Walking the Berkshires

Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative Website Launched

It has been a year in the making, but today our brand new website for the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative went live at www.litchfieldgreenprint.org.This will be the virtual home for the Collaborative and a major communications tool and resource for us and for those who care about conserving what makes our region so special.  There is an interractive map portal with lots of data specific to Northwest Connecticut and additional content that will be available to Greenprint members once I provide them with passwords.  We are having a soft launch during its shakedown cruise and will ramp up the publicity later next month.  Overall I am very pleased with this product.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Connecticut Cougar came from the West

As predicted, the cougar killed on a parkway in SW Connecticut came East from a population in South Dakota.  From the Black Hills to the Gold Coast was a trek of 1,500 miles, and along the way this same individual was detected in Minnesota and Wisconscin. 

"Some experts suspect this could be the same animal filmed by a trail camera in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, leading wildlife experts to map its likely path from the U.S. into Ontario Canada, circling the Great Lakes and eventually crossing back into New York and Connecticut."

This is the same route taken by the western Coyote on its move into the east.  It is the first wild mountain lion confirmed by the authorities in CT in 100 years.  There will be more.

Last Week's Nature's Notebook Column in the LJ

I wrote here in the Lakeville Journal about the Mountain Lion that was struck and killed by a car in Milford, CT, among other incipient arrivals in western New England.  Fair use excerpt:

"The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection is working on the standard hypothesis that this was an illegally held captive animal that somehow got loose, perhaps wandering over from New York, as the eastern mountain lion is officially extinct outside of the Florida panther subspecies.

Preliminary investigation of the specimen, however, confirmed that it had not been neutered or declawed and was a lean animal, which does not strengthen that hypothesis, so they are waiting for DNA tests.

Moose have been known to wander to Long Island Sound, but it is hard to imagine a viable population of cougars becoming established on Connecticut’s Gold Coast. The western mountain lion, however, visits backyard swimming pools and overlaps with encroaching development in the wildland/urban interface. They are expanding their ranges east and, like the coyote before them, it is only a matter of time before a few of these big cats wander into our region (if, indeed, they have not already done so).

Wildlife officials often say that if we had mountain lions here, there would be physical evidence from collisions with cars. There is one such example of that now, and it will be very interesting to learn whether this was truly someone’s pet or a long-ranging pioneer from Illinois and points west."

Midsummer's Eve with the Faeries at the Bottom of the Garden

Last night the twilight lingered long past 9:00.  I stepped outside into the warm evening air and instead of turning toward the street I headed into the backyard and out to the gardens that face the meadow.  It is not a large field, less than two acres on the assessor's map and further reduced by boundary incursions from various neighbors.  The rank grass and remnants of wild apple trees slope into wet meadow before reaching the neighbors on the far side.  It is flanked on the west and south by a screen of mature trees.  The elderly owner of the field lives in Kansas but grew up here, and she keeps it undeveloped because of the fringed gentian she remembers from her childhood.  There are very few of these flowers left in the field, but it is prime firefly habitat, and on Midsummer's Eve they were out in great profusion.

I have watched them in early summer ever since moving here in 2002.  Cold evenings dampen their glow, but warm nights with the mist rising send them wisping through the air, over the tassels of uncut grass and through the branches of the apple trees.  A few outliers may venture into the shadows of my garden but they avoid the lawns and other managed places, and when the field is cut their dance is done.  Every year I hope that the mower will be delayed, that the old man with the tractors who lays the grasses down to maintain the owner's claim will postpone his passes through the field so the fireflies will linger. 

This is a timed event, like sap rising in Spring and wild geese heading south in September.  My garden path ends at a wrought iron gate with nothing but magic and wonder in the rank meadow beyond.  I am loathe to leave when the faeries dance under the hazy stars.  Long may they return.

