, undercut, 2
Barite, 30, 63, 108
Basalt, 72, 115
Basalt, columns, 71
Basin, Triassic, 27, 43
Batholith, 32
Beaches, sloping south, 49
Bedrock, depth, 10
Biotite, 109
Block mountains, 25
Boulders, striated, 21
Brickyards, 4, 69
C
Calcite, 64, 108
Calendar beds, 69
Cambrian, 37, 38
Canyon, Little Westfield River, 61
Carboniferous period, 33, 42
Carboniferous swamps, 34, 42
Caves, Sunderland, 55
Chalcopyrite, 64, 108
Channel scars, 79
Chicopee shale, 18
Chlorite, 110
Cinder cone, 25
Cirque, 10
Clay, 4
Clay beds, 69
Clay, distorted, 6, 66 P, 70
Clay stones, concretions, 70
Clays, banded, 4, 6
Clays, record climate, 69
Climate, Triassic, 23
Coal, 33
Coal basin, 34, 42
Coal swamps, Carboniferous, 33, 40
Coal, Triassic, 22
Coherent rock, effect, 12
Columns, basaltic, 60
Concretions, 70
Conglomerate, 20, 25, 28, 54, 56, 99, 113
Conglomerate, boulder, 21
Conglomerate, Devonian, 35
Conglomerate, Mt. Toby, 54
Conglomerate, Triassic, 19, 21
Contact, conglomerate with crystallines, 59
Crater, 25
Cretaceous period, 17, 46
Cretaceous sediments, 16
Crops, 7
Cut-banks, 11
D
Delta, 7, 8, 49
Delta, Deerfield River, 58, 95
Delta, Florence, 89
Delta, glacial lakes, 49, 69
Delta, Long Plain Brook, 98
Delta, Millers River, 58
Delta, Sawmill River, 99
Delta, Westfield River, 62
Desert climate, Triassic, 46
Devonian, 39
Diabase, 62, 115
Dike, 32, 32 P, 42
Dinosaur habits, 67
Dinosaur tracks, 22, 22 P, 66, 66 P, 81, 96
Dinosaurs, 18, 46
Dinosaurs, bipedal, 67
Disturbance, Appalachian, 42
Disturbance, Shickshock, 40
Disturbance, Taconic, 40
Drainage, Atlantic, 15, 47
Drumlin, South Amherst, 9, 84
Dunes, 4, 49, 56, 87, 98
E
Earthquakes, ancient, 19, 26
Eastern Upland, 32, 33, 37
Entrenched valleys, 12
Eocene period, 46
Erratics, 8, 82, 89
Everlasting hills, 11
F
Fans, alluvial, 19
Fault, buried, 24
Fault, eastern border, 19, 25
Fault fissure, 66
Faulting, at Notch, 73, 75
Fault movement, 25, 26, 60
Faults, Turners Falls, 44
Fish, extinction of Triassic, 68
Fish fossils, Durham, Conn., 22
Fish fossils, Sunderland, Mass., 22, 68
Fish, living conditions, 68
Fish, Triassic, 22
Fish, Whittemore’s Ferry, 69
Flood level, 1936, 82, 96, 97
Floodplain, 3, 4, 79
Floods, 1, 3, 4, 6
Floor, Triassic basin, 30
Folds, 34, 36, 40, 42
Footprint localities, 66, 68
Footprints, dinosaur, 22, 22 P, 67, 84
Fore-set beds, 8
Forests, oldest, 40
G
Galena, 20, 30, 63, 108
Garnet, 111
Glacier, 8, 9, 21, 42, 46
Glacier recession, 9, 49
Glacier slope, 48
Glaciers, Permian age, 42
Gneiss, 28, 118
Gneiss, horizontal, 97
Gneiss, Pelham, 79
Gorge, Cold River, 92
Gorge, Deerfield River, 56, 92, 92 P
Gorge, Little Westfield, 105
Gorges, buried, 10
Gorges, Pliocene age, 48
Grade of rivers, 15
Granite, 21, 28, 33, 34, 42, 54, 116
Granite, pre-Triassic, 100
Granite quarry, 88
Granodiorite, 116
Granodiorite porphyry, 116
Granodiorite, Williamsburg, 64
Graywacke, 114
H
“Horse sheds,” 76
Hot springs, 30, 42
Hudson drainage, 15
Hurricane, 12
I
Ice Age, 10, 48, 56
Icebergs, 8
Ice-cakes, 8
Ice dispersal centers, 48
