Mill River Greenway Initiative

A community-based steward for the Mill River

JW Sinton

Five Devil’s Den Readings upcoming for February and March

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Devil’s Den to Lickingwater has gotten a really lovely, warm reception — full houses at all events, and we had to turn away many at the door. So, we’re scheduling a bunch more presentations. I’m really looking forward to seeing our MRGI folk out there. We’ve scheduled five Devil’s Den to Lickingwater presentations between February 11th and early April in Northampton, Williamsburg, and South Hadley. Other venues and events are either in a planning stage or have been set.

  1. February 11th, 7:00 Broadside Books. This will be more a conversation between author and audience than a lecture, and there will be no powerpoint/slide show. Topics will include the early history of the Mill River and Native American perspectives on the Pioneer Valley; how the Mill River defined Northampton; and why the river matters.
  2. February 19th, 7:00 at Odyssey Books, South Hadley. We will present an overview of Devil’s Den to Lickingwater, including the creation of the Pioneer Valley from both the geological and Native American perspectives. We will discuss the Mill River and Pioneer Valley as a reflection of much of American history. The author will choose several river stories from among the many in the book about floods, diversions, industrial evolution and environmental transformations.
  3. February 21, 7:00 at Northampton Community Arts Trust on Hawley St. This will be a repeat of the December 1 talk at Historic Northampton when we had to turn away so many people. The focus will be on the Mill River and the creation of Nonotuck and Northampton. We will feature the two river diversions and dozens of flood events (not the 1874 Williamsburg Disaster). What was it like to live in Northampton prior to 1940?
  4. March 13, 6:30 at Meekins Library, Williamsburg. This presentation will be in memory of Ralmon Black. We will look at Williamsburg in the context of Native American and Colonial history and then focus on Williamsburg’s contribution to the cultural and industrial history of the Valley.
  5. March or early April on a  Thursday evening at 7:30 at Smith College, venue to be determined.The focus for the presentation will be chosen in consultation with the Landscape Studies program, which is sponsoring the talk.
  6. A presentation at Forbes is up for grabs. I’d like to see it as a panel about how to approach public history and how to integrate local history into schools.
  7. ?April or May? Hitchcock Center – there may be a forum on environmental history of the Valley in honor of Elizabeth Farnsworth.
  8. October 18 evening, Audubon’s Arcadia Refuge. This event will focus on environmental history.

We wish you much happiness and warmth in the cold of this season. Looking forward to the river connecting us,

John

Schedule for Devil’s Den to Lickingwater Presentations

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Dear Mill River Lovers,

Forgive my barging into your homes this holiday season. I was talking with several MRGI members lately, who told me that they would like to know about reading events for our Mill River book, Devil’s Den to Lickingwater: The Mill River Through Landscape and History. I hope they’re right about your interest in the book. If not, please just click this off. Here’s the lineup:

January 9, 7:00 at the Leeds School. We’ll focus on Native American perspectives and Mill River industrial history featuring all the mill villages, especially Leeds.

February 21, 7:00 at Northampton Community Arts Trust on Hawley St. This will be a repeat of the December 1 talk at Historic Northampton when we had to turn away so many people. The focus will be on the Mill River and the creation of Nonotuck and Northampton. We will feature the two river diversions and dozens of flood events (not the 1874 Williamsburg Disaster), which gave citizens a very different experience of the Connecticut and Mill Rivers prior to 1940.

March 13, 6:30 at Meekins Library, Williamsburg. This presentation will be similar to the one in Leeds in February with greater attention paid to the town of Williamsburg.

April? Date and time to be determined. I will give a lecture on Devil’s Den at Smith College, sponsored by the Landscapes Studies Program. Focus of the talk will be decided shortly.

October 8, evening at Mass Audubon’s Arcadia Refuge. This time the focus will be on the environmental history of the region, including ecological transformations, alien and native plants, fish, and animals, and deforestation.

Two other readings are also being considered, one at Forbes Library and one at Hitchcock Nature Center.

Thanks for your patience, and I really look forward to seeing you at one of the readings. After all, the River Runs Through Us!

Happy New Year,

John

Autumn 2018 Newsletter

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Hello Autumn! Hello Mill River Community!

Hoping this finds you refreshed by the crisp weather and busily battening down the hatches for the winter ahead.  We three humble co-conspirators at the MRGI continue our diligent efforts to celebrate and elevate our river. To wit…

Mill River, the Book

We were delighted and humbled to see so many of you at the launch party for John’s gorgeous new book, Devil’s Den to Lickingwater: The Mill River Through Landscape & History, published by Levellers Press. Deeply researched and lavishly illustrated, the book is a must-have for Mill River lovers (holiday gift time is not so far off!).

