CHAPTER 3 Natural Resources CHAPTER 3 here is a wealth of important natural resources along the Route 122 Scenic Byway. The array includes interesting geological formations, cold, clean T water resources, a range of wildlife (some rare and endangered) and thousands of square miles of northern hardwood forests. This assortment of assets makes the Route 122 Scenic Byway a unique and special place for residents and visitors to experience. This diversity is also a strong contributor to the region’s scenic beauty, natural wonder and recreational riches, which are the underpinning for economic development and the rural vitality. In this chapter there is a general inventory and overview of the natural resources in the Byway area. Information on the geology, soils, water resources, and rare species habitats located in the study area are included. The inventory is not intended to provide an in-depth review or assessment of these resources, but to highlight the Byway’s primary natural and environmental assets. The chapter also discusses potential issues and concerns that could affect the quality of these resources over time. The chapter concludes with recommendations for protecting, maintaining, and enhancing the Byway’s natural resources. Geologic Resources north-south trending hills and ridges that Geologic History border the Byway corridor are all that remain of these ancient mountains and gneiss The landscape along the Route 122 Scenic domes. Byway is a product of the collision of two super-continents approximately 400 million Approximately 200 million years ago years ago (Mountain Building Era) that (Earthquakes and Dinosaurs Era), a great rift created huge mountains as tall as the Alps basin formed in the area that would dividing eastern and western Massachusetts. eventually become the present day The collision known as the Acadian Orogeny Connecticut River Valley as the sutured (a geologic term for mountain building), continental plates were pulled apart. Triassic affected much of central New England. and Jurassic-aged sedimentary rocks and During this event, in the location between basalts filled the rift basin and dinosaurs the towns of Athol and Erving, gigantic folds roamed across the area, leaving behind their of rocks called nappes, were squeezed up and footprints for us to discover. As the last ice out of the collision zone like paint from a sheet began to melt approximately 15,600 tube. The older, less dense gneiss, the years ago, Glacial Lake Hitchcock covered ―basement‖ rock, escaped the tremendous the valley as the melting water was trapped pressure by floating upward and outward, behind naturally-formed dams.1 forming nearly upright domes. Many of the 1. Little, Richard D. Dinosaurs, Dunes, and Drifting Continents: The Geology of the Connecticut River Valley.3rd Ed. Earth View LLC, Easthampton, MA. 2003. 19 ROUTE 122 SCENIC BYWAY — Franklin County Section By the close of the dinosaur age, the entire and ice in the far north began advancing eastern United States was part of a large under its own weight (Ice Age). A series of featureless plain, known as the peneplain. It glaciations followed, eroding mountains and had been leveled through erosion with the displacing huge amounts of rock and exception of a few higher, resistant areas. sediment. The final advance, known as the Today, these granite mountaintops, named Wisconsin Glacial Period, completely covered monadnocks, are still the high points in the New England before it began to recede about region. Such mountaintops are Mount thirteen thousand (13,000) years ago. It Monadnock in New Hampshire; and Mount scoured and polished the land into its current Grace in the Franklin County Town of form leaving a layer of glacial debris and Warwick, and Mount Wachusett in landforms that are still distinguishable. Worcester County in Massachusetts. This profile of softly rounded hills, bounded As the peneplain eroded, the less resistant by upland ridges, reveals the gneiss and rock eroded to form low-lying areas, while schist bedrock lying beneath it. It is covered bands of schist remained to form upland by a variable layer of till – an unsorted mix of ridges of hills. By this time, the Connecticut rock, clay, and sand left behind by retreating Valley had been filled with sediment, while glaciers. While the Millers River, which streams that would become the Westfield, flows west, probably first formed prior to the Deerfield, and Farmington Rivers meandered glacial period, most of hydrological system in eastward. The Millers, Swift and Chicopee Orange and New Salem is a remnant of that Rivers and other westward-flowing streams time. In particular, the Swift River follows a would become more significant later on. north-south course, which mirrors the advance and retreat of the glaciers. Smaller A long period of relative quiet followed the streams flow from upland areas and dinosaur era. Then, as the Rocky Mountains replenish the extensive wetlands that have were forming in the west eight million years formed in sediments that