Ice recession, rate, 49
Ice sheet, 5, 9, 52, 72
Ice thickness, 48
Indian campsites, 3
Indian graves, 3
Intrusive, 33
Inundation, 3
Iron ore, 34, 35
J
Joints, Mt. Sugarloaf, 56
Jurassic period, 46
K
Kame terraces, 82, 95
Kaolinite, 111
Kettle holes, 82, 83, 100
Kyanite, 111
L
Labradorite, 110
Lake Bascom, 93
Lake beds, 22
Lake deposits, Triassic, 55
Lake Hadley, 5, 49, 52, 70
Lake Hadley, glacial bed, 59, 79
Lake, ice margin, 82
Lake shore, Amherst, 79
Lake shore, old, 7
Lake shore, slope of, 7, 49
Lake Springfield, 5, 49, 103
Lake Springfield, antiquity, 70
Lake Springfield, frozen, 70
Lakes, post-glacial, 49
Lakes, Triassic, 46, 56, 68, 101
Landslide deposits, 46
Landslide, Triassic, 56
Landslides, ancient, 19, 21
Lava, amygdaloidal, 104
Lava, columnar, 32 P, 60, 60 P, 71
Lava, Deerfield flow, 101
Lava field, 72
Lava flow, 25, 26, 28, 43, 44, 48, 60
Lava, Holyoke flow, 26, 44, 81, 85
Lava, pillow type, 96
Lava, “second,” 85
Lead veins, 30, 63, 65
Limestone, 35, 40, 114
Limestone, Bernardston, 40
Limestone, Cambrian, 38
Limestone, Devonian, 34, 35
Limonite, 111
Longmeadow sandstone, 18
Lowland, excavated, 13
Lowland, Miocene age, 55
Lowland relief, 53
M
Malachite, 64
Marble, 118
Marble, Westfield, 61, 105
Maturity, 14
Meander, 3, 62
Meander scarps, 56, 57, 104
Meander scarps, Sunderland, 57
Meanders, Westfield River, 62
Microcline, 109
Microcline granite, 117
Mine, West Farms, 64
Mineral, definition, 106
Minerals, genetic classification, 107
Minerals, metamorphic, 111
Minerals, pegmatite, 109
Minerals, sedimentary, 111
Minerals, soil, 111
Minerals, vein, 63, 107
Mine shaft, 64
Miocene, 11, 14, 30, 55
Miocene lowland, 14
Monadnocks, 12 P, 55
Moraine, terminal, 8, 48
Mountain, eastern block, 19, 28
Mountain, exhumed, 48, 100
Mountain, Triassic, 21, 54
Mt. Warner rocks, 87
Muscovite, 109
N
Natural levee, 2, 3
New England landscape, 15
New England peneplain, 12 P, 15, 45, 74, 92 P
New England upland, 51, 55, 90, 94
New England upland, monadnocks, 55
Notch, 25
Notch, origin, 44, 74
Notch quarry, 84
O
Olivine, 110
Ophicalcite, 118
Orchard land, 8
Ordovician, 36, 33, 39
Ox-bow, 3
Ox-bow Lake, 4 P, 82
P
Paleozoic era, 42
Pegmatite, 28, 32, 82
Peneplain, erosional plain, 46
Peneplain, New England, 12 P, 15, 45, 74
Peridotite, 36, 38, 115
Piedmont plains, 40
Piracy by Farmington River, 47
Pitchblende, 110
Plains, lacustrine, 49
Plankton, Cambro-Ordovician, 36
Plants, Triassic, 22
Plateau-like upland, 11
Playa, 21, 22, 23, 46, 68
Pliocene, 10, 11
Pliocene uplift, 48
Providence basin, 33
Pyrite, 64, 108
Pyromorphite, 64
Q
Quarry, Westfield Marble, 61, 62
Quartz, 30, 63, 107
Quartz porphyry, 116
Quartzite, Cheshire, 93
Quartzite conglomerate, 35
R
Raindrop imprints, 22
Recession of Atlantic, Pliocene, 48
Recession of ice, 9
Red rock basin, 18
Reeds, 67
Rift movement, 43, 44
Rift, Triassic, 43, 44
Ripple-marks, 22, 69
Roches moutonnées, 4 P, 9, 10
Rock-benches, 15
Rock, definition, 106
Rock, extrusive, 32 P
Rock, history recorded, 112
Rock, igneous, 114
