the farmland is wide and fertile and tobacco barns dot the landscape. And there are almost no stone walls. The unusual landscapes and patterns of land use in the Central Valley derive from the special characteristics of its underlying bedrock and glacial drift and from the stately river that runs through most of the Valley: the Connecticut River. This chapter explores the relationship between what is underground and what is on top, and what was there before and what came after in this, New England's atypical heartland.

Farming the Valley

The early colonists quickly saw the Central Valley for what it was and is - the most hospitable region in New England. Scouting reports that arrived in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies frequently told of the flat, fertile soils underlying a region some ten days' travel to the west. Based on these reports, two groups of hardy colonists set out to establish the towns of Windsor (in 1633) and Wethersfield (in 1634) in the middle of this fertile country. These were the first permanent European settlements in Connecticut. (The Dutch had earlier main-tained a trading post near present-day Hartford, and native Americans had lived here for thousands of years.) Inhabitants of the two towns soon found all reports to be true: the ground in the Central Valley was excellent for farming. There was plenty of water, rich soil, and almost none of the annoying stones that would one day plague farmers in most of the rest of New England. Wethersfield and Windsor flourished and their success soon encouraged other settlements. By 1675, most of the Central Valley was already converted to productive farmland, a show-piece of the colonists for their skeptical relations back home in England.

The fertile fields of the Central Valley were fed by a curious red soil, quite unlike soils found almost anywhere else in New England. In the present day, this red soil is perhaps most familiar to people as the red sand spread over slippery Central Valley roads in winter and eventually tracked on the bottom of boots into homes and offices. (The residents of

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