John will be presenting different sections of the book at upcoming events at Historic Northampton at 4:00 Saturday, December 1; at the Leeds School on Wednesday evening at 7:00 January 9 (snow date January 10); on Feb. 21st at 7:00 a re-run of the Historic Northampton talk at Northampton Community Arts Trust at 33 Hawley St. (Historic Northampton is undergoing renovations); at Meekins Library in Williamsburg on March 13th at 6:30; and at Audubon’s Arcadia Sanctuary on October 8th. Additional events are in the planning stages for Smith College, Forbes Library, University of Massachusetts, and the Hitchcock Center. John would be happy to entertain invitations for other venues as well.

 You can pick up a copy at Collective Copies in Florence or Amherst or at Broadside Books in Northampton. You can also order it from Amazon.

Williamsburg Rolls Along

Team Williamsburg has been able to accelerate its progress this fall with an additional $100,000 in funds from the Massachusetts DCR Recreational Trails Grant program. Design and engineering work continues under the town’s contract with the great folks at VHB Engineering. The Phase II Pre-Construction Design Development Study has been expanded to include survey and field research toward the development of the new Skinnerville park parcel approved for purchase at Town Meeting in June.

VHB is also helping the Williamsburg Mill River Greenway Committee move forward on two fronts:

1. Improvements to the safety and accessibility of the Fort Hill Road-South Main Street intersection in Haydenville;

2. a study to qualify South Main Street for the MA DOT Complete Streets program, which funds improvements that benefit cars, bikes, and walkers as they traverse South Main Street between the Rail Trail and the Greenway (which will begin at the Library Bridge in Haydenville).

3. Surfacing of the rail trail from Leeds to Haydenville was completed this fall under an elegant partnership between Williamsburg and Northampton. Because the project spanned the town line, the two communities made an agreement to have Northampton supply materials, and Williamsburg Highway Department perform the work.  The 1/2 mile or so of pavement formally linked Haydenville into the Mass Central Rail Trail system, which will someday connect all the way to Boston. The Burgy Greenway committee hopes to create a wayside parklet at the switchback, with benches and interpretive signage to mark the terminus of the MCRT.

Smith Design Clinic Rides Again!

We’re blessed once again this year to have the extraordinary help of Smith College’s Design Clinic under the masterful guidance of Engineering Professor Susannah Howe. Our four Smithie seniors (Jess McKnight, Bea Dalton, Kelsey Hammond, and Serena Cattau) will be providing us with designs for the final grade and a new pedestrian bike bridge at the terminus of the Mass Central Rail Trail in Haydenville, the gateway to the Burgy Mill River Greenway. Everyone will have the chance to check out their work and provide feedback at a community forum in April 2019.

MRGI 2023

Your humble co-conspirators are opening a discussion on a strategic plan for the next five years of MRGI initiatives. We expect that the Haydenville to Williamsburg Center project will break ground five years from now in 2023 (fingers crossed!) by which time will need to:

1. Consider a more robust organization with its own 501(c)(3) non-profit status that can serve as a “Friends of the Mill River Greenway” advocacy group;

2. Establish the next steps in the development of a physical greenway connecting Goshen to Northampton via trail, scientific study areas, and virtual trails along reaches that need to remain off limits to active recreation.

See You in Spring, We’re Wintering on the Website

We will organize a MRGI meeting for our community next spring, but for now, we open the floor to your ideas. We have already received several suggestions about the website, which we will spend some time this winter updating. If you have any thoughts about the river or MRGI, please let us know.  Are there river reaches you’d like us to focus on for whatever reason, whether recreation, scientific or cultural study, or exploration?  After all, the river runs through all of us.

We hope to see you a book event in the coming months and to hearing from you about any Mill River thought on your mind.

May the river always flow through us!