Species of Special Concern

My children know that when you go looking for Box Turtles, you will not find them, but when you live where they live, it often happens serendipitously.  This old tortoise was walking across the cut in the bank that leads to the beach at Windrock.  The Massachusetts Heritage and Endangered Species Program lists  the eastern box turtles as a species of Special Concern in the Commonwealth.  I sent in a record from our property a number of years ago, making the surrounding area priority habitat and ultimately strengthening the environmental significance of the open space protection efforts that have saved so much of Great Neck from the heavy development pressure that has affected the remaining woodlands and shoreline of this coastal community.  Windrock itself qualified for Chapter 61B, a "current use" open space tax abatement program,, based on the environmental condition of our property and we cited the presence of this species to help make that case..When our neighbor cleared a part of the woodlands between us to build a stately home, the order of conditions for the construction work mandated a turtle barrier around the build site.

We are delighted to be sharing this land with these turtles.  I have the same thrill when I spot one of their long necks peering above a patterned shell that I felt as a child.

The Great Taconic Wildfire of 1930

The Lakeville Journal ran a feature article of mine in yesterday's edition on the historic 1930 wildfire that swept across the Taconic Plateau from New York into Connecticut and Massachusetts.   I first heard about this fire when I worked for The Nature Conservancy, and this fall I decided to see whether I could develop a single comprehensive narrative out of the various perspectives of the event as reported and experienced in each of the three states.

I am deeply grateful to my editor, Cynthia Hochswender, for her enthusiastic support of this project and willingness to feature it prominently in the paper.  I would also like to acknowledge the following individuals and institutions who helped locate key archival documents and shared oral history material with me for this piece:  Joel Carlson for his knowledge of modelling wildfire behavior; Thomas MacEntee, a geneablogging friend who helped me access the archives of the Poughkeepsie Journal online; Mason Library (Great Barrington), for access to microfilm of the Berkshire Courier;  Edgar Masters for oral history material in Copake; William Morrill for oral history material in Salisbury; Curtis Rand for his perspective as Mt. Riga's forester; Laura Riva of The Salisbury Association who provided a copy of a key article from the Western Connecticut News; Scoville Library (Lakeville) for access to The Lakeville Journal's microfilm archives; and Eleanor Tillinghast and Cile Van Deusen for Mt. Washington oral history material.

As this was not an assigned story, I wrote for personal satisfaction rather than for pay, and so in addition to being readable here with free registration, a slightly edited but otherwise complete text of the story is reprinted below, along with the above map which I created to illustrate the approximate extent of the Great Taconic Wildfire but that did not make it into the print edition.

The Great Taconic Wildfire of 1930 swept across the Riga ridge
Local History – Tim Abbott
January, 06, 2011

“If an aviator had left western Pennsylvania on Sunday morning for Eastport, Maine,” reported The Hartford Courant on May 6, 1930, “he would have seen the smoke of forest fires out of control, from the time of his takeoff until his landing at the Canadian line.”

It was a terrible fire season. More than 100 wildfires raged that week in Massachusetts, and those in New Jersey burned at a rate of 20,000 acres a day. In Nashua, N.H., flames driven by 40 mph winds destroyed several hundred buildings in the city’s Crown Hill section.

It was unusually dry that spring with rainfall across the Northeast at 50 to 75 percent below normal. Strong winds combined with low humidity and plenty of available fuel made an especially destructive combination.

In our region, a serious fire burned from East Mountain in Wingdale, N.Y., into Kent, and another flared up north of North Canaan near Clayton, a village of New Marlborough, Mass.

“Practically the whole sky was red over Dutchess County last night” read the May 5 edition of the Poughkeepsie Journal, “and stiff winds made fighting the fires difficult and dangerous.”

The big local fire, though, and the one that people here still recall (though details have faded with the passage of time), was the wildfire that raged between May 4 and 8 across the Taconic Plateau at the border of Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts.

It is remembered as the Mount Riga fire in Connecticut, and the Taconic Park Fire in New York. It was fought on all sides of the mountain with every available resource, from American Legionnaires and drafted onlookers to Boy Scouts and students from area schools including Hotchkiss and Salisbury and from as far away as Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

The fire burned a great swath of forest from Copake and Ancram in New York to Undermountain Road in Salisbury, while advancing on two fronts into Mount Washington, Mass., before the flames died down.

