Reverend Edward S. Hitchcock

grow tobacco exclusively for cigars. Broadleaf tobacco is raised for cigar filler and shade-grown tobacco is grown only for the outer leaf that wraps a cigar. Although Connecticut now produces more broadleaf than shadegrown, tens of thousands of acres of gauze tenting once quilted the Central Valley landscape, providing part of the special environment needed for shade-grown leaf.2 The Central Valley provides the rest. The excellence of the soil and the favorable climate combine to create conditions that are unmatched anywhere in the world for the production of shade-grown tobacco. Because it is used on the outside of a cigar where it is most noticeable, the shade-grown leaf must be produced to very exacting standards. The first stage of the tedious process of curing tobacco takes place inside tobacco barns, which are usually fitted with special shuttered sides that may be opened or closed to regulate temperature and moisture inside the barns. Hundreds of these long, wooden structures are scattered throughout the Hartford region (and also a few in the Housatonic River valley, near New Milford). Most are now in disuse and disrepair, due to a decline in tobacco production here in Connecticut. Many factors contributed to the decline, among them the increasingly high cost of land, labor, and capital, and the introduction of new "composite" cigar wrappers made from lower-quality leaf grown elsewhere. But the barns remain, testaments to the superb quality of the soil in the region around Hartford. In 1822, the Reverend Edward Hitchcock recognized that this flat, fertile landscape must have been created by the former presence of an enormous lake whose placid waters laid down fine sediments rich in plant nutrients. He wrote that the Connecticut River "once flowed over the great valley along its banks, forming an extensive lake."3 Years later, other geologists discovered that the lake formed when a huge dam of drift deposited by the glacier blocked the Valley. Remains of the dam may still be seen along the southern boundary of the town of Rocky Hill. The ancient lake has been named Glacial Lake Hitchcock, in honor of Hitchcock and his perceptive early observations. Glacial Lake Hitchcock was similar to modern Lake Champlain a long, narrow finger of water reaching north from Rocky Hill more than 150 miles. At its widest point, just north of Hartford, the lake was about

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