History of the Connecticut River Valley

Giving a tour can be a tough job, especially when you need to cover about 500 million years. This is the abbreviated reason of why this Museum's hometown looks just so today.

There is just so much history behind the valley that it can be tough to know what to put in a two minute video. Other than the Holyoke range footprints, other cool geological features of the valley include gravel pits visible off of route 91 in Sunderland (various bits of ground down rock were left there by the glaciers) and various rock formations.

History of the Connecticut River Valley from Ted Rogers on Vimeo.

Some formations, like conglomerate (larger hunks of rock stuck in smaller grained rock matrix) are what was left behind by alluvial fans, the term for rocks piled up by the erosion of mountains. These are what was left behind by the massive wasting of the ancient Appalachians.

Basalt formations found in the valley are leftovers from when the valley rifted. Lava from underground poured out of these rifts in sheets. You can see geological action like this in the East African Rift Valley today.

If you come across rock around Amherst that looks like it was scratched by something, chances are it came into contact with a glacier sometime in the past 2.5 million years. it's impossible to imagine how big these glaciers were. Think about the UMass library, which is visible from two towns over. Now, imagine there were an extra seven libraries stacked on top of that. You're reaching the height of an ice age glacier.

These glaciers pushed so much junk forward, the termination points of the glaciers are still visible today- as Long Island and Cape Cod.

My favorite story that I couldn't include in the video was a Native American myth told to me by Ed Belt, a former professor at Amherst College. As it turns out, Mount Sugarloaf, in South Deerfield, was once a trickster figure who went by the name of Little Beaver.

Little Beaver lived in what was once lake Hitchcock. One day, Little Beaver played a trick on a god that didn't have a developed sense of humor. The god drained Little Beaver's home, and turned him into stone to add insult to injury. This could be how Native Americans explained how Lake Hitchcock disappeared at the end of the last ice age.

If you will now walk through the door in between the drawers, please take a left, and start with the Phosphates and Vanadates exhibit.