Rock, intrusive, 32 P
Rock, metamorphic, 117
Rock mosaic, 17
Rock, sedimentary, 113
Rock, story of igneous, 114
Rock, story of metamorphic, 117
Rock, story of sedimentary, 113
Rock varieties, 106
S
Salt crystals, casts, 67
Sand bar, 1
Sand dunes, 4
Sandstone, 71
Sandstone, Longmeadow, 83
Sandstone, “second,” 85
Sandstone, Silurian, 39
“Scallops,” 4, 56
Scallops, meander scarps, 56, 57
Schist, 28, 117
Schist, Conway, 95
Schist, garnetiferous, 118
Schist, Goshen, 89
Schists, volcanic, 92
Scour-channels, 1
Screes, 43
Sea, Cambrian, 36
Sea, Devonian, 35
Sea, Ordovician, 36
Sediments, Devonian, 24
Serpentine, 110, 118
Shale, 21, 22, 55, 68, 114
Shale, Chicopee, 18
Sheets, intrusive, 42, 62
Shickshock disturbance, 40
Shore, Lake Springfield, 80
Siderite, 64
Sill, 32
Silt, 3, 4, 21
Slate, 35, 36, 117
Slickensides, 66
Snowfields, Triassic, 21
Soapstone, 118
Soapstone, uses, 119
Sphalerite, 63, 108
Spodumene, 109
Springs, hot, 30
St. Lawrence drainage, 15, 47
Stock, 32
Stone fences, 9, 52, 80
Strath, 14, 15, 16, 47, 58, 92 P, 93
Striations, 9
Swales, 1, 98
Swamps, 40
T
Taconic disturbance, 40
Talc, 111
Talus, 46
Terminal moraine, 8, 49
Terraced surface, 17
Terraces, 4, 7, 49, 79, 98, 104
Terraces, floodplain, 87
Terraces, meander cut, 95
Tertiary period, 16
Till, 8, 10
Top-set beds, 8
Torbernite, 110
Tourmaline, 109
Tracks, dinosaur, 66
Trail, Holyoke Range, 84
Triassic, 42
Triassic basin, filled, 13
Tuff, 25, 36, 81, 84
Tuff, Granby, 22 P, 25, 85
U
Upland, Eastern, 32
Upland, New England, 18
Upland, Western, 32, 34
Uraninite, 110
Uranite, 110
U-shaped valley, 10
V
Varve, 9
Varves, annual deposits, 69
Vein, Hatfield, 64, 88
Vein, Leverett, 65, 66
Vein, Whately, 64
Veins, lead, 63
Veins, Loudville, 30, 63
Volcanic necks, 23, 71
Volcanics, Cambro-Ordovician age, 36
Volcanics, Mt. Hitchcock, 29
Volcanoes, 23, 27
Volcanoes, Cambrian, 38
Volcanoes, Ordovician, 38
Volcanoes, Triassic, 43
V-shaped valley, 14
W
Washout by flood, 87
Watergap, 3
Well, deep hole, 82
Western Upland, 32, 34, 37
Windblown sand, 4
Wulfenite, 64
Geographic Index
“P” indicates plate following page number indicated.
A
Adams, 14, 93
Adirondack Mountains, 15, 35, 38
Amherst, 7, 21, 25, 97
Amherst Island, 98
Ashfield, 90, 94
Atlantic, 3
B
Bare Mountain, view, 73
Belchertown, 80
Belchertown Ponds, 82
Berkshire Hills, 15, 38
Berkshire Trail, 89
Bernardston, 34, 35, 40
Bernardston Ridge, 30, 43
Blandford, Mass., 110
Bloody Brook, 95
Brattleboro, 3, 35
Brimfield, 32
C
Catskill Mountains, 15, 40
Central Vermont Railroad, 21
Charlemont, 14
Cheapside, 95
Chester, Mass., 36
Chester, Vt., 110
Chesterfield, 89
Chicopee, 7, 102
Christopher Clark Road, 86
Cobble Mountain, 105
College Highway, 103
Connecticut Lowland, 9, 12, 15, 49, 58, 61, 97
Connecticut River, 11, 12 P, 56, 57
Connecticut River, birth of, 47
Connecticut River, pre-glacial, 58, 59
Connecticut Valley, 6, 9, 14
Conway, 55, 95
Coolidge Memorial Bridge, 1, 9, 10, 48, 78
Cummington, 14, 89
D
Daniel Shays Highway, 79, 97
Davis Mine, 92
