  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 PelhamMount 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 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. Pl. 6. View of the Holyoke Range from Mt. Lincoln. Fig. 21. Map showing location of interesting places.
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 CavesThe 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 SugarloafMount 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. 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 FallsRushing 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. a. View of the Deerfield River gorge emerging on valley lowland as seen from Mt. Sugarloaf. 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 BridgeThe 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 Titan’s Piazza and Titan’s PierNot 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. a. View of Titan’s Piazza at Hockanum showing the columns resting upon the gently inclined sandstone. 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 QuarryAnyone 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, 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 The Old Lead MinesThe 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 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. Fig. 23. Geologic map of the region in the vicinity of the lead veins near Leverett.
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 HolyokePeople 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. Pl. 9a. The dinosaur track preserve at Smith’s Ferry near Holyoke. 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 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 FishingMany 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 BedsThe 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 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 RangeFor 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 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 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 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. Fig. 24. Diagrams showing the stages in development of topography in the vicinity of the Notch. a. The New England peneplain stage at the Notch. b. The incoherent rocks are removed from the lava flow. 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. 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 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. |
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