An article in the May 7 Poughkeepsie Journal from that year quoted Copake Fire Chief Howard Wilsey saying that, “Sometimes the blaze shot 40 feet in the air when it hit the pine trees and dead chestnut trees." 

“The crackling and snapping of the flames struck terror in the hearts of those congregated to watch the progress of the most awful fire we’ve ever had." 

“Rabbits ran from the woods singed and burned. Partridge and quail abandoned their nests in the face of the terrible thing that was happening, almost became tame. They flew down into Copake and accepted without fear the crumbs that were offered to them. They seemed to realize that they were banded together with the humans in a common fight against the fire.”

The Poughkeepsie Journal also reported that rattlesnakes were driven out of the mountain in great numbers by the fire.

Tracing the fire’s path

Piecing together the chronology of the fire, and even determining its cause and true extent, depends on analysis of newspaper accounts from all three states and benefits from oral history material collected in several affected communities.

Just as the steep and remote terrain challenged firefighting crews in 1930, the tri-state location of the fire means that there is no single, comprehensive account of what happened when the fire was active or during its aftermath.

Most accounts agree that the fire began on Sunday, May 4, in the vicinity of Boston Corner in Ancram. The May 8, 1930, edition of The Lakeville Journal adds that it started “along the Harlem rail track near Weed Mine.” Many suspected the cause was a careless match or cigarette tossed by a fisherman, although it could have been ignited by a passing train. The same northwest wind that burned all those homes in Nashua fed the flames of the Taconic Fire, which spread rapidly into Taconic State Park and up the steep flanks of the mountainside.

Fueling the flames

Wildfire behavior is affected by weather, fuel characteristics and topography. The Connecticut Western News (May 8, 1930) attributed the rapid spread of the fire to “a howling wind that came out of the north … [and] the more resinous growth on the western side of the mountain.”

The Berkshire Courier (May 8, 1930) reported that the fire “spread rapidly through the undergrowth, took a firm hold in the standing timber, and within a short time had extended far beyond control.”

There were many dead trees available as fuel as well, killed in the previous decades by the chestnut blight fungus.

The wind blew the flames against the steep sides of the mountains, and carried firebrands great distances to ignite new fires ahead of the advancing blaze.

Edward M. Brazee was among the Salisbury residents who first encountered the fire as it came up over  Mount Brace into Connecticut on the evening of May 4. In an unpublished account recorded in 1996 for the Salisbury Association oral history project, Brazee recalled, “The fire was going right through the tops of the trees. That laurel was high too. Laurel burns like the devil when it gets hot. And you can’t move through it. That’s the bad thing…. Those hemlocks, that’s another thing that burned like gasoline … Probably a lot of them it didn’t kill. But a lot weren’t too big and so [for them] the fire was a crown fire, up there at the height of the trees.”

Salisbury Fire Warden Donald J. Warner told The Lakeville Journal that in 1914 another fire had raged on  Mount Riga, but “the present blaze traveled farther and was more destructive in 48 hours than the entire two weeks of the 1914 fire.”

Once it reached the Riga Plateau, the 1930 fire lost speed but still made steady progress to Bingham Pond and then toward Lion’s Head, Bear Mountain and the eastern escarpment.

All the while, volunteers trailed behind with Indian pumps, shovels and brooms, and lit backfires to protect the camps on Mount Riga and keep the wildfire from reaching the more thickly settled areas below.

“All Monday,” The Lakeville Journal observed, “the smoke covered the countryside like a fog and thousands of autos lined the entire length of Undermountain Road.”

The fire threatened homes and infrastructure in both Mount Washington and Salisbury, while Copake, N.Y., was virtually under martial law as hundreds of men were dispatched against the fire that was backing against the wind up the slopes of  Mount Alander.

State police walked the hose line pumping from Preachy Hollow Brook, to discourage any of the conscripted firefighters who were being paid by the day who might have been tempted to extend their employment through sabotage.

Losses of life, homes

Rumors spread that two Boy Scouts from Thomaston, Conn., had been lost in the fire. While this proved unfounded, there were a number of close calls, as some men had their clothes and shoes burned or got caught in backfires.