Gaby, Neal, and John

Devil’s Den to Lickingwater Book Launch

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Devil’s Den to Lickingwater: The Mill River Through Landscape and History tells the multifaceted tale of the Mill River in Western Massachusetts, from its emergence after the glaciers 20,000 years ago to the present. This is in fact the story of New England, and much of America, as told by environmental historian John Sinton (co-author of Water, Earth and Fire: The New Jersey Pine Barrensand The Connecticut River Boating Guide). Little escapes Sinton’s voracious historical appetite – the creation of the landscape, the disappearance and reappearance of native fish and animals, the Mill River as a Native American crossroads, the contrast between English and Native ways of managing the land, the transformations wrought by war, floods and industrial disasters, the extraordinary role of the Mill River in the Industrial Revolution, and exceptional personalities from Sachem Umpanchala to Calvin Coolidge: all this is told through the arc of the Mill River’s history—beloved, abused, diverted, and ultimately reclaimed as an integral part of the landscape.

Devil’s Den to Lickingwater, while describing a specific landscape, contains that element of universality that links readers to their own stories. It connects us with our past, and evokes a sense of what it was like to live along the river long ago.

Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated with maps, drawings and other images, Devil’s Den to Lickingwater will serve as an exemplar for readers and authors of local and public history, proving that local history is a reflection of the larger world. Sinton’s unique book is a delight for the eye, the intellect, and the heart.

Copies of  Devil’s Den to Lickingwater may be purchased at the following addresses: For mail order copies, contact: Steve Strimer, Levellers Press,  Phone: 413-992-7408  Email: levellerspress1@gmail.com
Collective Copies Stores:
In Florence: 93 Main St., 01062
In Amherst: 71 S. Pleasant St. 01002
Or at the following bookstores: Broadside in Northampton, Odyssey in S. Hadley and Amherst Books in Amherst
Or via Amazon

John Sinton is a retired environmental studies professor who lives with his wife in Florence, Massachusetts

About John W. Sinton

Born in San Francisco in 1939, I spent my first thirteen winters there and my summers on the Truckee River outside Tahoe City, California. I spent the next four years at school in New England, then returned to the West Coast for college, after which I left the Bay Area to spend my graduate school years in Indiana and Paris. After receiving a doctorate in Russian and Early Modern European history, I taught history for two years and then changed my life’s trajectory. I went to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as a post-doctoral scholar in environmental planning where I taught natural resource conservation from 1967-1972.

After a 4-year stint as principal in an environmental planning firm from 1969-1972 in Amherst, I went to the newly-opened Stockton State College in southern New Jersey to help establish an environmental studies department. I spent twenty-seven years there as an environmental planner while teaching environmental planning, history, and geography. I became active in the creation and management of the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, co-authored a book on it, and then studied and published articles on rivers both in the US and Europe.

I retired in 1999 and moved to the village of Florence, Massachusetts in the City of Northampton, living some two hundred yards from the banks of the Mill River. I became an environmental activist and an integral part of the resurgent Connecticut River Conservancy for whom I co-authored The Boating Guide to the Connecticut River: Source to Sea. I remain an honorary board member of the CRC and an adjunct professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. I am a founding member and current co-moderator of the Mill River Greenway Initiative based in Williamsburg and Northampton.

I have been married to Wendy Sinton since 1970. We have five sons, three grandsons, and eight granddaughters.

Praise for Devil’s Den to Lickingwater

Christine DeLucia, Assoc. Professor of History at Williams College, author of Memorylands
The Mill River that flows through western Massachusetts forms the
centerpiece of John Sinton’s fine-grained study of water, land, people,
and their complex interactions over extended spans of time… Moving fluently between birds-eye vantages and the perspectives
of paddlers, and written in accessible prose, the book is well illustrated
with images and maps from local historical collections that
illuminate diverse facets of the river’s transformations. It blends commitment to critical localism with attentiveness to regional, national, and global developments, offering a compelling lens into the past, present, and future of a dynamic watershed.

Christopher Clark, Head of the Department of History, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs. Author of Rural Roots of Capitalismand The Communitarian Moment.
An important book, Devil’s Den to Lickingwater is a fine environmental and industrial history of the Mill River in Williamsburg and Northampton. Its lively text, accompanied by beautiful maps and illustrations, tells a dramatic story of the river’s many transformations through community enterprise and development, ecological challenges, disaster, decline, and rejuvenation. Both as an account of how the Mill River came to be as it is, and as an inspiration for ensuring its healthy future in the life of the region, this book will have lasting influence.

Neal Salisbury, Richmond 1940 Professor Emeritus in History, Smith College. Author of Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England.
John Sinton has given us a masterpiece that is at once environmental history, local history, and a microcosm of New England, American, and global history. It interweaves the latest findings on all manner of scholarly topics with countless anecdotes of human beings, both inventive and foolish. Especially notable for incorporating Native Americans’ presence and perspectives. Beautifully written and illustrated.