Deerfield River, 12, 14, 21, 47, 58 P
Dover, Vt., 110
Durham, Conn., 22
E
Easthampton, 3, 86
Erving, 97
F
Falls River, 58, 96
Farmington River, 47
Fish Hatchery, 96
Flat Mountain, 76
Fort River, 85
French King Bridge, 22, 28, 30, 58 P, 59
G
Goshen, 55, 89
Grafton Center, N. H., 109
Granby, 21, 25, 46
Greenfield, 96
Greenfield Ridge, 26, 44
Green Mountains, 15, 35, 36, 37, 38, 46
H
Hadley, 1, 4, 4 P, 11, 87
Hadley lowland, view, 71
Hartford, 18
Hatfield, 4, 30, 64
Haydenville, 89
Hilliard Knob, 76
Hockanum, 1, 2, 25
Holyoke, 23, 67, 80
Holyoke Range, 25, 52 P
Holyoke Range, view of, 52 P, 83, 89
Hoosac Tunnel, 92
“Horse sheds,” 76
Housatonic, 6
J
Jacob’s Ladder route, 61, 103
Jamaica, 12, 14
L
Leverett, Mass., 21, 30, 35, 65
Litchfield Hills, 16
“Little Tinker,” 29, 72
Little Westfield River, 61
Long Island, 9, 48
Long Island Sound, 14, 16
Loudville, 30, 63
Lowell Mountains, 36
M
Maine, 15
Manhan River, 103
Martha’s Vineyard, 9, 48
Memphremagog, 35, 36
Merrimack River, 6, 47
Middletown, 3, 7, 22, 23, 49
Mohawk Park, 92
Mohawk Trail, 14, 35, 91
Montague, 7, 21, 30, 99
Mt. Ascutney, 15, 46
Mt. Grace, 55
Mt. Greylock, 15, 46, 55
Mt. Hitchcock, 29, 72
Mount Holyoke Hotel, 23, 71
Mt. Holyoke Range, 3, 9, 14, 26, 44, 52 P, 71
Mt. Lincoln, 12 P, 51, 52 P
Mt. Lincoln, road to, 79
Mt. Monadnock, 5, 9, 12 P, 46, 52, 55, 97
Mt. Nonotuck, 86
Mt. Norwottock, view, 75
Mt. Okemo, 15
Mt. Sugarloaf, 12 P, 56, 58 P, 87
Mt. Toby, 18, 20, 52
Mt. Tom Range, 9, 14, 26, 44
Mt. Tom Reservation, 86
Mt. Wachusett, 15, 46, 55
Mt. Warner, 4, 14, 30, 43
Mt. Washington, 9
N
New Hampshire, 15, 48
New Haven, 14, 17, 19, 26
New London, 3, 14
New Salem, 97
North Adams, 93
Northampton, 1, 3, 4 P, 26
Northfield, Mass., 17, 52
Northfield Mountains, 36
North Hadley, 4, 87
Norwottock, 4
Notch Mountain, 73, 74
O
Old Deerfield, 95
Orange, 52, 97
Orient, 79
P
Pelham, 15, 51
Pelham Hills, 9
Pelham, view, 51, 79
Plainfield, 14, 38, 90
Plainfield Pond, 94
Pocumtuck Hills, 14, 52, 95
Portland, Conn., 19, 109
Q
Quabbin Reservoir, 79, 97, 105
R
“Riffles,” 22, 67
Roaring Brook, 21, 52, 99
S
Saguenay, 10
Savoy, 93
Shelburne Summit, 91
Shickshock Mountains, 35
“Sisters,” the, 71
South Amherst, 9
South Ashfield, 94
South Deerfield, 4
South Hadley, 7, 25
South Hadley Falls, 7, 69
Spencer, 32
Springfield, 19
Stratton Mountain, 15, 55
Sunderland, 4, 22, 28, 98
Sunderland Bridge, 2, 3, 10, 48, 98
Sunderland Caves, 21, 55, 69, 101
Swift River, 89
T
Taconic Mountains, 35, 36, 93
Taylor’s Notch, 71
“Tinker,” 29, 72
Titan’s Piazza, 60, 85
Titan’s Pier, 61
Townshend, Vt., 12
Trail, Holyoke Range, 71
Tuckerman Ravine, 10
Turners Falls, 22, 26, 44, 58, 96
W
Ware, 32
Westfield Marble Quarry, 62
Westfield River, 14, 60 P, 89
West Pelham, 11
West River, 12, 47
Whately, 30, 64, 88
Whitcomb Summit, 92
White Mountains, 10, 15, 46, 47, 48
Whittemore’s Ferry, 68, 69
Wilbraham Mountains, 18, 60 P, 62
Williamsburg, 89
Williamstown, 93
Windsor Dam, 32 P
Worcester, 32
Z
Zoar, 92
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