Sunday, April 25, 2021

Paddling Trip To The Last Green Valley

 

Traveled into the Connecticut section of The Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor for 3 days of paddling earlier this Earth Day week.  The National Park Service describes the Heritage Corridor's significance as: "spanning 35 towns in northeastern Connecticut and south-central Massachusetts, The Last Green Valley is surprisingly rural and uniquely historic.  With 1,100 square miles that are still 77% forests and farms the pastoral landscape is interspersed with powerful rivers, mill villages, and vibrant town centers.  'Green by day and dark by night', The Last Green Valley is the last stretch of dark night sky in the coastal sprawl between Boston and Washington, DC."  

So, on Monday morning I hit the road equipped with a copy of Paddle Guide for the Quinebaug, Willimantic, and Shetucket River Water Trails and followed Route 395 south from Massachusetts.  This fairly mellow highway parallels the French River staying to the eastward of it.  Leaving 395 in the village of North Grosvenor Dale I got a brief look at the French River at Blain Rd...


...just before arriving at West Thompson Lake, a US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) flood control project built in the 1960s on the Quinebaug River about 6 river miles below the Massachusetts line. 

The flood control project required the taking of many homes and farms in West Thompson.  The USACE was successful in getting all the landowners to leave their properties, except for one...Alice Ramsdell who refused to leave her family's farm.  She literally 'held her ground' and ultimately was allowed to stay on her farm until her death in 1994.  Because I'm a railfan, I usually check my collection of railroad history magazines before visiting a new area.  While doing so I came across a very interesting article in a September 1982 issue of The New England States Limited on a 1891 train wreck which involved 4 different trains and occurred in East Thompson, CT.  Imagine my surprise in seeing that the article, "The East Thompson Wreck!!" was co-authored by Gregg Turner and Alice Ramsdell-the very same Alice Ramsdell.  It seems both Alice and her father, Frank, were also railfans.  In fact, on their farm alongside the Quinebaug River resided a narrow-gauge steam engine which Frank and 3 others had rescued from the defunct Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington RR in coastal Maine.  On the Find A Grave website is a  photograph of Alice standing aboard her dad's steam engine in happier days.  Today the little engine has been restored and once again chugs along the tracks in eastern Maine.  More info on the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington RR can be found at this link.

After launching into the West Thompson Lake a look to the south brought the dam into view...


 ...before I turned and headed up the lake and eventually the Quinebaug River towards and a little beyond Red Bridge Road where the river's current livened up a bit...


En route I encountered a 'nip' bottle at 1 o-clock...

...riding the current down, most likely, from a town over the state line in Massachusetts only about 3 miles or so upriver.  It was one of 25 'nip' bottles recovered that day.

On returning to West Thompson Lake a crew team was rowing on the lake...

Note the fifth member of the team sans oars.

Post paddle I drove further south on Route 12 to my accommodations in Plainfield, CT passing through the scenic towns of Putnam, Attawaugan, Killingly, Danielson, and Wauregan along the way.

On Tuesday I drove westward on the undulating and scenic Route 14 through the small towns of Canterbury and Scotland to Shetucket River Park on Plains Road in Windham.  My objective was to paddle upriver on the Shetucket to its confluence with the Willimantic/Natchaug rivers, and later to paddle downriver from Plains Rd.  However the current was a little stronger than I was and only allowed me to get within sight of the confluence...

I landed in an eddy and walked about a 200 yards further up to the confluence...

The USGS gauge showed 1200 cfs/4.25' and my trip back downriver was a swift one...

  
Once back at Plains Rd...

...I elected to takeout rather than paddle further downriver and tempt fate (and the current).  With the rest of the afternoon to kill I drove 2 miles into Willimantic planning to scout another launch site near the Airline Rail Trail.  Instead of finding the boat launch I found myself looking through the closed gate of the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum...

I remembered learning that the museum has a working 60-foot turntable and 6-stall engine house while looking for information regarding an abandoned 60-foot turntable foundation in my own town.  I was peering through the fence with my camera when a museum volunteer kindly invited me onto the museum's grounds.  Shortly I was watching as a museum staff member operated the turntable using the "armstrong" technique...
...which is the same technique mentioned in descriptions of my town's turntable which served a 2-stall engine house.  In fact, if I understand correctly, both turntables were made by Boston Bridge Works within 8 years of one another.  The museum's turntable was originally installed in Dudley, MA then later moved to Edaville RR in S. Carver, MA before finally being moved to the former Columbia Junction turntable foundation at the CT Eastern RR Museum.  Leaves me to wonder where the one from S. Acton ended up.