Elizabeth M. Sharpe, co-director of Historic Northampton. Author of In the Shadow of the Dam: The Aftermath of the Mill River Flood of 1874.
This is a must read for anyone interested in New England cultural and environmental history. John Sinton is a companionable and knowledgeable guide as he brings to life the cultural and landscape history of Northampton and Williamsburg through the story of the region’s lifeblood, the Mill River. Aided by many newly crafted maps and illustrations, Sinton describes in great clarity the river’s geologic history, its use and meaning to indigenous people, its industrial phase, and its revived place in the landscape today.  A cogent discussion of the environmental impacts of deforestation, pollution, and invasive species places the Mill River in a national context. This highly readable volume should be on every New Englander’s bookshelf.    

Bruce Laurie, Professor Emeritus of History, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. Author of Artisans into Workers(1989), Beyond Garrison(2005) and Rebels in Paradise: Sketches of Northampton Abolitionists(2015).
 This gem of a book offers an elegant yes to the question “Does nature have a history?”—along with us humans—through a detailed chronicle of the Mill River. This current trickle of water once had a heroic past, a sacred place to the early Native Americans and an invaluable resource to the first Anglo American settlers and later generations that harnessed its power to the region’s first mills and factories. John Sinton, the longtime environmental historian cum environmental activist, captures the history of the Mill in loving detail, exposing the changing shape of its flora, fauna, and aquatic life and larger impact on our landscape. It is beautifully written, richly detailed with maps and other illustrations, and informative throughout–a must and compelling read for everyone fromenvironmentalists to local historians and general readers wishing to learn why we reside in such a special place.

David Glassberg, Professor of History, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. Author of American Historical Pageantryand Sense of History: The Place of Past in American Life.
Sinton’s engaging history of the land and people along the Mill River is essential reading for anyone in Western Massachusetts seeking a better understanding of where they live.  It combines the attention to detail of the best local histories with a sophisticated analysis placing those details in a broader social, economic, and ecological context.  

Helen Horowitz, Parsons Professor Emerita of History and American Studies, Smith College. Author of Rereading Sex(2002) and Traces of J.B. Jackson(coming 2019).
With rich knowledge and clear, evocative language, John Sinton interweaves the natural and engineered history of the Mill River in Western Massachusetts with the complex stories of settlements along its course. Sinton deftly traces the interactions of the river and its flooding waters with the forces that built farms, villages, towns, and cities alongside its banks—forest clearing, agriculture, industrialization, dams, transportation, and politics. Abundant maps and images enhance understanding and help bring this past world to life. Today, inspired by environmental awareness, interest in recreation, and tourism, a growing number of river walks allow new appreciation of the Mill River’s beauty. Sinton offers a compelling story and an important contribution to the growing literature of the interplay between nature and human action.

Ted Steinberg, Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve Univ. Author of Gotham Unbound, Down to Earth, and Acts of God.
A beautifully written microhistory that will make you care deeply for this winding little New England tributary in ways you never dreamed. A remarkable book and lavishly illustrated to boot. 

Larry Hott, Award-winning filmmaker at Hott Productions and Florentine Films. He lives in Florence, Massachusetts.
Take a dollop of geography, a tablespoon of industrial history, and a pinch of city planning, blend them together into a compelling tale of a New England river and you’ve got a recipe for John Sinton’s fascinating book.  I’ve lived along the Mill River for decades but I never knew just how many hundreds of mills dotted its banks, or the details of the utopian and abolitionist movements that sprung up nearby, or the impact of the many devastating floods that affected the layout of Northampton.  Sinton is a master storyteller who knows that a river’s history is far more entertaining when its central players are people who not only changed the course of the river but the character of the region as well. 

Richard Smardon, PhD SUNY Distinguished Service Professor, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse NY. Author of Revitalizing Urban Waterway Communities and Sustaining the World’s Wetlands.
John Sinton takes us on a full-immersion journey in environmental history with his book Devil’s Den to Linkingwater: The Mill River through Landscape and History. He utilizes intensive historical research, a la Paul Krugman and William Cronon, to give ‘voice to the river’ in what he terms an awikhigan – the Abenaki word for representing the world in different ways. He covers the Mill River’s history from early geologic times, through Native American eras and the period of early European settlers all the way up to the present. Major hydrologic events like floods and river diversions are covered, as well as their interactions with riverine communities. This book will be of interest to those whose appetites include; natural and cultural landscape history, environmental interpretation, cultural ecology, and river-related planning and management.