Mount Tom Range
Mount Tom Range | |
---|---|
Metacomet Ridge | |
Highest point | |
Peak | Mount Tom |
Elevation | 1,202 ft (366 m) |
Coordinates | 42°14′30″N 72°38′53″W / 42.24167°N 72.64806°W |
Dimensions | |
Length | 4.5 mi (7.2 km) east-west |
Geography | |
Country | United States |
State | Massachusetts |
Geology | |
igneous and sedimentary |
The Mount Tom Range is a
Geography
The Mount Tom Range rises steeply between 500 and 1,100 feet (150 and 340 m) above the Connecticut River Valley below; it is roughly 4.5 miles (7 km) long by 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide at its widest point, although the ruggedness of the terrain makes the actual area much larger.
Peaks | |||
---|---|---|---|
Name | Height above sea level | Notes | |
ft | m | ||
Mount Tom (summit) | 1,202 | 366 | the high point of range with west-facing cliffs up to 400 feet (120 m) |
Deadtop | 1,115 | 340 | |
Whiting Peak | 1,014 | 309 | |
Goat Peak | 822 | 251 | location of raptor observation platform |
Dry Knoll | 835 | 255 | |
Mount Nonotuck | 827 | 252 | location of historic Eyrie House ruins |
Little Mount Tom | 631 | 192 | a wooded hill on the southeast side of the range, recently conserved by The Trustees of Reservations |
The entire range is sometimes referred to as "Mount Tom". Oriented from south to north, the range is located within the towns of Easthampton and Holyoke.[1][3]
The Metacomet Ridge continues south from the Mount Tom Range as
History
According to popular folklore, Mount Tom (the high point on the range) takes its name from Rowland Thomas, a surveyor who worked for the settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts in the 1660s. Thomas supposedly named Mount Tom after himself while his fellow surveyor working on the opposite side of the Connecticut River, Elizur Holyoke, gave his name to Mount Holyoke.[5] Before the mid-19th century, very little history had been recorded about the Mount Tom Range to distinguish it from the surrounding landscape.
Highland areas were also burned of timber when lowland fires, set to clear land for farms, raged out of control. However, by the early 20th century, after agricultural interests shifted west and charcoaling became unprofitable, rural New England became largely forested again. A 2004 ecological resource study conducted for the National Park Service suggests that the Metacomet Ridge may have remained more or less forested (cleared only intermittently) throughout New England's agricultural period, thereby allowing the area to retain its biologic diversity through the 20th century.[2]
Increasing urbanization and industrialization in 19th century New England resulted in an opposing aesthetic transcendentalist movement characterized by the paintings of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters such as Frederic Edwin Church and Thomas Cole (who, in 1836, famously painted the Connecticut River from sketches he made from the summit of Mount Holyoke), the work of landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted, and the writings of philosophers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. This philosophical, artistic, and environmental movement transformed many areas of the Metacomet Ridge (as well as other places in New England) from a commercial resource to a recreational and aesthetic resource.[2] Hotels, parks, and summer estates were built on the mountains from the mid-1880s to the early 20th century.[7]
Early tourism and conservation
In 1861, following the success of the hotel on the summit of Mount Holyoke across the river, William Street opened a summit hotel on Mount Nonotuck and named it Eyrie House. The hotel was closer to the Connecticut River and therefore more accessible than the hotel on Mount Holyoke, which spurred the owners of the latter establishment to build a rail line and a ferry dock from the river to the base of Mount Holyoke. The hotel burned down in 1901 when Street attempted to cremate two horses on the mountain and lost control of the fire, leaving only the cellar holes and the walls of the stone understory standing.
Another hotel, the Mount Tom Hotel, was constructed on the summit of Mount Tom in 1897, but it burned down three years later. Subsequently, rebuilt, it burned again in 1929 and was never rebuilt; in 1902 the property became the first parcel to become the Mount Tom State Reservation. In 1933 the Civilian Conservation Corps assisted with the construction of reservation structures and park roads still existent through the turn of the 21st century.
In 1897 the
Both the Holyoke Range and the Mount Tom Range were part of a 1966 proposal by the National Park Service for a "Connecticut River National Recreation Area." Although the project was never realized, it has been followed through in spirit by a number of similar local and national conservation efforts, including an increased effort to acquire land on both ranges for state park expansion,[7] the creation by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of the Connecticut River Greenway State Park,[9] and the recent proposal by the National Park Service for the inclusion of the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail in a new National Scenic Trail.[10]
Geology and environment
The ridge of the Mount Tom Range was formed 200 million years ago during the late
The Mount Tom Range hosts a combination of
The Mount Tom Range is also an important seasonal
Recreation
A low-profile network of seasonal auto roads and many miles of trails climb the ridgeline, including the 110-mile (180 km)
A number of trail head parking lots are located within the Mount Tom State Reservation, accessible from
Conservation
Much of the range has been conserved as part of Massachusett's
In 2002, several conservation non-profit organizations and the
Other organizations invested in the conservation of the Mount Tom Range and its viewshed include The Kestrel Trust, The Valley Land Fund, and the Pascommuck Conservation Trust.
See also
- Metacomet Ridge
- Metacomet-Monadnock Trail
- List of subranges of the Appalachian Mountains
- Nearby summits:
↓ South | East > |
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References
- ^ a b c d *The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail Guide. 9th Edition. The Appalachian Mountain Club. Amherst, Massachusetts, 1999.
- ^ a b c d e f g Farnsworth, ElizabethJ. "Metacomet-Mattabesett Trail Natural Resource Assessment. Archived 2007-08-07 at the Wayback Machine" 2004. PDF file cited November 1, 2007.
- ^ a b c "Mount Tom: Defining the Landscape of the Connecticut River Valley Archived 2007-10-17 at the Wayback Machine" The Trustees of Reservations. Website cited November 28, 2007.
- ^ DeLorme Topo 6.0. Mapping software. DeLorme, Yarmouth, Maine.
- ^ Harper, Wyatt. The Story of Holyoke. Holyoke Centennial Committee, Holyoke, Massachusetts 1973.
- ^ a b Cronin, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. 2003, Hill and Wang, New York.
- ^ a b c *Mt. Holyoke Range Historical Timeline Cited November 20, 2007.
- ^ "Queen of the Mountain" Defunctparks.com cited December 21, 2007
- ^ Massachusetts DCR "Connecticut River Greenway State Park"
- ^ Monadnock, Metacoment, Mattabesett National Scenic Trail Study. Archived 2007-10-08 at the Wayback Machine Cited November 4, 2007.
- Raymo, Maureen E.Written in Stone: A Geologic History of the Northeastern United States. Globe Pequot, Chester, Connecticut, 1989.
- ^ A thorough study of the Metacomet Ridge environment and its species can be found within a report commissioned by the National Park Service as part of its New England National Scenic Trail Study Archived 2007-08-07 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ U.S. Congress New England National Scenic Trail Act Archived 2016-07-04 at the Wayback Machine Cited December 1, 2007
- ^ "Land Acquisition and Protection Program, Fiscal Year 2002 Annual Report." Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management
External links
- Metacomet-Monadnock Trail
- Mount Tom State Reservation map
- The Trustees of Reservations
- Appalachian Mountain Club
- Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation
- U.S. Congress New England National Scenic Trail Designation Act. Archived 2016-07-04 at the Wayback Machine
- NPS brochure for National Scenic Trail proposal.
- The Kestrel Trust
- The Valley Land Fund
- Pascommuck Conservation Trust