filled drainage ago, the eastern peneplain shifted upward a depressions left by the retreating glacier. thousand feet. As a result of the new steep topography, stream flow accelerated, carving The glacier deposited gravel and sand deep valleys into the plain. The plain rose deposits in the lowlands and along stream one more time, and the Millers and Swift terraces. These lowlands became the Rivers, once slow, meandering streams, now floodplains of the Swift River, North Pond, carved their courses through the sediment Shingle Swamp, and Gulf and Cold Brooks in and bedrock. Today, the visible remnants of Orange, and the Swift River, Spriggy, Bow, the peneplain are actually the area's schist- Willow and McIver Brooks, Basset, North bearing hilltops, all at about the same one and South Spectacle Ponds, and Blackington thousand (1,000) foot elevation. Swamp in New Salem. The broadest deposit in Orange is found on the glacial outwash Mountain building, flowing water and wind plain in the area of the Town's Municipal had roughly shaped the land; the great Airport, known by townspeople as "The glacial advance would form the remaining Plains." peneplain into its current topography. The earth's climate cooled until a point about two Where sand and gravel deposits were left million years ago when accumulated snow along hillsides, they formed kame terraces CHAPTER 3: Natural Resources 20 and eskers. Kames are short hills, ridges, or bedrock and rocky ledges and the attendant mounds and eskers are long narrow ridges or shallow depth to groundwater common in mounds of sand, gravel, and boulders. Both the region, as well as by aquifer recharge are formed by glacial melt waters. areas and many small wetlands. There is no public sewer system in New Salem. In Geology Today Orange, only the downtown area is served by pubic sewer, leaving most of the Byway area The Route 122 Scenic Byway lies within the served by on-site septic systems. Also, most Millers River and Swift River watersheds,2 areas along the Byway are served by on-site which include some of the most rugged and private wells. This mix of septic systems and steep terrain of the State's central upland. private wells on residential and commercial Monadnocks, hills of erosion-resistant rock, parcels makes development complicated are an important landscape feature that is because shallow depth to groundwater lands characteristic of the area. The region tend to flood which can cause pollution of includes a vast acreage of unspoiled open wells from nearby septic systems. space, forested lands and water (Quabbin Reservoir) in public and quasi-public The Towns of Orange and New Salem that ownership that provides a wide variety of we recognize today are the result of millions outdoor opportunities for camping, hiking, of years of geologic history: the great picnicking, fishing, boating, hunting and upheavals of the earth's crust and volcanism, scenic viewing.3 and the sculpting power of moving water, ice, and wind. This distinctive physical base has The underlying bedrock of Orange and New determined the distribution of the water Salem is predominantly Monson gneiss with bodies, soils and vegetation, and the large banded areas of schist rock forming the settlement pattern in the region, both prior upland ridges and mountains in the area, to and since colonial settlement. including: Chestnut, Harris, Adams, Maggon, Rattlesnake, Fairview and Bassett Hills. These are hard bedrock formations, which have no inherent development or site Soils suitability limitations. However, the The soils found along the Byway corridor overlying soils, the slope or grade of the land, occur in natural groups known as soil and the depth to groundwater may pose associations. According to the United States constraints to development. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Soil Conservation Service Soil Survey for Franklin In Orange, because of some volcanic activity County (February 1967), the soils of Orange in pre-historic periods, there is at least one and northeast New Salem fall into two basic area of soft soapstone rock on the west side associations: the Hinckley-Merrimac and the of Tully Mountain that would limit Shapleigh-Essex-Gloucester soil associations. development. Growth elsewhere in the Orange and New Salem area may be The Hinckley-Merrimac soil association constrained by significant areas of shallow occurs on glacial outwash plains and stream terraces in the southern half of Orange and 2. The Swift River is a tributary to the Chicopee River, which, like the Millers River, is considered a major tributary to the Connecticut River. 3. Skehan, James K. Roadside Geology of Massachusetts. Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, MO, 2001. 21 ROUTE 122 SCENIC BYWAY — Franklin County Section northeast portion of New Salem. These soils Water Resources were formed in deep deposits of sand and The Route 122 region has an abundance of gravel deposited by the melt water streams of cold and clean water resources that provide the glaciers.