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HOUSATONIC RIVER WALK
GUIDE DOWNSTREAM
…it's cherishing something local that everybody can have in common,
and to me a thing like that can't go wrong.
It's just a little narrow walkway, scaled right,
but it's an enormously suggestive thing.
-Wendell Berry
Welcome to the new downstream section of RiverWalk, a greenway trail in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, created by community volunteers. River Walk roughly follows the west bank of the Housatonic River between Cottage
Street and Bridge Street. Two completed sections of the trail are linked by Dresser Avenue and River Street. The original upstream section of the trail goes from Riverbank House on Main Street to the St. Peter's Church parking lot on Dresser Avenue. The new downstream section of the trail
begins by the bridge on Bridge Street near Searles Middle School (site G on the map) and ends adjacent to Berkshire Corporation on River Street (site L).
The new downstream section of River
Walk has a fascinating history. In the pre-Columbian northeast, the various tribes who settled in what is now Massachusetts used ancient trails to travel from coastal areas to mountain passes to river valleys. One east-west Native American "highway" stretched from what is now Westfield in the Connecticut River valley to the Hudson River valley, and crossed the Housatonic at a fordway, often said to be in this vicinity.
At fordways, the river spreads out to a point so shallow and slow-moving that one can walk through the water. In a river as large as the Housatonic, the shallow water could have spread over wide sections of what is now the town of Great Barrington. The Native Americans might have used this open expanse for fishing, trapping and clamming. It would have been a good place to rest before traveling the mountain passes. It would have been a good place to settle, to farm the rich soil and to meet and trade with people passing through. Long before it made sense to white people to make a town here on the Housatonic,
Mahicans chose this spot to live where their highway met the river.
As history progressed, what once might have been a wide, low crossing was constricted artificially to meet the needs of rural industry and town life. Today this downstream section of River Walk adjoins a middle school, an elementary school and a local business. Unlike River Walk's shady path upstream, this trail travels through a highly developed area of playgrounds and parking lots. Here we have lots of open space and sun and an atmosphere that is busy and exposed.
G: BRIDGE STREET
ENTRANCE
Bridge
Street provides the southern entrance to River Walk's downstream section, started early in 1997. It is for walking and nature-viewing and is wheel-chair accessible. It is not intended as a bike path.
From here you can, however, see the Bridge Street bridge and the land downstream where plans for an expanded greenway and bikeway to the Senior Center will be realized in the future. Already, the land immediately across Bridge Street has been developed into a town recreation area.
To your right is a stone marker commemorating the Mahican fordway and suggesting that it was near this spot in August 1676, during an episode of King Philip's War, that Major John Talcott and a group of militiamen from Westfield caught up with and killed at least twenty-five members of a fleeing band of Narragansett Indians who had fought the encroachment of European settlers on their traditional lands.
Searles Middle School, originally a high school, opened for classes in 1898. William Cullen Bryant Elementary School, built in 1888, was named for the poet, journalist
and orator who lived in Great Barrington from 1816 to 1825.
.
H: NATURE TRAIL
In 1989 seventy Searles 8th grade students,
cleaning up the river bank next to their school, hauled out twenty tons of trash to make
possible a nature trail and canoe access to the river. As they worked, they learned about the dynamics of the river
while they made the river landscape more attractive and accessible.
As you walk along, think of the river as a repository for the water that falls as rain. All the rain that falls in the entire Housatonic watershed ends up in the river unless it first evaporates, or is used by a plant or animal. If the rain falls on an absorbent surface, it slowly sinks into the ground, where it is filtered of impurities and joins the saturated underground layer called the water table. If
a large amount of water is absorbed into the ground, the water table rises to the lowest depth of the river bed. In this way, rivers can fill up even without having any water spilling into them from the surface of the land.
When there is too much rain to be absorbed by the ground and vegetation, or when the water falls on a roof or a parking lot, it rushes to the lowest spot as fast as it can. It races down gutters, along streets and into drains, where it is channeled and picks up speed and power. When it ultimately reaches the river, it splashes down in a frenzy, carrying anything picked up along the way. It can carry eroded particles of soil and stone; it can carry cigarette butts and
Styrofoam coffee cups. It can also carry pesticides and herbicides from lawns and fields.
