The Connecticut River

CT River History & Ecology
The Connecticut River—Our Living Heritage.

Connecticut River History & Ecology
(used with permission from Riverfront Recapture)

HISTORY

At the end of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago, the present-day Connecticut River came into existence. Since that time humans have lived along its shores. The first people to inhabit the Connecticut River Valley were Native Americans (Paleo-Indians) who hunted caribou, wooly mammoth, and other cold-adapted animals. Native American populations flourished in the valley as the climate became progressively milder and more temperate.
      In 1614, the first Europeans entered the Connecticut River estuary, and by the 1630's, fur trading posts extended into Massachusetts. In the following century, English colonists moved farther and farther up river into Vermont and New Hampshire, displacing the Native Americans.

ECOLOGY

In the Connecticut River many of the food webs are ultimately based upon organic detritus, small particles of microbially altered leaves and wood. All of the fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds living either in or along the river are directly or indirectly dependent upon this organic matter. The river is a kind of moving soup of organic particles. These particles are filtered out of the moving water by a variety of invertebrates, including the larval stages of aquatic insects, mussels, bryozoans and sponges.

Leaves and wood enter the river from the flood plain forest and the woodlands along the river's tributaries. The majority of this plant material moves into the river either in the Fall or during periods of high water, when the river floods into the riparian forests and masses of dead leaves, fallen branches, logs, and even whole trees float out into the mainstem. Eventually these plant materials become water-logged and sink. As the sunken leaves, branches, logs and trees tumble along the river bottom with the current, they are shredded into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces are colonized by microbes, which convert this material into high quality food for the filter feeders.

Thus, the origin of the organic detritus in the river is ultimately the trees, shrubs and herbs of the nearby forests. These plants synthesize leaves and woody tissues from CO2, using the sun's energy (light); this process is called photosynthesis, and it occurs in the green leaves (and green stems) of the flood plain plants. Therefore, an understanding of the Connecticut River's ecology must start with an appreciation of the chemistry of photosynthesis.

For more information please visit: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/

The Connecticut River, like any large river, is home to a wide variety of both vertebrate and invertebrate animals.

The Connecticut River
Our Living Heritage.

Its Geologic History

The modern Connecticut River spans millions of years. Its story unfolds from the many types of bedrock that supports its sandy shores, to the creatures that swim in its water and live along its banks. We can appreciate how its cultural history shapes our lives today.
     There are many fascinating aspects of the river and its valley that we can learn about, if we take just a few minutes.
     The Connecticut Valley originated about 220 million years ago, late in the Triassic Period. The Earth’s crust in southern New England was stretched, creating a huge fault system that ran north and south. Over the next 40 million years, the land west of the faults sank slowly downward. Lava erupting from deep fissures covered the valley floor three times. The climate was very warm, but the amount of rainfall alternated between moist and semiarid over periods extending for hundreds of years. During the wet periods, in the early Jurassic, Luxuriant forests of conifers, cycads, horsetails and ferns grew in the valley. Judging from the thousands of fossil tracks found in the valley, dinosaurs and other more primitive reptiles were common. The dinosaurs ranged from turkey-sized fabrosaurids to 20 foot long predators related to Diophosaurus.
     The modern Connecticut River developed between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, after the receding of the last ice sheet, the late Wisconsin Glacier, to cover New England. During the last glaciation (25,000 to 18,000 years ago), a continental ice sheet gouged its way across the bedrock of the Connecticut Valley and covered all of New England with ice more than a mile thick. During the retreat of this great ice sheet through New England (18,000 to 13,000 years ago), meltwater streams issuing from the waning glacial ice deposited sands and gravels as temporary dams impounding glacial lakes. Glacial Lake Hitcock occupied the Connecticut River Valley between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago. The lake was as much as 15 miles in width and stretched from a glacial drift dam at Rocky Hill, Connecticut, for about 140 miles northward in the valley to Lyme, New Hampshire. Eventually, the dam broke, the lake waters drained southward to Long Island Sound, and the modern Connecticut River was established on the drained bed of glacial Lake Hitchcock. Today, varved glacial lake clays an be seen in many places in the river banks, and in other places remnant delta and beach deposits of the glacial lake lie more than 100 feet above the modern river.
     As time passed and the Connecticut River cut down into the glacial lake bed, linear stream sections changed to more meandering (curving) ones. In some cases, oxbow lakes like the one at Northampton, Massachusetts, formed as river meanders were abandoned during flood events.
     Today’s Connecticut River actually begins near the Canadian border in New Hampshire and travels 410 miles to Long Island Sound.

