Clark Creek flits about in riffles and cascades as it snakes through old Tylerville en route to the Connecticut River. Springtime woodlands immerse the falls in shadow as soothing murmurs of tumbling water rise into the canopy.
Sometimes a simple babbling brook can, through tangential association, lead us unexpectedly into topics of great historical importance. For example, one historian recalled in 1900 that “the Clarks of… Clark’s Creek in Tylverville are descended from Major John Clark… who is named as one of the patentees in the Charter of Charles II to Connecticut in 1662.” Sure, at face value that may seem to be an obscure reference, but it’s difficult to overstate the importance of that founding document to which the name of Clark Creek can be circuitously traced.
The Charter of 1662 gave legal blessing to the Connecticut Colony in the eyes of the English monarchy, ensuring an impressive measure of self-governance for what had previously amounted to little more than a loosely-associated series of Puritan settlements south of Massachusetts. Upon granting that early charter, it’s likely that Charles II couldn’t have imagined that Connecticut and its sibling colonies would be back just about a century later, demanding a far greater degree of self-governance that would change everything.
Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing
Click here to visit my landing page for “Clark’s Stairway” or “Tylerville Cascades” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing either of these images.
In a shady gorge beneath the dense canopy of summertime woodlands, Dividend Brook leaps eagerly from a jagged cliff before meandering a half-mile eastward to unite with the vast Connecticut River.
Although industry has largely been divorced from a need for water power in modern times, there are few natural waterfalls in Connecticut that didn’t serve as mill sites at some point over the past four centuries. In many cases, these waterfalls drove streamside manufactories for several generations and churned out everything from flour to hand tools as the economy shifted and society’s needs changed. The falls on Dividend Brook are a perfect example, having been granted to Reverend Gershom Bulkeley for a grist mill back in 1665, only about 20 years after colonists settled in the Connecticut River Valley.
The Reverend and his descendants operated mills at Dividend Brook for nearly 150 years, mostly churning out flour from the grain crops of community farmers. By 1830, when the millstream left the family’s hands, a new breed of industrialized millworkers were only just getting started. Axes, chisels, saws, horseshoes, flour, lumber, shears, firearms and bulk iron were produced along the stream during the remainder of the 19th century.
Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing
In “Graham’s Secret” (above), the latest installment in my Waterfalls of Connecticut project, the cool waters of Carr Brook slip over a forest-shaded cliff, descending into a ceaseless whirlpool at the bottom of a rugged ravine just a few miles east of the Connecticut River.
When I set about my “Connecticut Waterfalls” project back around 2010, eager to interpret the beauty of the Nutmeg State’s varied natural waterfalls, I’m not sure that I was thinking about how long it might take to see the endeavor through to its conclusion. And so here I am, after more than six years of work, and I’m still expanding the formal collection a couple times each year with imagery from new waterfalls.
Of course, the core of the project came together a couple years ago in the form a dedicated website, “Waterfalls of Connecticut”, which I invite you to visit. But even as I was busy pulling together the body of work that would premier in the collection, an effort which might customarily mark the end of a thematic project, I knew that waterfalls had earned an enduring place in my subject matter for years to come. I also knew that there was, and still remains, a great many stories of cascading water left to tell in the wilds of Connecticut.
Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing
In my new release, “Coburn Hideaway”, dense forest underbrush embraces a vigorous brook which tosses about in a frenzy as it cascades through a gully of glistening boulders. Mosses spread in vibrant blankets amidst the waterfalls, undeterred by the swift current and furious plunges.
When a few friends and I came upon this brook snaking beneath a small bridge in the wilds of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the tell-tale sound of cascading water could be heard echoing up from the forest understory downstream. I couldn’t resist making a descent into the gorge to investigate the waterfall, lugging everything from my camera bag and tripod to my fishing rod and waders.
Without even the faintest trail to follow, the bushwhack down to the base of the falls was grueling. But the absence of a footpath, as well as the overall remoteness of the place, makes it likely that I’ve been the only person in many decades to peer up from the foot of these cascades. That’s worth every scraped elbow and labored breath!
Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing
In my new piece, “Shipyard Abyss”, sunlight struggles to reach the depths of a dark ravine where Mine Brook plunges over tiers of jagged bedrock in an eager race to join the Connecticut River nearby.
