Northgate Fall, Simsbury, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman
In my latest piece, “Rings of Northgate”, foam churns away at the foot of Northgate Falls, swirling ceaselessly amidst a shallow, mossy gorge beneath woodlands in the northwest of Simsbury.
Even fairly small waterfalls such as this one, found along a nameless branch of Bissell Brook, were a boon to settlers as they migrated throughout the wilds of Connecticut in the early days. The hollow that was formed when a brook descended abruptly into gorge meant that a relatively small dam could impound plenty of water to operate a stream-side mill.
After discovering old fieldstone retaining walls lining the gorge at Northgate Falls, my curiosity was piqued. I used computer software to carefully overlay a hand-drawn map of Simsbury from 1868 upon modern satellite imagery. Sure enough, the 19th-century map shows a dammed pond labelled “Saw Mill” at the exact location of Northgate Falls; it’s likely that the mill site was already quite old even at that time.
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