Its Cultural History

The first people to inhabit the Connecticut River Valley are called Paleo-Indians, and are known to have camped across these regions more than 11,000 years ago. At that time, the receding late Wisconsin Glacier, which had covered New England, allowed them to hunt caribou, wooly mammoth, other smaller animals, and to gather seasonal wild plant food. As the climate warmed, the plants and animals gradually changed and diversified. These semi-nomadic people adapted their lifestyle and food choices accordingly, hunting deer, moose, bear, beaver, muskrat, rabbit, and fish. Varieties of edible nuts, berries, seeds, roots and plant parts were also eaten.
     Between 2,000 to 1,000 years ago, native populations bean cultivating vegetables such as corn, beans, and squash. This more predictable food supply allowed for the establishment of even more permanent settlements. Garden crops were raised in the lower fertile flood plains of the river, where people also gathered to fish and trade.
     A thriving trade business among native populations existed along the Connecticut River well before European contact as Native Americans gathered to trade furs, maple syrup and sugar, and to harvest wild rice, waterfowl, and other water resources. Wampum beads, made from the shells of the quahog clam and whelk, were a primary trading activity in this early river trade. The Nehantics and other river tribes, members of the Algonquian federation, called the Connecticut River "Quinatucquet" or "Quinnetukut," meaning "long tidal river," because the ocean tides influence the river from its mouth on Long Island Sound as far north as the Enfield Rapids.
     The first Europeans to explore the great river were traders, not settlers, who brought furs from the Indians and sold them on the Old World. The Dutch explorer Adriaen Block is credited with being the first European to sail up river in the "restless." He called it the "de Versche" or Fresh River because of the purity of its waters. In 1614, he established a small trading post for beaver, deer, fox, muskrat, raccoon, martin, mink, otter and other mammals at Saybrook Point. Later, in 1633, the Dutch West India Company founded another trading post, House of Hope, at the present site of Hartford.
     The relationship between the Indians and the traders was mutually beneficial and mostly 10,000 beaver skins annually. However, when permanent English settlement began in the 1630s, disputes arose among the Indians, Dutch and English. Unfortunately, between encroachment upon Native homelands by European settlers, changing stewardship of the land, warfare and European diseases, the Native American population was greatly reduced and dislocated.
As the English settlement grew in places like Windsor, Wethersfield, Hartford, and Saybrook, the Connecticut River became an important source of travel and trade, beginning as early as 1650. In addition to the fur trade, logging of timber became an important industry. The first log drive occurred in 1761, and continued until 1949 in northern New England. Huge trees were cut and located down river to mills for making furniture, boxes for shipping materials west, paper, and houses.
     Fertile glacial terraces and floodplains created prime agricultural lands that inspired settlement and the establishment of a permanent society. The earliest settlers practiced subsistence farming, growing what they could for their own use. They quickly developed cash crops for export, such as tobacco, wool, butter, milk, and maple syrup. Today, diversified and specialty agriculture, and farmstands and farmers’ markets, all contribute to the economy and the Atlantic seaboard and as far as the Carribbean. The rich soil adjacent to the river grew grains, onions and other crops. Livestock and salter fish added to the value of their cargoes. On return, they carries rum, molasses and sugar. Brownstone rock was another important product of the valley, and was often shipped to Hartford, Boston, and New York.
     Hartford and Middletown were the two largest river ports. With the introduction of steam power around 1815, river traffic increased, and the small shipyards between Only Lyme and Windsor prospered. There was regular steamboat service between Hartford and New York until 1931.
The Connecticut was America’s first major river to be improved for transportation. A system of dams and canals opened the river to steamboats and flatboats for more than half its length, encouraging settlement, trade, and travel.
As the population increased, it is estimated that three-quarters of the Valley was cleared for agriculture and grazing of livestock before the Civil War. Because of this habitat change, many wildlife species disappeared or were greatly reduced in numbers. The gray squirrel might have been considered an "endangered species" in the mid-1800s.
Small acre farming, however, suffered from competition as western lands were opened to settlement and from the lack of more fertile soil as the population grew. Young people moved north and west to seek an easier life. Again, the land use changed. Native trees, through a successional pattern, began to grown back. Slowly animals returned. Today, the regrowth of the woodlands has brought back the bald eagle, the beaver, the bear, the bobcat, the moose, and others.