If there is more water than the river can hold, it will spill over the banks and the low land
on either side of the river will flood. This land is called floodplain. The sediment carried by the water settles onto the flooded land. As the flood water recedes, it leaves a fine nutrient-rich soil that is great for farming, but the land is always prone to flooding again. The plants that grow here are specially adapted to withstand periodic flooding.
In floodplains there are wetlands, where moisture is present all the time. Wetlands support a great diversity of life and play a crucial role in sustaining the purity of our water.
The ideal landscape for keeping water fresh and clean and for preventing erosion would have many layers of vegetation such as trees, shrubs and dead leaves so that the rain drips gently into the ground. It would have a pristine floodplain of permeable soil to hold and clean flood water. It would have slow moving streams and shaded rivers with wide, shallow banks.
The area surrounding River Walk was once such a landscape, but development has altered it for the worse. The riverbed itself has been narrowed artificially, yielding steep and
erosion-prone riverbanks. Instead of a rich floodplain of marsh grasses and cattails, there is turf grass and hard pavement which cannot filter runoff nor hold floodwater from storms.
As we work here on the River Walk, we are reminded that we are in the Housatonic floodplain. We can
watch the river level change-rising in early spring and dropping in late summer. Sometime in the future, as it has done in the past, the river will rise enough to flood the trail, the parking lots and even River Street, which is lower than River Walk. That is the nature of rivers.
In our trail building and planting, we try to plan for flooding and runoff from heavy rainstorms. Water run-off from the school parking lot is directed through surface drains to trap oil and sediment before discharging into the river. The trail surface that you are walking on is hard enough for heavy use, yet is water permeable. Further on you will see restoration efforts to preserve and diversify the steep riverbank slope. Native floodplain trees have been planted along the path to provide the shady cooling cover that is essential for a healthy river.
I: W. E. B. Du BOIS
RIVER GARDEN
The "pocket park" you see ahead of you was once a dump concealed by a snarl of invasive multiflora rose, oriental bittersweet and buckthorn. Volunteers transformed it into a memorial park that serves as a formal entrance to River Walk. Here the town connects to the river as you come down Church Street and enter this little haven.
Sit for awhile on the Memory Bench, dedicated by HospiceCare to those who have experienced the death of a loved one. In the words of
former Executive Director Anne Kissel, "One may pause on this bench and allow the sadness of loss to be balanced by the healing beauty of nature and the small miracle of River Walk."
From the bench you can see a raised garden made of stones that are representative of the mixed geologic origins of what is now the upper Housatonic watershed.
[See Memory Garden] Gneiss, quartzite, schist, limestone and dolomite form the geologic basis
of Berkshire County. The waterleaf and sedges that grow in the garden are typical woodland plants of the region.
They are the first products of our Native Natives program, in which local nurseries are growing plants whose genetic provenance is here in western Massachusetts. Many of the seeds and cuttings were collected locally by River Walk
volunteers.
On the south side of the park, a raised berm is planted with sumac and with little bluestem and wild rye grasses, as well as Pennsylvania sedge. These beautiful native plants are typical of the "old field" phase of ecological succession. Ecological succession describes the process by which a disturbed piece of land
is slowly transformed from "meadow" to "old field" to "young woodland" to "mature woodland" to
"old growth forest."
At the street entrance to the park, a storm drain channels runoff water from the streets and parking lots directly to the river.
Here we have created a raingarden-a low swale or catch basin of land where flowering wetland plants like Joe Pye weed, cattails and swamp milkweed filter the water, and where the water
has the opportunity to soak slowly into the soil. If there is excessive water, it flows into the drain where suspended sediments
are trapped, and then proceeds to the river. If this experimental way of allowing a more natural hydrological process succeeds, there are many other low areas that could become raingardens. See if you can spot
them. [See
Rain Garden]
On September 28, 2002, the park was dedicated to the memory of civil-rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois [See
River Garden] and his special regard for the "golden river" by
which he was born.