Reports that cottages on Plaintain Pond and Mount Riga were burned were unsubstantiated, but along Undermountain Road some outbuildings were lost while firefighters protected primary structures.

The fire extended down Riga Brook toward Salisbury village and was checked by the bridge above Factory Street. Up at High Valley Farm in Copake, with the flames right above on Alander Ridge, a team of draft horses plowed furrows as a firebreak around the main homestead and other buildings.

By May 7, the fire was still raging on Lion’s Head and had moved into Massachusetts from both New York and Connecticut.

“At Sage’s Ravine,” wrote The Lakeville Journal, “the blaze was intense and pine trees blazed like torches. Much of the mountainside was inaccessible, and nothing could be done, only to watch the fire burn itself out.”

More than 500 men arrived from Torrington and Winsted to fight the fire in Connecticut, and more came from the Berkshires and as far away as Poughkeepsie and Hudson in New York.

The wind dropped, and the fire was finally put out on Alander Mountain the following day.

The aftermath

Contemporary estimates of the extent of the 1930 Taconic fire vary considerably, ranging from 6 to more than 30 square miles.

Analysis of historic records and first-person accounts argue toward a more conservative estimate of 8 to 10 square miles, with the largest portion in Connecticut.

Mount Riga’s holdings burned north and east of Riga Lake, sparing Bald Peak but burning over every other promontory from Lion’s Head to Sage’s Ravine, as well as much of the Scoville ore mine vicinity down toward Undermountain Road.

It never reached Mount Everett Reservation in Mount Washington, though it burned much of what is now Mount Washington State Forest in the southwest part of the town. It did advance to within a mile of the church and school in that community.

There was a concerted effort after the fire at the local and state level to keep sightseers away from the burned areas and prevent the spread of new wildfires.

The woods were closed to trout fishing across all three states and the roads to the Taconic Plateau were barred by state police to all but property holders.

‘Considerable grandeur’

The Lakeville Journal reported: “A number of people visited Bald Peak at the height of the fire and the scene, while appalling, was also one of considerable grandeur.”

As of this writing, however, no contemporary photograph of the wildfire or its suppression efforts has surfaced — although the 1934 aerial survey of the state conducted by the state of Connecticut does appear to show evidence of the fire.

Fire Warden Warner would write in gratitude to his fellow citizens of Salisbury: “During the trying days last week when the forest fire was raging, there was always one comforting thought and that was the realization of how splendidly our people stood together in the crisis. Men and women, boys and girls, all did voluntarily and ungrudgingly all and more than was asked of them, in many cases they did more than they should have done.”

Mount Alander fire losses

Not everyone was as sanguine as they counted their losses. The part of the fire that burned over Mount Alander from New York charred more than 2,000 acres in Mount Washington, owned by William Miles, that had once been used for charcoal for the Copake Falls iron furnace.

The state of New York leased the summit of Mount Alander for a fire tower, located in Massachusetts and manned by Mervin Whitbeck of  Mount Washington, who also worked for Miles.

The fire warden’s shack survives today but the tower was ordered taken down by Miles, who canceled the lease shortly after the fire.

It was relocated first to Washburn Mountain across High Valley in Copake, and then to Beebe Hill, farther north in Columbia County, where it remains today.

Impact on forests

Edward Brazee recalled that one could still see the scars of the fire on the big trees in the 1970s.

Curtis Rand, a licensed forester and now Salisbury’s first selectman, notes that there are 80-year-old poplar stands growing on the mountain today in some sections where the fire passed through.

There are fewer pitch pines today on the acidic ridgetops of some of the peaks that were in the path of the fire than on the ones nearby that were spared.

Connecticut does not experience wildfires of the scope and severity of the 1930 Taconic Fire anymore. When the woods were younger and careless smoking put more land at risk of fire, it was not unusual to lose more than 50,000 acres annually to wildfires.