Manufacturing and Water Power

In addition to travel and shipping, the Connecticut River has also been used to provide water power since the mid-1800s.
In 1848, Samuel Colt, producing revolvers in Hartford, and Robbins and Lawrence, making rifles in Windsor, Vermont, were among the first manufacturers in America to produce goods using interchangeable parts.
     Holyoke Massachusetts became the first planned city using a dam and a series of canals to harness water power, and prospered, producing goods needed for the Civil War. Turner Falls, Massachusetts, was also developed in the later 1800s after the war, with the help of a dam and water power. Many manufacturing plants used falling water as a source of energy.
     Mills in Bellows Falls, Vermont, and Claremont, New Hampshire, produced paper and textiles. Other mills sawed lumber, ground grain, and powered various woodworking and metal-working machinery.
     However, these dams, built about 200 years ago, dealt a significant blow to anadromous fish, such as the salmon and shad, which spawned in the Connecticut River, but returned to the sea to live. The salmon was the hardest hit, and was completely eliminated because these fish must travel to the feeder streams or tributaries to lay their eggs. Shad spawning habitat, on the other hand, exists downstream of the dams; thus, shad were never completely eliminated.
In the late 1800s, technology for converting water power into electricity arrived in the valley. Dams were improved and efficiency increased. Industrial development, however, caused pollution of our waterways. This, along with pesticides and population growth, put stress on many remaining species of fish and wildlife.
     A successful fish lift (elevator) was built in Holyoke and began operating in 1955. The Turner Falls fish ladders were completed in 1980. Additional fishways have been built in Vernon (1981), Bellows Falls (1984) and Wilder, Vermont (1987), to help restore salmon and shad.
     Today, these valuable species are making a comeback, and conversation efforts are also underway to help conserve such unique species as the shortnose sturgeon and other fishes. The river now supports a large population of sport fish including largemouth and smallmouth bass, brook trout, northern pike, and channel catfish. Efforts supported by taxpayers and anglers have turned the Connecticut River into a premier recreational resource enjoyed by thousands of boaters, anglers, birders and the general public.
     Today, our environment contains a diverse mix of land uses and our challenge is to maintain a healthy ecosystem while still allowing for sustained economic growth. There are 50,000 business employing over 640,000 people in the 99 cities and towns that touch the river.
     The Connecticut River Compact has been signed by many of the groups involved with river projects who have agreed to work together "for the betterment of the River Valley," a shared vision that includes economic development, protection of the river ecosystem, farmland preservation, reduction of river pollution, and public recreational usage. One typical project is the creation of a tri-state Connecticut River Scenic Byway that would promote heritage tourism in rural areas in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Other projects include Riverfront Recapture in Hartford and the Riverfront Development Program in the Springfield, Massachusetts, area.

What You Can Do

As you have seen, our beautiful Connecticut Valley has experienced vast changes over time. We’ve seen both the positive and negative environmental impacts of our human activities. Our challenge is to maintain a balance between economic growth and a healthy ecosystem.
In addition to learning about and appreciating the Connecticut River, here are a few things you can do to preserve it:
     Join a watershed organization or land trust. Read and support conservation efforts.
     Storm drains in the street (also called sewer inlets) are for water only. Water flows into storm drains, many of which empty into local creeks and the Connecticut River. You can help make our waterways safer for drinking, fishing and boating by keeping pollution and trash out of storm drains.
Service your car regularly to prevent oils and other fluids from leaking onto the pavement and being washed down storm drains. Always recycle your used motor oil and other fluids from leaking onto the pavement and being washed down the storm drains. Always recycle your used motor oil and antifreeze.
     Manage your painting projects by choosing water-based paints and washing brushes in your sink with water. Reuse and recycle paint thinner, which is a hazardous material. Don’t pour it down the sink or storm drain.
Compost leaves and grass clippings. This will provide you with rich compost next year that can be used to enhance your garden soil. If you don’t compost, carefully bag your leaves and grass clippings. Leaves and grass clippings placed in the street unbagged will clog storm drains.
Minimize use of toxic chemicals on your lawn and garden and use only when necessary. These include fertilizers, used to make grass and flowers grow, and herbicides, used to kill weeds such as crabgrass. Use alternatives, non-chemical techniques – and save some money in the process! If upi must use chemicals, follow the directions carefully.
     Minimize the use of household toxic substances. These include mothballs, drain and oven cleaners, insect sprays and many other products. Substitute with products that use natural ingredients whenever possible.
     Expand your garden, plant shrubs for wildlife and cut down on the size of your lawn. Maintaining a garden without chemicals is easier that maintaining a lawn with chemicals. Use native plants and mulch, and plant densely to decrease the need for water, reduce erosion, discourage weeds, and encourage birds and other animals. Set your lawn mower height to 3 inches to encourage a deep root system.
Landscape with nature. Use native plants and grasses that are well-suited to our region’s climate and soils. Native plants usually require less maintenance and irrigation and less fertilizer. They also require fewer chemical pesticides. The result is that the water that runs off your lawn and garden into storm drains will carry fewer pollutants. Consult your local garden center for suitable native plants and grasses.
     Place dog waste in the toilet or a trash can, not in the street or down the storm drain. Dog waste introduces disease-causing bacteria into our water supply.
     Keep litter off the street. Thins includes cigarette butts, fast food containers and other wastes. Put trash in trash cans and clean up street litter so it doesn’t get washed or blown into the storm drains.
     (These tips were adapted from the Hartford Storm Drain Stenciling Project and the Philadelphia Water Department.)

(This article was published courtesy of the Connecticut Light & Power Company.)

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