The Connecticut River

Physical geography is one of the topics not included in this work, though, of course it has its own extensive body of literature. Normally, attention to Connecticut’s rivers would fall in that category, but there is a discrete collection of works about the Connecticut River that take an historical rather than geographic or pictorial approach, and it seems appropriate to include those in this bibliography.

Abbe, Nellie G. "Traffic on the Connecticut River." Connecticut Quarterly 3 (1898):266+

Bacon, Edwin. The Connecticut River and the Valley of the Connecticut. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906. A major, standard work. It describes much more than the River, but is geographic in focus.

Burnham, Collins G. "Early Traffic on the Connecticut River." New England Magazine. New series 23(October, 1900) 2:131-49. Lovely photographs and drawings. A narrative account from Block to steamboats.

Dewey, T. M "Navigation of the Connecticut River." Papers and Proceedings of the Connecticut Valley Historical Society (187S-1881): 114-22.

Genthe, Martha Krug. "Valley Towns of Connecticut.” Bulletin of the American Geographic Society 39 (September, 1907):513-44. A very important piece.

Grant, Ellsworth S· "The Connecticut River: The Main Stream of New England." American Heritage 18 (April, 1967) 3. A lavishly illustrated popular piece tracing the white man’s uses of the river and life along its banks.

Hard, Waiter R. The Connecticut. New York: Rinehart, 1947. A contribution to the popular Rivers of America series.

Hayden, Jabez H. “Early River Navigation." Historical Sketches. Windsor Locks:  Windsor Locks Journal 1915.

Lewis, Thomas Reed, Jr. "From Suffield to Saybrook: An Historical Geography of the Connecticut River Valley Before 1800." Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 1978. This is a geographic study, but pages 112-23 deal with uses of the River. Lewis has published Chapters I and II, "Aspects of the Physical Environment" and "The Origin and Expansion of Settlement, c. 1630-1700," in his Near the Long Tidal River. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981.

Love, William DeLoss. "The Navigation of the Connecticut River." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. New series 5(April, 1903):385-441. This work has also been published separately. It covers the colonial era and the age of steam as well, and includes attention to trade. There are useful citations. This is a very helpful piece.

Sheldon, George. "Old Time Traffic and Travel on the Connecticut River." History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association 3(1901):117-29

Verrill, Alpheus Hyatt. The Heart of Old New England. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1936. This is largely descriptive, with historical episodes. Pages 162 to 273 deal with the Connecticut section of the River. It is full of myth passed off as history. It would be best to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Whittlesey, Charles Wilcoxon. Crossing and Recrossing The Connecticut River: A Description of the River from its Mouth to its Source with A History of its Ferries and Bridges. New Haven: Turtle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1938. Much of this work deals with the River north of Connecticut, but it is full of information, much of it of a local history or antiquarian nature.

Wright, George Edward. Crossing the Connecticut: An Account of Various Public Crossing of the Connecticut River at Hartford together With a Full Description of the Hartford Bridge. Hartford: Smith, Linsley Company, 1908. See also the many photographs in Jacobs, Melancthon W., "Bridge Week, October 6-8, 1908." CHS Bulletin 43(October, 1978)4:1 12-19.

See also Gregory Greve Curtis, "Connecticut Historic Riverway: A case Study of Acceptance and Rejection of a National Recreation Area" (doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1974); and William Leuchtenburg, Flood Control Politics: The Connecticut River Valley Problem, 1927-1950, cited elsewhere. See also "A Proposed Recreation Area on the Lower Connecticut River," by State Forester Austin Hawes in Connecticut Woodlands 1(September, 1936)3:9-10. The area consisted of 110 square miles between Middletown Narrows and Essex

There is a volume, The Housatonic (New York: Rinehart 1946), in the Rivers of America series, by Chard Powers Smith. It is full of inaccuracies as well as an interpretation that maintains that much of the River and its banks is as wild today as it was 200 years ago because idealism won out over progress. That ill-informed view could come only from one who does not know that the Housatonic Valley and watershed area was one of the most industrialized sections of the state in the mid-nineteenth century. See James and Margaret Cawley, Exploring the Housatonic River and Valley, La Jolla, Calif.: Howell-North Books, 1977.

So much for the valleys: if you want to know about the mountains, see a list of about 125 peaks over 1,000 feet high in Edward E. Schroeder’s "Connecticut High Points," in Connecticut Woodlands 13(May, 1948) 2:21-23.