Although I can’t find any formal name for this striking cataract in the Middle Haddam Historic District of East Hampton, it was once at the heart of a bustling shipyard and trading port throughout the 1700s and 1800s and the brook along which it is formed drove several mills. In those early times, before trains and tractor trailers made it possible to transport large amounts of goods over land, the entire navigable length of the Connecticut River was lined with thriving cities and maritime villages that served as crucial hubs for shipping and shipbuilding.
The advent of the railroad in the 1830s marked the beginning of the end for maritime culture along the Connecticut and, within a few decades, business began declining steadily. By the late 1800s, when the rail system in the state had grown to extensive proportions, commercial shipping traffic nearly vanished and the river grew quieter than it had been in centuries. These days, several of the smaller riverfront villages such as Middle Haddam are beautiful wooded hamlets which bear little resemblance to the noisy, frantic ports that they once were.
Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing
Bark peels from the trunk of a fallen birch wedged into the boulders of a gorge in Western Massachusetts. Just ahead, Goldmine Brook Falls descends 40 feet into the ravine amidst ancient, weathered rock faces softened by jackets of moss.
Drive through the quiet, wooded town of Chester, Massachusetts where I produced “Deadwood at Goldmine” (at top) and it might seem hard to believe that area was historically bustling with mines of all sorts. First came the early iron mines; later, in the mid-1800s, a somewhat rare, abrasive mineral known as emery became the object of commercial efforts. Yet the name “Goldmine Brook” is still a bit puzzling, since there doesn’t seem to be any record of sincere attempts at mining the precious metal at any point in Chester’s past.
While there is undoubtedly gold in the valleys of Western Massachusetts, it’s been scattered too broadly and too thinly upon the landscape by the prehistoric advance and retreat of glaciers. Suffice it to say, the amount of gold you might get after a day of panning a creek in Southern New England wouldn’t even cover the cost of driving home.
Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing
In my new release, “Okumsett Preserve”, Glen Falls glows with whitewater as it careens over a sheer, 20-foot ledge, plunging Cobalt Stream into a shallow, woodland oasis lined by mossy cliffs, gravel beds and swaying ferns.
As early as the mid-1600s, the lands surrounding the mile-long Cobalt Stream were firmly believed to be rich in various ores and precious metals. Connecticut’s first governor, John Winthrop, laid claim to some 800 acres in the area and legends tell of him camping out in the hills, assiduously mining gold and casting rings that he would carry back to his home in New London. The territory consequently received the nickname, “The Governor’s Ring”.
Generation after generation of enterprising men made countless attempts to mine the Governor’s Ring for about 200 years. Some sought gold and silver, while others set their sights toward cobalt and lead. Except for occasional veins of cobalt, most of these operations proved fruitless. By 1844, a Connecticut geology professor finally summed up two centuries of unproductive mining around Cobalt Stream: “it is a curious fact, that after all that has been done in this mine, very little is really known to the public as to the worth of the minerals located there, and whether it could be worked to any profit.”
Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing
It’s difficult to overstate the degree to which life in Connecticut has changed since 1907. For instance, big cities such as Hartford and New Haven probably had limited access to electricity at that time, but it would be at least a decade before such a luxury appeared in the average Connecticut household. Folks of that era still had to light their houses at night by candle or lamp, heat their homes with wood and quarry their their ice from nearby lakes. The state was criss-crossed only by rough dirt roads and rails; local travel was by horse or horse-drawn carraige, while longer trips were by train. For the ordinary resident of Connecticut, travel was by no means impossible, but it was still difficult enough that you didn’t tend to leave town for the day unless their was a good reason to do so. Most people spent most of their waking lives within just a few miles of their home.
But why do I refer specifically to 1907? Well, that was the year that Sperry Park, the subject of my newly-released work, was created in the rural town of Woodbridge, Connecticut. And the reason that I’ve offered an account of life during that era is because we probably need a bit of context these days to understand why a small place like Sperry Park, at a size of only 4 acres, was once a celebrated town landmark.
My piece, The Pride of Old Woodbridge (above), brings us to the aesthetic heart of Sperry Park: a calm, shady pool in the woods where the Sargent River is cleft into two sister waterfalls as it plunges some 6 feet over a shelf of weather-beaten bedrock. Hardy shrubs and trees grasp the faces of bare stone which rise from the river gorge and transition seamlessly into hilly forests blanketed by leaf litter. A few more of my pieces from Sperry Park are portrayed here, as well, so you can really get a feel for this lovely woodland oasis.
