The Ponemah Mills in Taftville stand beside the Shetucket River, just north of Norwich. Note the dam and the regular rows of worker housing. During the early years of the industrial revolution, company- owned mill towns like this one sprang up everywhere along the fast rivers of Connecticut's uplands.

South Woodstock, West Woodstock, East Woodstock, and Woodstock Valley. And there is a Cornwall, Cornwall Center, East Cornwall, West Cornwall, North Cornwall, Cornwall Bridge, and Cornwall Hollow.

The growth of manufacturing centers in the river valleys contributed to an almost complete about face in the way people viewed and used the resources of the Uplands. New immigrants to Connecticut went not to the hilltop farming towns but instead to the valley mill towns. The hilltop farming communities stopped growing and many began to shrink. Meanwhile, the valley towns swelled with the new immigrants and with family after family who abandoned hilltop agrarian life for the jobs readily available down in the valleys. Superstitions about the "ill humors" of the valley mists died with the elder generation, unable to make much impression on younger people filled with passion for new life styles. One hilltop village in the township of Cornwall, Dudleytown, disappeared completely and is now visited only by hikers on the Appalachian trail, which leads down the former main street.

69