The four landscape regions of Connecticut.

improvements, as to afford the necessaries for the support of a family. The whole state resembles a wen cultivated garden . . .²

The population of Connecticut had swelled to the point where there simply was no suitable uncleared land left on which a young family might establish a farm and a livelihood. So the plucky Yankee headed north and west in search of new and, it was hoped, greener pastures. So extensive was the exodus that in 1830 Alexis de Tocqueville counted 39 members of Congress - one eighth of the total - who had been born in Connecticut.' Connecticut had become " . . . a nursery of men, whence are annually transplanted, into other parts of the United States, thousands of its natives."⁴

The transformation of Connecticut from wilderness to nursery did not proceed at the same pace or along the same path in every part of the state. Connecticut may be divided into four main regions, each charac- terized by different landscapes and geology and thus a different human history. In the middle of the state lies a broad lowland, running north to south, known as the Central Valley. Flanking the Central Valley are the Eastern Uplands and Western Uplands. Along the southern boundary of the state is Connecticut's Coast.

To understand how the different landscapes and resources of the four regions have led to four different - but related - histories of land use, we must look at the underlying geology. Two main types of materials underlie the land surface in Connecticut. First and most fundamental is the stuff at the bottorn: bedrock. Popularly known as "ledge,* bedrock is the crust of the Earth, the rigid rock exterior that seals in the Earth's hot, semi-solid interior. Although this rocky hide is always at least three miles thick, and in some places as much as 55 miles thick, compared to the massive size of the Earth it is no move than a thin skin on a planet- sized grape. Erosion of the bedrock over millions of years by rivers and weather has been the primary force shaping the landscape. But in Connecticut and much of the rest of North America, the bedrock skin also has been -eroded by the advance of at least two great continental glaciers (similar to the ice sheets still present on Greenland and Antarc- tica). This erosion during the Ice Age is responsible for the second

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