Connecticut towns with a population density of 500 or more people per square mile. Note how most of the towns lie in the Central Valley and Coastal Slope regions.

forever scurrying about. The next point of interest is always so close by that we come to expect all distances and time to be short. Westerners, pacified by the proverbial wide-open spaces, have learned to be tolerant and easy going concerning time.

The influence of land on land use in Connecticut goes beyond history and the shaping of attitudes. Here in the 20th century, land resources still limit our ability to do whatever we want whereever we want. Despite technology, we will never be able to rise completely above the land we live on, nor should we strive to. Twentieth-century technology and industry are just as dependent on land as a Puritan farmer's half-dozen acres of turkey-wheat and as a colonial iron mine in the Northwest Highlands.

One example of the continuing role of landscape in land use is the concentration of the state's population into two regions. Sixty-eight percent of the population lives in the 36 percent of the state covered by the Central Valley and Coastal Slope.' Connecticut may be the fourth most densely populated state in the country, but the concentration of population into these two regions has left the Uplands comparatively uninhabited. Hence, rural lives and livelihoods can still be found in Connecticut. There are sound reasons why the Central Valley and Coast are so populous: these are the regions whose land resources are best able to support modern industrial life.

Land and an Industrial Society

The history of land use in Connecticut between 1860 and 1945 was one of ever decreasing agriculture and ever increasing industrialization and urbanization. As was discussed in Chapter 3, the trend was encouraged by the availability of water power in the valleys and the 19thcentury land shortage. The rush downhill. from the hilltop farming towns to the valley mill towns was particularly pronounced between the 1880 and 1890 censuses; 76 Uplands towns lost population, even though the total population of the state rose 17 percent.²

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