on the fault. The name translates roughly as "You fish on your side, I fish on my side, nobody fish in the middle - no trouble. "" The "Lake Char" Fault - as it is usually called for convenience - together with the Honey Hill Fault (both thrust faults) forms the boundary between the Mohegan Range and the Windham Hills.

Despite the association of most earthquakes with faults, no fault has yet been positively identified as Hobbamock's physical reality. Many faults have been discovered in the Moodus region, but all of these seem to be inactive. Many geologists believe the "Hobbamock Fault" may be obscured by the blanket of drift, forest, and human settlement that covers the bedrock. The fault is there, but we can't see it at the surface.

Time and again when geologists have found themselves conceptually between a rock and a hard place, the solution has been to head back out into the field to study the bedrock in even greater detail. Historian Mott Greene has observed: "Every major controversy had but a single outcome: geology was a larger and more difficult enterprise than had previously been imagined."¹⁹ By the early 19th century, geologists had begun to recognize the vast complexity of the Earth and its origins. Seventeenth- and 18th-century hypotheses about geology, often formed with little factual basis, were replaced by a scientific approach and a greater emphasis on detailed studies. It had become clear that true answers to the main puzzles of geologic science would not be forthcoming unless a lot more was known about the specific nature of the Earth. Moreover, geology could help satisfy the burgeoning industrial revolution's need for minerals and good transportation. In order to supply these industrial needs and to fathom the complexity of rock formations, geology entered a new era: cataloging the world through mapping.

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