J: ECOLOGICAL
RESTORATION
Having crossed the swale on the elevated Trex walkway, you are now standing on land belonging to the Berkshire Corporation, whose employees have enthusiastically encouraged and helped the expansion of River Walk. The crabapple tree was planted here for the enjoyment of the people working in the building near the walk. The land between this building and the river was covered in Japanese knotweed, an aggressive and invasive polygonum that crowds out all other plant life. Volunteers dug and sifted the soil for root particles, picked and re-picked new sprouts, and replanted with native species to shade out and overtake the
persistent knotweed. It has taken biweekly vigilance over four years to reduce the knotweed to a less threatening population. Roots and sprouts still fight to come back, but the continued work of volunteers and competition from native plants keep the knotweed at bay.
You will notice that this is a very steep, almost vertical riverbank and thus inherently unstable. A stable riverbank would be sloped so that materials falling on the bank would remain in place without sliding. This angle, which varies for different materials, is known as the Angle of Repose.
Here, reshaping the bank is impractical and expensive, so we are using living organisms to achieve structural ends, a technique known as bioengineering. We have chosen trees and shrubs with matted roots that will penetrate the bank and hold the soil. Their branches and leaves will protect the soil from breakdown by wind, sun and rain.
A tragic accident on the Housatonic in the winter of 2000 deeply moved the community and had a great impact on River Walk. On January 25, five-year-old Shirley Palmer lost her life after falling into the icy river by the Cottage Street bridge, a few hundred feet upstream of River Walk. The exhaustive search mission that followed resulted in great damage to the riverbank at this downstream site. To permit heavy search equipment access to the river, more than 100 cubic yards of soil were excavated and mature trees had to be felled. We found it necessary to make substantial repairs to the riverbank and to change its profile significantly.
The steep riverbank had been gouged out to make access ramps in three areas. Instead of re-filling the cavities, we simply smoothed out their contours, leaving a diminished angle of slope and thereby increasing flood storage capacity and mitigating further erosion. Stone retaining walls were constructed at the top of the new slope to stabilize the trailbed.
The destruction of established native vegetation and mature trees exposed the site to erosion and also to the sun, inviting the return of aggressive non-native plants such as knotweed, bittersweet, multiflora rose and garlic mustard. So
in the following summer work season, River Walk crews planted a dense cover of more than 800 native plants, shrubs and trees specially selected to combat erosion by quickly spreading roots and branches. Over twenty new species of riparian plants, including swamp white oak, pin oak, elderberry, witch hazel, alder, dogwood and viburnum, now enhance the biodiversity of the area.
You may be wondering why so many stakes are poking up out of the ground. These two-inch diameter sticks were cut from saplings and pounded into the slope for three reasons. They offer safe, erosion-free footing for volunteers working on the bank. They catch leaves and branches that provide a protective mulch. They help secure the bank until a solid root structure eventually develops.
A split-rail fence has been installed along the riverbank. The two areas on either side of the fence are managed very differently. On the wild, river side of the fence, where steep banks meet the water's edge, we are letting nature take its course, with only occasional weeding of "invasive exotics." On the path side of the fence, volunteers are cultivating a public garden of native plants. Decorative vines grow on the fence, while blocks of flowering plants and a row of specimen trees follow the trail.
K: RIVER OVERLOOK
Here, at one of the repaired sections, we have built a special river overlook. This is a good spot for watching the river and the wildlife that uses it. River Walk volunteers have seen beaver, skunks, raccoons, deer, great blue herons, cedar waxwings, chickadees, eagles, osprey, kingfishers, hellgramites (dobson fly larvae) and snapping turtle eggs. The list will lengthen as we invite the river back into our lives.
The young trees planted along the path are samples of the large, stately trees that grow well in floodplain environments in Berkshire County and the Northeast. American sycamores have beautifully mottled bark and large leaves with shallow lobes. They can grow to be as tall as 100 feet, although they are now fighting a kind of anthracnose that affects the growing tips of twigs in spring.
