Tag: Waterbury

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

What’s in a Name?

“Spring of the Sedges”
Rifle Range Pond in Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut

April may have melted the ice from these quiet swamplands amidst the hills north of Connecticut’s Brass City, but the sedges and woodlands alike still bide their time, laying dormant until springtime manages to relax the harshness of New England’s elements.

For me, it’s always illuminating to gain a historical perspective of my subject matter; it can even go a long way towards deepening my creative efforts. But the ease with which I’m able to delve into the past varies sharply from one place to the next and, on occasion, I’m a bit surprised to find how little has been written about certain places in Connecticut despite this state’s nearly 400 years of recorded history.

One such case is Rifle Range Pond, a roughly 14-acre expanse of water and wetlands in Mattatuck State Forest which is just barely contained by Waterbury’s northern border. With such a distinctive name, you’d think it shouldn’t be too hard to uncover some sort of insight into it’s past. And yet, I’ve come up empty-handed on this one. The pond doesn’t appear on USGS topographic maps until 1951 and doesn’t even appear with the name “Rifle Range Pond” until 1968. But given its relatively secluded location along Spruce Brook Road, which is devoid of any nearby shooting ranges as far as I can tell, this pond’s backstory remains a mystery for the time being.

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Categories
All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Waterville Echoes

Sheffield Revenant (Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge, Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut, USA)
“Sheffield Revenant”
Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge,
Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

The year was 1884. The Waterville manufacturing district in the north of Waterbury had grown to be quite the industrial powerhouse, churning out a seemingly endless supply of brass and cutlery. But Hancock Brook, a tributary of the Naugatuck River which coursed through a steep ravine along Sheffield Street, was a routine impediment to the transport of goods eastward.

Iron Relic of Waterville (Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge, Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut)
“Iron Relic of Waterville”
Old Sheffield Street Iron Bridge,
Mattatuck State Forest, Waterbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

In an era when wooden covered bridges were still being phased out of mainstream construction in New England, the famous Berlin Iron Bridge Company was contracted to build a hefty iron bridge over Hancock Brook that would accommodate two lanes and exceptionally heavy loads. For years afterward, as countless tons of product fresh from the Waterville factories began their journey to distant destinations, they first cleared Hancock Brook over the Sheffield Street Bridge.

But that was then; this is now. As Waterbury’s golden age of manufacturing declined, the industrial landscape it occupied atrophied and eventually grew wilder than it had been in over a century. Today, the forgotten bridge off Sheffield rusts away in the forest near an isolated quarry. Much of the old wooden decking has long-since decayed, though stray planks sometimes still break free and plunge into the waters below. All that remains of the Sheffield Street Bridge is a haunting, iron skeleton hung high above Hancock Brook… an eerie, lonesome witness of bygone times marooned in a vastly different world from the one in which it was born.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Sheffield Revenant” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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Categories
All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Lakewood Shimmering

Lakewood Shimmering (Great Brook Reservoir at Lakewood Park, Waterbury, Connecticut)
“Lakewood Shimmering”
Great Brook Reservoir at Lakewood Park, Waterbury, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

With over 3,800 people per square mile, the crowded city of Waterbury in Western Connecticut is among the last places you might expect to find natural beauty. Don’t count it out entirely, though: the calm waters and wooded hills of Great Brook Reservoir on the east side of the city, seen here in my piece “Lakewood Shimmering”, are a welcome escape from the concrete, brick and asphalt.

It’s hard to imagine that when Waterbury was settled by Europeans in the late 1600s, the Central Naugatuck Valley was still a vast frontier of wooded hills. In fact, townspeople referred to the settlement by its Native American name, “Mattatuck”, for the first decade of its existence.

Waterbury’s rocky landscape made for terrible farmland and the town’s growth stagnated for a century. When brass manufacturing took off in the 1800s, though, Waterbury became an industrial powerhouse —the “Brass City”— and began to grow rapidly.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Lakewood Shimmering” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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Be sure to check out all of my work from Great Brook Reservoir and Lakewood Park, including the photograph seen above.