If Sperry Park strikes you as an exceptional place for a tranquil retreat into nature, then you can probably get a sense of why Nehemiah Sperry decided to donate this four-acre parcel of his family’s ancestral land to the Town of Woodbridge in 1907. At that time, he was an 80-year-old US Congressman and there must have been times that his memories drifted fondly to the old farm where he had grown up in the 1830s. For that matter, Sperry Falls had been passed down in the Sperry Family from generation to generation for nearly two centuries. In protecting a piece of that land as a park, Nehemiah was preserving the waterfalls that had been at the heart of Sperry family heritage for as far back as anybody could remember.
Of course, in modern times, a four-acre nature preserve seems awfully small. Indeed, it was not the sort of park where one could go hiking for hours on end, but then again, that wasn’t really what the people of Woodbridge needed. In the early years of the 20th-century, when life for the folks living in rural Woodbridge was centered mostly around town, Sperry Park was truly a treasured place where locals could go to relax and unwind without the difficulty of distant travel. Many publications from that era extolled the virtues of Sperry Park, with one hailing it as “the most celebrated natural feature of the town.”
In 1911, just a few years after donating Sperry Park to the town, Nehemiah passed away. Around the same time as his death, there also began the incidental decline of that rural way of life which he had known throughout the 19th-century. The famous Ford Model T had been introduced in 1908 and, by the 1920s, the price of automobiles had fallen to levels at which even ordinary middle class families could afford them. By the 1930s and 40s, it was easy for the people of Woodbridge to leave town for leisure. Amidst the flurry of changing times and a world that was growing ever smaller, Sperry Park was largely forgotten.
These days, the tiny park lies nestled within the vast, woodland watershed area of a few reservoirs in eastern Woodbridge. The public is still welcome to visit —a fact that would certainly make old Nehemiah proud— but few people venture out to see it anymore. As much as Sperry Park is a historic treasure to Woodbridge, it’s overall remoteness and proximity to public water supplies surely make it something of a liability, too. The result is that the park is quietly kept open for those rare few who learn of it by word of mouth or who stumble upon it while perusing a map. And, in truth, maybe that’s a good thing. A small, out-of-the-way park like Sperry simply cannot exist in this day in age unless its visitors bring along a healthy measure of respect for the landscape and a mindfulness that the origins of this place stretch deeply into the past… back to a simpler time when a few tranquil waterfalls on the Sargent River were the truly the pride of old Woodbridge.
“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.'”
-Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
As we move into the month of March here in Connecticut, the sentiment among most folks is that we’ve had more than our fill of winter. Temperatures have remained anchored below freezing in spite of our advance towards springtime and we’ve found ourselves knee-deep in a persistent snowpack that has certainly overstayed its welcome.
I’ve observed that we here in Connecticut have an interesting relationship with winter. We are charmed by the aesthetic range of our landscape as it transitions from the dazzling displays of autumn to the contemplative dormancy of winter. But, without fail, early March finds us increasingly eager to escape the frigid temperatures and meager daylight that we’ve endured for months on end. Our winter wonderland starts to feel more like a winter wasteland, and in spite of our experience and good sense, there brews in the back of our minds an irrational concern that the snows might never melt and the trees might never again bear leaves.
But with my new work, Winter on Eightmile Brook (above), I challenge us all to put aside our quarrels with the frigid weather, even if it’s only for a moment! Produced in Connecticut just last month, this piece brings us to the foot of Southford Falls where Eightmile Brook plunges a dozen feet before meandering through a snowy gorge that straddles the borders of Southbury and Oxford. The Sun hangs low on the horizon, peeking through the woodland canopy and imparting a feeling of warmth, even if there’s little it can do to banish the frigid air that has pooled in the gorge overnight. Winter on Eightmile Brook embraces all the icy bitterness of our tough winter and seeks to find something comforting —perhaps even inviting— in nature’s patient hibernation.
And don’t worry, friends… springtime is right around the corner!
To see more of my work featuring Southford Falls and Eightmile Brook, be sure to visit my Southford Falls State Park collection.
As part of J. G. Coleman’s Decor Series prints, all of the works seen here are available at Fine Art America. You are encouraged to visit J. G. Coleman’s Fine Art America eStore, or see all of Fine Art America’s snow art or forest art.
“The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844)
Nestled in the forests of Plymouth within Connecticut’s Central Naugatuck Valley, Buttermilk Falls Preserve is among those small and relatively obscure nature preserves that most of us will never set foot upon. It’s not that there’s anything stopping us, mind you; the public is welcome anytime to visit this shady grove of hemlocks that crowd the boulder-laden banks of Hancock Brook. It’s simply that, at a size of only a dozen acres, folks tend to assume that this diminutive swath of open space is just not worth the trip.