These days, the state averages 1,800 acres burned. When  Mount Everett Reservation caught fire in 2004, it burned for six weeks and consumed just 18 acres. However, it also burned underground through thick layers of duff and leaf litter, and it took the mutual aid of more than 20 communities from three states to respond to that fire, echoing the response that was required to combat the 1930 fire.

Going the Extra Mile Too Far

I am researching a feature story for my local paper about an historic wildfire that blackened more than twenty square miles in three adjoining states in our region back in 1930.  It is the sort of project I might easily have decided to publish here at Walking the Berkshires rather than in the Lakeville Journal, although I will certainly link to it here once it comes out at the end of December.

I am intrigued by the choice of the newspaper over the blog, and by the choices I continue to make in the course of my research about the associated costs and benefits of following various leads.   These choices impact the kind of story and the version of history I will ultimately produce, so I choose to make them explicit here (even those that make me uncomfortable).

The primary reason for researching and writing the story itself is that it has engaged my curiosity.  The great wildfire was a momentous occurrence in its day that has all but faded from modern memory.  And yet there is fertile ground here for an historian to synthesize events that took place, and the choices made by participants in the context of their own time, that still inform the patterns and processes that shape the landscape of our communities today. 

Clearly this is too long a research topic for a single blog post. As often happens with my research, I can envision at least one road not taken that could lead to a book, or more graduate school. For now, serializing the story in blog format feels like a constraint that weighs against the challenge of crafting a full-length newspaper feature, especially when my editor has embraced the project. It lends itself to some boots on the ground reportage as well as electronic data mining.  There is certainly a local audience for what I will write, and for personal recognition, which I readily admit is balm for a battered ego.

My reasons are certainly not pecuniary.  I do this as an amateur and on my own time, and for this am compensated by the paper at a rate of $2/column inch.  Being thorough is very important to me as a writer and researcher, yet the cost of doing the research itself, both in terms of time and money, does come into play and will ultimately shape the direction of the story and availability of sources.  The challenge is to do enough research, and follow enough leads, to produce good and accurate work that adds insight and does not perpetuate errors.  That is a pretty high bar, even for a piece in a local paper.

I have decided to let the needs of a 1500 word story define the research questions.  I want to provide a perspective on the fire as it was experienced in all three states, where it is known by different names.  I want to place these events within the larger context of the environmental and social conditions of the day.  I want to be able to determine what parts of the mountain forest burned, and how this may affect their condition today.  And I want to make the past come alive for residents today, to reawaken interest in the narrative and stir latent memory.

There are two research avenues open to me.   I can search for archival material online, some of which is only available for a fee or through an institutional affiliation.   I can search the microfilm records of the local print media that covered the story, and interview residents who may still remember those times of the stories of those who were there.  Good reporting, let alone good history, requires that I follow leads in both these areas.  Indeed, the Lakeville Journal archives for this period are available on microfilm in a local library, and the opportunity costs to me in consulting them are very slight.  Following the local angle of the story in adjoining states, however, takes a greater commitment in time and money.

The Poughkeepsie Journal archives are available on microfilm at the Adriance Memorial Library: an hour's drive to the west.  For the Berkshire Eagle I would need to travel north about the same distance to Pittsfield's Berkshire Athenaeum.  The New York Times and Hartford Currant both make their archived articles available online but for a fee.  In the case of the NYT this has become frustrating for me because judging from the first paragraph of the stories that I can view without payment, there are at least a couple of articles that contain information about the topic not available in other print media.  Is it worth it to me and to my research for this project to shell out $3.95 per article, or buy a bundle of 10 at a reduced rate but perhaps more than the story requires? 

For now, I have resisted.  Instead, I am engaging local contacts in the communities that experienced the fire in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut to see what leads they can provide.  Already an elderly resident of Mt. Washington, MA, has been in touch and recalls that several annual town meeting reports from the years after the fire included payments to those who helped to fight the flames.  I have spoken with the forester responsible today for the core area in CT that was burned in 1930 who says that there is still evidence of natural disturbance from around that time in certain forest stands and species composition in these woodlands.  I have found a number of AP stories online about the fire and the many other blazes that raged across the Northeast during that dry spring in 1930.    At least for Connecticut, there are historic 1934 aerial photographs of the affected landscape, though whether of not the path of the fire can be discerned from them is still an open question to me.  .

