By BILL CHAISSON
Springfield, Vermont has the fastest internet in the state (apparently also among the fastest in the country) and the regional planners, entrepreneurs, and developers in the Springfield area hope to build a business community in the town in part based on the availability of this crucial component of much of today’s economy: high-speed, electronic communication.
Springfield is also part of the “Precision Valley,” a reference to this region’s past (and to some extent present) reputation as a manufacturer of complex hardware, in the old sense of hardware meaning actual machines.
Fellows Gear Shaper made machines that made the parts for other machines. Although founded in 1896, the company really kicked into gear (sorry) after 1911 with the advent of mass-produced automobiles that had gear transmissions. It reached its zenith of production during World War II. In 2002 the Fellows Gear Shaper company was acquired by Bourn & Koch of Rockford, Illinois.
Why did Springfield, Vermont grow into a mill town? Because it is centered around a place where the Black River drops 110 feet in just an eighth of a mile.
Falling water once turned wheels that in turn spun wheels in mills, a direct transfer of mechanical power.
The development of turbines in the 19th century made the transfer of mechanical power more efficient and when coupled with a generator, a turbine produces electricity to run machines.
While Bellows Falls is right on the Connecticut River at Great Falls, most of the Precision Valley towns developed on tributaries to the Connecticut. Springfield is on the Black River; Claremont is on the Sugar River; Windsor is on Mill Brook; Lebanon is on the Mascoma River; and so on.
The towns grew up around the mills, which required the abrupt descent of the rivers over short distances. These abrupt descents are controlled by the geology of the region.
A fault trends north to south right through the middle of Springfield. A different fault trends north to south right through the middle of Claremont. Faults may only be visible as abrupt changes in the type of rock exposed at the surface. If one rock type is more resistant than the other, it can cause an abrupt change in elevation over a short distance.
Bedrock causes may be exacerbated by glacial erosion and deposition. North-south trending valleys formed pathways along which glacial ice advanced repeated over the last 2 million years. The Finger Lakes of New York State are startling examples of this phenomenon. The ice advanced out of the north and had to go uphill onto the Allegeny Plateau, which was crossed by several north-flowing rivers. Because river valleys tend to widen as rivers head toward their mouths, the south-moving ice sheet entered a progressively narrower valley has it advanced. Because its volume could not decrease, it cut deeply into the bedrock.
Today the bottoms of three of the Finger Lakes are actually below sea level and the sides of the valleys are spectacularly “over-steepened” by ice erosion.
This produced “hanging valleys”; small east-west oriented tributaries plunge off the old plateau surface into the glacially deepened north-south valleys, creating the waterfalls for which the region is famous.
The Finger Lakes are lakes because of the extreme down-cutting by the ice-sheets as the moved up the river valleys and also because the north ends are dammed by glacial moraine.
The ice sheets moved down the Connecticut River Valley (instead of up as in central New York) and so did not cut down deeply into the bedrock. In addition, whereas the central New York bedrock is sedimentary, the New England bedrock is much harder, more erosion-resistant metamorphic rock.
Even so, the north-south faulting through the valley creates zones of weakened bedrock. The base of a mile-thick ice sheet did remove much rock from the walls of the Connecticut Valley as is evidenced by the erratic boulders of Vermont and New Hampshire bedrock that are found scattered across Massachusetts and even Connecticut.
A massive dam of glacial moraine in central Connecticut caused glacial meltwater to collect in the Connecticut Valley from Rocky Hill, Connecticut to St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Between 15,600 and 12,400 years ago, Glacial Lake Hitchcock occupied the valley.
After the retreat of the ice sheets, the landscape was covered with loose sediment. This was then carried into the glacial lakes, including Hitchcock. Coarser sediments — pebbles, sand — fall out of the water column first, making beaches. When the lakes freeze over in the winter and the water column is no longer stirred by the wind, clay and silt particles settled out.
If you have ever wondered where all the bricks came from to make these mills and the surrounding mill towns, they were made with clays that accumulated in the glacial lakes. After the glacial lakes drained, the clay deposits were left behind, often in valleys that carry tributaries to the Connecticut.
The remarkable flatness of what is now Monadnock Park and the Washington Street area east of downtown Claremont is likely because it was the bottom of a glacial lake.
As you can see, the power that drove the economy and the building materials that produced the towns are a function of the geological history of the area. We tend to forget that now that we hinge economic development on the existence of a cable that allows for high-speed internet access.
Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagle Times and has a Ph.D. in geology.
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