As part of my years-long project to capture in photographs the aesthetic essence of Connecticut’s waterfalls, I became familiar with Buttermilk Falls Preserve in the Summer of 2011. In fact, I was so impressed with its incredible beauty and arresting atmosphere that I’ve returned several times since then. My goal has been simple: to catch conditions that help me tell the story of this jewel in a way that is befitting of the magical impression it makes upon its visitors. As it would happen, I managed to get out to the Preserve on an early May morning last year as a dense fog drifted through the forest, producing subtle tones and contrasts that brought to the surface what Emerson would have called the “anciently reported spells” that linger in the wilds of Buttermilk Falls.
One of the pieces that emerged from that morning, Plymouth Wildlands (photo at top), brings us to a magnificent whitewater cataract on Hancock Brook. Plummeting more than 50 feet over a steep rock face, Buttermilk Falls is the namesake landmark of the Preserve, as well as its aesthetic epicenter. This glade feels like some verdant amphitheater where soft light filters through the greenery of the hemlocks overhead and every surface of the forest understory lays cloaked in a generous blanket of moss and ferns.
Another of my works, Hymn of the Hemlocks (above), takes us upstream from the falls and into the imposing vertical expanse of the seemingly primeval woodlands that envelop Hancock Brook. We find ourselves surrounded by towering hemlocks, most perched mightily upon bare rock, that cast whorls of wizened branches into the air as they reach skywards from the shadowy gorge for a taste of precious sunlight.
Finally, in Hancock Cascades, we find ourselves squarely in the middle of Hancock Brook, almost as if we are wading barefoot in its cool waters. Peering ahead, we watch the stream spread and splinter into myriad cascades as it struggles to clear ancient boulders and weather-scarred bedrock. Wherever the water cannot reach, the mosses have staked their claim, thriving amidst the cool, moist air that settles in troughs of the gorge.
Rendered in a written chronology, the story of Buttermilk Falls is long and varied. People have enacted their influence upon this place for centuries, if not millennia, and there’s little doubt that the landscape has been shaped and re-shaped by the rigors of time and water. But for me, all of those disparate verses of bygone times found a focused voice in the tranquil mists that drifted over Hancock Brook on a quiet morning in May.
Want to See More?
To see more of my work from Buttermilk Falls or buy a fine art print of the pieces introduced here, be sure to visit the Buttermilk Falls collection at my online galleries.
“A brook there is all children know,
Upon whose banks the wild flowers grow;
A brook that from its hill runs down,
And wanders wanders past the town.”
-Susan Pendleton
“Hebron” (1908)
Grayville Falls is a hidden gem nestled in the wooded wildlands of Hebron, a small town which bridges the low-lying Connecticut River Valley to its west and the hilly uplands of Connecticut’s “Quiet Corner” to its east. Although these falls had been on my must-see list for a few years, my attention was somehow routinely pulled elsewhere even as I passed within only a few miles on my way to shoot at more distant locations. It wasn’t until last summer when I finally managed to get out to the forests of Hebron on a warm July morning to visit Grayville Falls for the first time.
Grayville Everlasting (above), one of my pieces from that shoot, embraces the essence of these tranquil cascades on Raymond Brook, beginning with their steady persistence. Over thousands of years, Grayville Falls has ceaselessly carved its way deeper and deeper through several feet of stratified bedrock, leaving shadowy recesses along the periphery of the brook where weaker layers of stone have been gouged out by running water.
There’s also a measure of human history to be found at Grayville Falls, as evidenced by the remnants of a large boulder dam that rises over the cascades in Grayville Everlasting. In Hebron’s earlier days, when industry was still tethered to water power as the sole means of animating machinery, William Gray operated a carpet factory along the banks of Raymond Brook. The dam ruins we find today suggest that Gray utilized a fairly crude dam constructed of boulders and earthen mortar to impound several thousands of gallons of water upstream, ensuring that his factory could run even during dry spells.
Interestingly, old William Gray wouldn’t have recognized the name “Grayville Falls” during his lifetime. That name didn’t appear until the 1970s, when Hebron purchased the property for use as parkland and held a town-wide contest to determine what it would be called. “Grayville Falls Park” emerged as the winning name; a clever tip of the hat to a man that might otherwise have been lost to history.
