Introduction

New England is a high, hilly and in some parts mountainous country formed by nature to be inhabited by a hardy race of free, independent republicans."¹ When Jedidiah Morse, an early American geographer, wrote that sentence in 1804, he was not simply advocating a political philosophy; he was observing that the lay of the land and its bedrock and soil resources affect the course of human events. There is a connection between people and land, and it is just as important today and tomorrow as it was in the past. Although the nature of this connection has changed, our need to understand more about it has not. This book explores the connection of people to the landscapes and land resources in one region of high, hilly New England: Connecticut.

Connecticut is a beautiful and varied state. It has slow, meandering rivers like the Connecticut River and fast, rocky streams like the Shepaug. There are wide, fertile valleys, such as the Central Valley, and narrow, hauntingly dark ravines such as Boston Hollow. Agricultural land, flat as a table, stretches out beneath the rugged Taconic Mountains and the cliffs of the Hanging Hills. There is both coastline and upland interior, both farmland and forest. True, Connecticut does not have the country's biggest mountain, longest river, highest waterfall, largest lake, or anything else that would warrant an entry in a list of geographic superlatives. But herein lies the state's beauty. There is so much in a land area so small. If Connecticut had the biggest, longest, or highest, there

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