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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Eightmile Crossing

Eightmile Crossing (Covered Bridge at Southford Falls State Park, Southbury & Oxford, Connecticut)
“Eightmile Crossing”
Covered bridge at Southford Falls State Park, Southbury & Oxford, Connecticut

Even as woodlands along Eightmile Brook grow increasingly bare by late October, the river gorge remains lively as ever with exuberant cascades singing away in the shadow of a covered bridge above.

Although dozens of covered bridges could be found throughout Connecticut during the 19th-century, most have long since been lost to floods, fires, wear and tear and changing technology that had rendered the venerable timber bridges largely obsolete more than a century ago. Only three covered bridges built before 1900 are left in Connecticut these days, each of which has become a beloved icon in its host town. But while historical covered bridges may be few and far between in Connecticut, there’s also a handful of covered bridges dotting the state which were built later, from the 1950s and onward.

Unlike their antique forebears, these relatively new covered bridges were never really intended to be trafficked crossings, but rather carefully crafted replicas that recall New England’s early days. Take the covered bridge in “Eightmile Crossing”, for example: although it uses the authentic Burr Arch truss design patented in 1817, it wasn’t actually built over Southford Falls until 1972.

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Categories
All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

A Golden View of the Silver City

Daybreak at Chauncey Cliffs (Chauncey Peak, Giuffrida Park, Meriden, Connecticut)
“Daybreak at Chauncey Cliffs”
Chauncey Peak at Giuffrida Park, Meriden, Connecticut

Gusting winds rock a cluster of cedars dauntlessly perched atop an ancient traprock cliff in the Metacomet Range. In the valley below, the outskirts of Meriden are eased from their twilight slumber as dawn banishes a blanket of morning fog.

Originally known as Meriden Farm when it was settled by hard-scrabble pioneers from the Connecticut Colony in the mid-1600s, Meriden has managed over the intervening centuries to swell from a remote, agrarian outpost to a city of more than 60,000. Industry flourished there during the Gilded Age and beyond, especially in the form of silver manufacturing, earning Meriden the nickname “Silver City”. The handle persists to this day, even long after the old factories were shuttered.

But if The Silver City isn’t really notable for its silver any longer, it’s certainly a veritable gold mine of municipal parkland. Almost 18% of Meriden’s landscape is contained within city parks and, as the literature explains, “no other city in New England can match that percentage!” Central among those parks are Meriden’s traprock ridges, characterized by precipitous cliffs which tower over the surrounding valleys and dominate the city’s horizon. I produced “Daybreak at Chauncey Cliffs” from the summit of the 700-foot Chauncey Peak which rises from woodlands in the northeastern reaches of the city.

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Categories
All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

A Serpent Awakened

A Serpent Awakened (Gorge Cascade Falls, Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden, Connecticut)
“A Serpent Awakened”
Gorge Cascade Falls, Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden, Connecticut

In the autumn forests of Hamden along the flank of the Sleeping Giant hills, a cascading stream boils fiercely with whitewater as it surges around a bend at the bottom of a leaf-scattered gorge.

When a client asked me last year about Gorge Cascade Falls, a mingling of waterfalls and cascades along a nameless brook at Sleeping Giant State Park, I gave my honest answer: Sleeping Giant is an incredible state park for its extensive trails and mountaintop vistas, but it’s just not a waterfall destination.

I still stand by that assessment, as the stream is starved for water most of the year and the “falls” can nearly dry up during summertime droughts. But in those rare cases when, for example, an October Nor’easter dumps 5 inches of rain in a day, even this little kitten of a waterfall enjoys a few days of roaring like a lion.

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