Arguably Connecticut’s most famous series of waterfalls, Kent Falls is truly a marvel of cascading water and an exquisite museum of natural rock sculptures that have been carved from its marble streambed over the course of millennia. The State of Connecticut began actively pursuing the conversion of the Kent Falls area into a state park beginning in 1915, after a donation of land from the White Memorial Foundation (which, to this day, encompasses its own 4,000-acre preserve in Litchfield).
Falls Brook is tucked tightly into a towering grove of hemlock that, as the Connecticut State Park Commission noted in its 1915 report, were obtained with the “timber undamaged by cutting, which it narrowly escaped.” As can be seen in one of my latest pieces from this park, “Falls Brook Stairway” (right), the view from the foot of Kent Falls reveals a successive series of waterfalls and cascades that emerge from the shadows of conifers and descend powerfully over terraces of time-worn limestone.
Only after reaching the summit of the rocky gorge does the largest waterfall come into view. Here, Falls Brook takes its first leap into the gorge, plunging some 70 feet over sheer-walled cliffs dotted with swaying ferns and grasses and jacketed with moss. You can see these larger falls in some of earlier work from Kent Falls State Park such as “Silken Falls” and “Pristine Cascades”.
My latest piece from Oxford’s Jackson Cove, “As Winter Melts Away” (below), captures the essence of Connecticut’s wildlands as they transition from the deep-freeze of winter to the Spring revival. Cedar Mill Brook, swollen with meltwater, can be seen frantically spilling over mossy boulders on its way to Lake Zoar. Above the commotion, strings of melting icicles hang like natural jewels from fallen branches and tree trunks. For only a few fleeting minutes, the Sun was marvelously cast through one of these icicles, producing a gleaming star that foreshadows the warmer months to come.
For information about prints or licensing, head over to my landing page for “As Winter Melts Away”.
Enders State Forest, a 2,000-acre swath of woodlands in Granby and Barkhamsted, encompasses what is surely one of Connecticut’s least-known natural gems. It is here that Enders Falls can be found, a series of six majestic waterfalls formed as Enders Brook descends jagged ledges of bedrock into a deep, shadowy ravine. Each successive waterfall possesses a distinctly unique character from the last and visitors are apt to lose themselves in studying the myriad plunges, chutes, veils, horsetails and slides.
One of my latest print releases from Enders Falls, “Ice and Ferns” (above), captures plumes of water cascading into the gorge during pre-dawn twilight. Icy snow blankets the far wall of the gorge, a testament to the cool micro-climate that endures here even as temperatures begin to rise in anticipation of winter’s departure. Perhaps the most striking feature, though, is the unexpected juxtaposition of lively green ferns dancing in the breeze upon the nearest rock ledge. Known as Christmas Ferns, these resilient evergreens audaciously defy Connecticut’s harsh winters and, it is said, were once incorporated into Christmas decorations in earlier days since they were among the only leafy green plants that could be collected in December.
Peculiarly, Enders Falls has never enjoyed the same level of popular acclaim as Kent Falls, despite being arguably just as spectacular. Perhaps its because the trails along Enders Brook aren’t as well-developed as those of Kent Falls, or maybe the terrain is too rugged. It might simply be that Enders Falls, unlike its counterpart to the southwest that goes by “Kent Falls State Park”, is buried within state-owned land whose name cleverly disguises the waterfalls of Granby as no more than a “state forest”. In any case, it would seem that these very qualities which cement the obscurity of Enders Falls also make the experience and sensation of being in this remarkable place even more unexpected and impressive.
Some of my newest fine art prints come from places in Connecticut that, while surely beautiful, are nonetheless only known to a few locals and exist outside the consciousness of 99.9% of the state’s residents. These can be somewhat challenging places to find, but they also offer the potential for photographing small nooks and crannies within the state that very few have ever seen.
One of these places is the Koons Nature Preserve, a shaded ravine gurgling with cascades that flows through a quiet, 40-acre parcel of forest in Southbury, Connecticut. My piece, “Spruce Brook Twilight”, features the soothing waters of Spruce Brook as they meanders their way through angular bedrock under the bluish light of the pre-dawn hour.
About 50 miles to the northeast, in Mansfield, one finds the larger watercourse of Fishers Brook. In my piece, “Late Winter on Fishers Brook”, the rock-strewn waters can be seen coursing beneath tight stands of conifers which provided enough shade for remnants of past snows to persist beside the stream.