My graduate thesis adviser gave me some very good advice about research; you will never be fully finished with it, but there comes a time when you have done all that it requires of you.  If the story cannot be told or understood without my going the extra mile and paying the NYT the equivalent of 4 column inches of my compensation, then so be it.  If not, then I will leave that for other researchers.

 

Saving Where the Wild Trout Are

There were wild fingerling brookies in this pool when I visited yesterday.  Further downstream is a pool with scores of fish, including native trout that are well over a foot in length. No one stocks this stream, and very few know the value of what it contains.

I am working with a landowner to save over 1,300 feet of frontage along this trout stream through the donation of a conservation easement to a local land trust.  It is a small strip of deciduous forest with a very special stream, as important in its own way as a large farm parcel or forest tract is for protecting those resources.

Eastern brook trout have completely vanished from nearly 40% of the subwatersheds where they histoically occur in the Highlands region that runs between south Central Pennsylvania and the MA/CT line.  We have some of the most intact and productive wild trout streams that remain in the region here in Northwest Connecticut.  This is one of them. 

Old Miniatures at New Windsor

The New Windsor Cantonment, where Washington's Army spent the final year of the war, has a new visitors center that houses an old but extraordinary diorama of a long column of continentals on the march.  Created in the 1960s by Paul A Buckley of Lexington MA, in collaboration with Col. Frederick Todd of the West Point Museum with custom miniatures from the team of Imrie Risley in upstate New York, the diorama was completed in sections that when fully assembled is 24 feet long. It has more than 300 figures in what looked to be 54mm scale, and is remarkably accurate in its depictions of the late war period.

I spent a wonderful visit at the Cantonment yesterday, and could not take my eyes off the model.  Dioramas captivated my imagination as a small boy and have held my love and interest ever since.  This one has so many marvelous details to discover, including elements of whimsy like a soldier being prodded awake while shirking in the bushes, and a dog pulling at a piece of cloth held by one of the marchers.  The dog, the story goes, is a representation of the faithful hound of the artist, that sat on one of the completed sections of the diorama.  One of the sutler's wagons is emblazoned with Todd and Buckley, provisioners, as the signature of the collaborators whose vision it depicts.

The display case is well labelled and interpreted, explaining the function of each of the marching individuals and units. I particularly appreciated the inclusion of camp followers and civilian onlookers, as well as the yellow mud clinging to wagon wheels and the  regimental flags in their black casings.  The only thing the interpretation lacked was an explanation of the reversed colors on the coats of the musicians, which for a blue coated regiment with red facings meant that the fifers and drummers wore red faced with blue.  This allowed commanders to locate their main form of communication over the din of battle, but also makes those attired in red appear to be British.  The trumpeter for the 2nd Dragoons was in a buff or off white coat faced with blue.

The exhibit is housed downstairs in the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor, whioch may explain why the facility at this State Historic site had the funds to create such a fine interpretive space.  I was there to meet with one of the researchers about 18th century artillery as part of the hunt for a surviving example of a Salisbury cannon, but ended up having a wide-ranging conversation and personal tour of the exhibits.  I mentioned that an ancestor through marriage to one of the Ogden siblings, Lt. Col. Francis Barber of 2nd NJ regiment (3rd establishment), had been killed at the very end of the war at this site by a falling tree, and he lead me to a display where the officer in question was featured, along with his sword, a present from La Fayette!  The New Windsor Cantonment houses a number of such relics from other area sites, inckluding Washington's Newburgh headquarters now under renovation. 

Eli's Forest in the LJ

This week's piece in the Lakeville Journal, readable here with free registration.  Fair use excerpt:

"We see the same world with a different sense of time. I, who have known some of life’s limitations and lost opportunities, have a job that has me thinking in forest time, but a personal life that is rooted in middle age and a sense of time’s passing.

He sees the forest that is there in the seed and is not discouraged by the thought that it will be a lifetime before his vision is realized."