My heartfelt thanks to the staff of the museum for allowing me see the turntable and its operation.  I now have a much better idea of how the turntable at South Acton may have looked and operated...

 
 Below is the museum's two-tiered stone foundation with the ring rail which the table's wheels follow...

Compare with this photo of the two-tiered stone foundation in South Acton missing the ring rail...

This photo shows how wheels at each end of the table ride the ring rail...

Before leaving the museum grounds I got to see this 2011 replica of the 'Gallows' signal structure which governed train movements at Bridge Street in Willimantic...

It may represent the same signal structure referred to as "the famous 'windmill' signal at the Bridge Street interlocking in Willimantic" in the aforementioned "East Thompson Wreck!!" article by Gregg Turner and Alice Ramsdell.


On Wednesday I stayed closer to Plainfield and launched into the Quinebaug River from Butts Bridge in Canterbury, CT...

...with the intention of paddling to Peagscomsuck Island...

I was intrigued that a relatively small island would have retained its Native American name through all the many years since being mentioned in land transfer deeds in the late 1600s.  Neither the meaning of the word or whether it's Mohegan or Nipmuc in origin isn't known for sure.  Possible meanings range from "swift narrow brook", "cleared lands", "great brook", and my personal favorite "where stream divides into two currents".  The island is about 3.5 miles upriver from Butts Bridge and the route is a winding one through a series of oxbows...until finally the island's southern tip appears...

     The opposite tip on the island's north end...
..."where the stream divides into two currents" per John C. Huden in his 1962 Indian Place Names of New England.

I landed on the island and found it carpeted with these wildflowers...

Peagscomsuck Island is significant for having given its name to the adjacent area.  Ellen D. Larned in her History of Windham County Connecticut 1600 to 1760 published in 1874 relates how the Mohegan sachem Uncas was "sinking into dotage" and his son Owaneco had a serious drinking problem. In 1680 the General Court ordered that "If Uncas hath right to any land about Quinebaug he may make it out and dispose of it to his son Owaneco, and such gentlemen as he shall see cause."  Larned then explains that Owaneco, "conscious of his own inability to retain or dispose of this land" designated James Fitch to act as his guardian in all such matters.  Thus Fitch ended up controlling thousands of acres of land in Quinebaug Country.  Consequently in 1697 he chose "a neck of land enclosed by a curve of the Quinebaug (River), below the river island Peagscomsuck" for his own.  "Soon the Indian 'neck' became an attractive family seat...drawing many people around him (Fitch), and his plantation was at once recognized as a place of no small consequence; a rendezvous for land-traders, civil and military officials and hordes of idle Indians." (idle???)  On the day of my visit both the island and the adjacent land along the river's west bank was silent.  One brick chimney and hearth stood alone on the river's east side downstream of Peagscomsuck...

Fitch's place is said to have been on the west side of the river perhaps below a mile long cut-off oxbow which may or may not have been the river's course at that time.  With my 3 day visit coming to an end the blue sky above Butts Bridge when I set out had become this upon my return...
...and shortly I was packed-up and traveling north on Route 395 back home to Massachusetts.  The Last Green Valley is a place with a unique feel and I hope to visit again soon.  

In doing some pre-visit research I came across an unusual Map of Connecticut, Circa 1625, Indian Trails, Villages, Sachemdoms.  It was drawn by Hayden L. Griswold based on information complied by Mathias Spiess and published in 1930 by the The Connecticut Society of The Colonial Dames and Mary Pierson Cheney.  The map is unusual in attempting to show Connecticut as it may have looked before it was colonized by Europeans. I enlarged the section showing the Last Green Valley areas which I visited and/or paddled...

   

Some wildlife encountered along the water during my visit:
This mink...
...and this wood turtle...



Some Earth Week trash...

...
...





     


Thursday, April 22, 2021

Happy Earth Day 2021

 


Some appropriate words...

Grandfather,
Look at our brokenness.

We know that in all creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.

We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk in the Sacred Way.

Grandfather, 
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion, and honor
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.

    ~Ojibway Prayer



Friday, April 16, 2021

A Few Twists and Turns

 

Seems like this twisted mess was typical of the week's finds.  Odds and ends were about in both the Concord River on Sunday morning and the Assabet River on Wednesday.  The stuff ran the gamut from a green dimpled Sprite bottle embossed with "Hawaii National Park" just upstream of Concord's Old North Bridge...

...to an empty Acetone container in the Assabet...


And post-paddle I almost stepped on this garter snake (first of the season for me)...