Pin oaks are straight and graceful with sweeping lower branches and leaves that tend to stay on well into winter. They can grow to be from 50 to 80 feet. American lindens, or basswood, are not widely available for planting, but may be found growing up and down the Housatonic in great numbers. They have large heart-shaped leaves, very soft wood and a beautiful perfume when blooming. Red maples are ubiquitous in New England. They are an indicator of wetlands but will grow everywhere else as well. Their buds and flowers in late winter and early spring are scarlet, and their fall leaf color is astonishing.
One hackberry tree was planted along
the path by the Sarah Deming Chapter of the Children of the American Revolution
in remembrance of children who have lost their lives to the river.
You may notice other bottomland trees that grow here, including a huge cottonwood by the elevated path and silver maples that lean over the river. In their shade grow slippery elms and box elder,
a scrub maple unfairly maligned for its messy clusters of seeds. A large butternut tree adorns Memory Park.
L: EXIT TO RIVER WALK
UPSTREAM
This old house is part of the Berkshire Corporation facility. You can see that the river starts to make a bend here. To rejoin the upstream section of River Walk, take a right onto River Street and follow it around the bend where it becomes Dresser Avenue. Turn right into the St. Peter's Church parking lot, where in the back right-hand corner you will find steps to the upstream section of River Walk.
[Go to
River Walk Guide Upstream]
If, by chance, you are just starting your tour of River Walk here at Site L, we suggest that you walk all the way downstream to the bridge, turn around, and begin your tour at Site G at the Bridge Street
entrance.
VOLUNTEERS
River Walk is a community project
directed by Rachel Fletcher and created by 1900 volunteers.
The River Walk trail is designed by Peter Jensen of Openspace Management.
The landscape restoration is directed by Monica Fadding of Marconica and Heather
Cupo of Plant Euphoria.
Volunteers with more than 100 hours in the field
include Gail Berneike, Don Bernier, Glen Chamberlin, Peter Ghani Champoux, Ann Condon,
Dana Cummings, Bernie Drew, Monica Fadding, Rachel Fletcher, Peter Jensen, Bernard Kirchner, John Mallory,
Tony Manzon, Will Marsh, Judd Reiss and Comstock Small.
Young people with more than 50 hours in the field
include Andrew Baxter, Jessie Drew, Erik Jensen, Alden Johnson, Willa Johnson, Ben Kalish,
Hannah Kirchner and Ben Passmore.
Inventory of trash removed by River Walk
volunteers between 1988 and 2003:
255 - tons of rubble/garbage
10 - tons of metal
82 - tons of wood waste and fire wood
3 - tons of compost
GRAND TOTAL: 350 total tons
A FEW NOTES ABOUT TRAIL
ETIQUETTE
- Please remember that you are passing through
private property and are here as a guest.
- Please remember that it is unsafe to use the trail during icy conditions and therefore
the trail is closed during the winter months.
- Please remember that the path is constructed for walking and nature viewing only. River
Walk does not yet have a bicycle path. Please do not bring bicycles to any part of River
Walk.
- Please use the proper entrances and exits. Stay on the delineated trail where it is safe
to travel.
- Riverbank slopes are sensitive to erosion. Please do not climb on the bank.
- Please respect the desire of others for a smoke-free environment.
- Please help us to keep River Walk clean. Carry out what you carried in.
- Please consider picking up any litter you may see along the trail.
- Please leave the flowers for all to enjoy.
CONTRIBUTIONS
River Walk is a project of the Great Barrington
Land Conservancy. Conservation leases and easements granting public access to the trail
are managed by the Conservancy on behalf of the local community.
Donations are tax-deductible and may be sent to:
Housatonic River Walk
P. O. Box 1018
Gt. Barrington, MA 01230 USA
For further information about River Walk,
please contact Rachel Fletcher,
413-528-3391, or river@gbriverwalk.org.
Excerpt by Wendell Berry reprinted with permission from U.S. Catholic magazine, Claretian
Publications, www.uscatholic.org, 800-328-6515.
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© copyright 2001 Great Barrington Land
Conservancy