Mill River Greenway Initiative

A community-based steward for the Mill River

Mill River Greenway

MRGI HAS A NEW WEBSITE!

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MRGI Has a new website

Dear Mill River Lovers,

We’ve returned just in time to bring you some joy during these hard times. Lots has been happening to all of us, and for MRGI, it’s been a time to focus our energies. on:
1. A new website;
2. Extending the greenway itself;
3. A Mill River Learning Initiative.

We’ll leave #s 2 and 3 for an email next month, but right now, please concentrate on the new website. The url hasn’t changed, but Neal Bastek, our comrade in arms for a decade, has finished his amazing work, and we’ve now hired Carey Baker of Midnightson Designs to create our new one. We have no idea whether this design works or not, and it’s still in progress.

We need you to make this a responsive site. Send us your evaluation, your suggestions, edits, your furious grumblings and joyful outbursts. Whatever you’ve got, we can not only handle it, we need it! Send it along to us at info@millrivergreenway.org.

John and Gaby

Fund Drive to Link the Mill River to Broad Brook

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Fund Drive to Link the Mill River to Broad Brook

Please help the City of Northampton acquire this critical link!

Dear Mill River Lovers,

Steve McDonough on behalf of the Leeds Civic Association, Friends of Northampton Trails, and Yours Truly urge you to contribute to this great project. Here’s how Steve describes it:

Northampton seeks to purchase 44.7 acres of land in Leeds located north of Beaver Brook between Haydenville Road and the Leeds bike path.  The acquisition would expand the current Beaver Brook conservation area while helping to connect the Mill River Greenway to the Beaver Brook/Broad Brook Greenway and Broad Brook/Fitzgerald Lake Greenway.

As we send this message out to you MRGI folk on January 13, we already have more than $2000 donated of the $15000 goal. You can donate directly to the City of Northampton via the Office of Planning and Sustainability, 210 Main St., Northampton, MA 01060 or simply click on this site: https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/team/beaver-brook-land-purchase

Due to the property’s connection with the other conservation areas, it is also important as a wildlife corridor.  Deer, bear, deer, fox, porcupines and turkeys have all been sited on a frequent basis.  And just in the past few months, river otters have been spotted in Beaver Brook on at least two occasions, likely using it as a migration route to and from the Mill River!

The area has become a popular recreation area as it connects with the trails along the Mill River Greenway and the Beaver Brook Conservation area with the main access off the bike path near the Beaver Brook bridge.  There are about 2 miles of well-maintained trails on the property and also some ‘bread crumb’ trails that lead out to Route 9 and the new wildlife blind.

The acquisition would also add a major land parcel in support of Northampton’s Multi-Use Trail Plan to develop a Northampton trail that encircles the city building on existing trail networks where possible.

Thanks from all of us at MRGI, LCA, FNT, and the City of Northampton!

Re-live The 1874 Williamsburg Dam Disaster with Eric Weber!

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The Mill River Flood
Wednesday, April 17
1:00-3:00 at the Garden House
Tickets are $10 each and available by calling 413-584-5457
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, eleven Mill River manufacturers banded together to build a dam and reservoir in Williamsburg that would collect water at times of high stream flow to be released during the drier seasons, thus enabling mills and factories to run at or near full capacity year-round. The dam leaked from the beginning, and on May 16, 1874 it failed catastrophically, killing 139 residents of four downstream villages, making front-page headlines across the United States. It was the worst disaster of its kind in North American history up to then, and it raised important questions about the responsibility of those who design, build, inspect and approve large engineering projects to assure that they are safe.
 
Eric Weber, President of the Williamsburg Historical Society, has digitized some 350 stereo images of the disaster’s aftermath and analyzed what they tell us about the dam, the flood, and the experience of those who lived through it. Drawing on those images and on Elizabeth Sharpe’s award-winning “In the Shadow of the Dam,” Eric will tell the story of the Mill River Disaster and answer questions about it from the audience.

April 6 River Cleanup Florence Fields to Paradise Pond

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Cleanup The River Banks With Us On Saturday April 6 From 9:00 to 11:00 AM

Meet at the Smith College Museum of Art on Elm St.

MRGI and the Connecticut River Conservancy are co-sponsoring this clean-up effort to kick-off Community Day at the Smith College Museum of Art. We invite you to take action and respond to the challenges raised in the exhibition Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials at Smith’s Art Museum. Sign-up to volunteer for a morning of trash collection on our local river. Transportation from Smith College will be provided for those who need it. Afterwards, head over to the museum for Community Day to reflect, be inspired, and celebrate your hard work!  Register here by March 23. You are welcome to join us even if you don’t register!

We will be cleaning up the following sites: Florence Fields/Meadow Street near Crimson & Clover farm, Riverside Drive in Bay State, the Dog Park and Burt’s Pit Road area, Maines Field, Smith College Path at Paradise Pond Dam and upstream at end of path at Hinckley St

We’ll provide trash bags and Pedal People will pick them up. Thanks to everyone in advance!

Your MRGI crew