This doe seemed as perplexed by things as I was and approached...perhaps looking for an answer...


The week's trash...



Nonetheless it was good to see the Concord Minuteman standing ever at the ready...


...and the Concord River still heading off to the northward...


It's been 6 weeks now since the cessation of commuter train service on the Fitchburg Commuter Rail east of Littleton.  Railroad bridges over the  Assabet and Concord rivers in Concord are silent and won't see another scheduled train until May.  So it was only fitting that between my 2 paddles of the week I rode my bike along the Assabet River Rail Trail in South Acton where, thanks to the lack of vegetation, a stone structure I'd not noticed before caught my eye.  Entered the woods adjacent to the trail and soon found myself looking at the remains of an old railroad turntable's stone-laid foundation...

The turntable allowed steam locomotives to be turned before being placed in a 2-stall engine house just to the immediate south.  The floor of the engine house still reveals the pits below the tracks supporting the locomotives...

The rear wall of the engine house as seen from behind...

As I walked out of the woods that day I only suspected it was the foundation of a turntable.  Confirmation would be found later on-line including discussions as to whether or not the remains should be a feature of the rail trail.  The area is presently overgrown and ticks are plentiful (as I can personally attest).   My appetite for confirmation was finally satisfied after seeing this Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of the spot from 1918.  The map locates the turntable and engine house near the beginning of the Fitchburg RRs Marlborough Branch in South Acton.  While I knew there was a turntable at South Acton Junction. my thinking was its location would have been closer to the mainline rather than the branchline.  Thanks to the Boston and Maine Railroad Historical Society's on-line archives, additional information about the turntable was found including the following from a 1918 engineering report: Turntable installed 1892, was made of steel and 60 feet long, was of the "cone roll" center type, was rotated by hand, rated for 112 tons, and was turned 6 times per day.  Standing by the turntable's foundation one can imagine a couple of fellas putting their backs into turning a locomotive and tender.  Walking across the floor of the engine house one can imagine a pair of steam locomotives hissing and groaning with their fires banked until the next morning's commuter cycle. 

One last relic from those old time railroad days is this more than a century old "tell-tale" located where the Marlborough Branch once passed under a bridge before joining the mainline...


From its horizontal arm, shown above (seen behind the tree), extending out over the rails there were once about 20 vertical pieces of rope or thin rods.  It was those hanging strands which told the "tale" to any railroad brakeman riding atop a boxcar..."Duck"!


 

Friday, April 9, 2021

Tracking Eastward

 

Kicked off April with an Easter morning paddle in the Nashua River Valley from the Oxbow NWR in Harvard, MA.  It was my first paddle since becoming fully vaccinated against COVID, and seeing  Mount Wachusett on the way to Oxbow (photo above) had me pondering the post-vaccination world we'll all soon be entering.  It was an exceptionally quiet and peaceful Sunday morning and I could feel the effects of my second dose beginning to wear off.   The banks of the Nashua won't look this barren much longer...



On Tuesday I moved further eastward of Wachusett paddling the Assabet River in the towns of Maynard and Stow where a classic New England sea breeze reached this far inland...  
 

Wrapped up the week yesterday still further eastward on the Sudbury River in the towns of Lincoln and Concord.  Once again a sea breeze developed as the day progressed.   

Fairhaven Bay from a different vantage point...


The week also saw eagles and ospreys returning to well-established nests.  One nest belonged to an eagle pair...one of which was perched 100 yards or so from the nest...

...while the other kept a closer watch over the nest...



An osprey nest atop a dead tree had a pair of osprey in close proximity...

...


The week's trash included one haul with some 58 'nip' bottles...

Checking my records revealed that my last 4 paddles on this 6 mile stretch of river has produced 258 'nip' bottles.  The 'nip' containers have no monetary value and therefore are treated as such.  I recently read of the State of Connecticut moving to include 'nip' bottles in their bottle deposit program, and assign them a redemption value of 10 cents each.  Hopefully the measure will succeed and help to get these containers out of the environment...at least in their state.  Maybe we in Massachusetts can tackle the 'nip' bottle problem as well.  Of course the State of Maine is way ahead of all the other New England states in dealing with 'nip' bottles.  Speaking of monetary incentives, it's interesting to note that folks regularly retrieve errant golf balls from water hazards on golf courses and earn up to 10 cents per ball.  

Another much lighter haul from a different river...


...and a third river chipped in this assemblage with more of a plastic bag theme...


  Always good to see an empty bag of ice melt and know the season for that stuff is over and done with.