The Mystique of Upper Valley

http://web.kottke.org/photos/summer2005/index_17.html

What, precisely, is “Upper Valley”? There is no exact geographical definition. It is generally described as the Connecticut River Valley and watershed centered at the intersection of Interstates 89 and 91 at Lebanon, New Hampshire and White River Junction, Vermont. It extends north as far as St. Johnsbury and as far south as Barre, perhaps even from the Canadian border down to Massachusetts. It reaches east to Interstate 93 and west to the Green Mountains. The parameters are fluid: you are part of Upper Valley if you think you are or want to be.

What is certain, however, is that Upper Valley is a distinct geologic and geographic region with its own unique culture and beauty.

The prevailing feature of Upper Valley is the Connecticut River, whose source is found in northern New Hampshire just south of the Canadian border. The river begins as a mountain pond of only a few acres, eighty feet below the summit of Mount Prospect and twenty-five hundred and fifty-one feet above sea level. The pond is the uppermost of four basins comprising the river’s headwaters, and is blessed with the unimaginative name of Fourth Lake. Less than half a mile downstream is Third Lake, also known as Sophy Lake, at twenty hundred and thirty-eight feet with are area of three-quarters of a square mile set in a mountain forest. At this point the mountain stream attains the status of a full fledged river. Second Lake lies six and a half miles downstream at eighteen hundred eighty-two feet; it is two and three-quarters miles in length and more than a mile wide at its broadest. The river proceeds four more miles to its final basin, with an eighteen foot waterfall just past Second Lake, to First or Connecticut Lake. At sixteen hundred eighteen feet above sea level, Connecticut Lake is four miles long and two and three-quarters miles at its widest.

Attribution: Mike Kline

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TrophyStretchConnecticuttRiver.jpg

Then the river proceeds headlong to the Vermont/New Hampshire border at Canaan, Vermont and Stewartstown, New Hampshire, through the region some consider a world apart: Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and New Hampshire’s North Country. Sparsely populated, the difficult landscape promotes isolation and little development. This is hill country, a remote land of granite and scrabble, redeemed at its center by the exceptional beauty of the Connecticut River. Below Littleton, New Hampshire and St. Johnsbury, Vermont the region culturally thought of as Upper Valley begins.

The river valley marks an important geologic plate tectonic boundary. Some geologists believe that the fault is the result of a continental collision and separation they believe occurred approximately six hundred million years ago. They theorize that the North American and African continents collided and then separated, leaving part of Africa attached as New Hampshire. This theory solves a geological mystery: the differences in the rock on the two sides of the river. The older rocks on the Vermont banks are composed of metamorphosed sediments of shale, sandstone, and limestone, consistent with rock typically found on the North American continent. The younger rocks of New Hampshire, especially the granite, are primarily crystalline and metamorphic stone, most often found on the African and European continents.

Vermont and New Hampshire lie next to each other, each a reverse of the other separated by the river. Vermont expands as it heads northward, while New Hampshire contracts. Vermont enjoys a landscape of open meadows and rolling farmland, dotted with small picturesque villages. Census Bureau statistics establish it as the most rural state in the Union. It is the next smallest state in terms of population, behind only Wyoming. Its land is fertile and well suited for farming. Its mountains, aptly named the Green Mountains, are lush in summer and brilliantly colored in the fall. While imposing and extensive, the Green Mountains lack the stark majesty found in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire, with its granite base, has very little soil. What little there is consists of glacial hardpan housing rocks and boulders, inhospitable farm country. Its land is heavily forested and its mountains are bold, steep, and spare. It is the fourth most industrialized state and ranks forty-fourth in population. New Hampshire is blessed with a number of natural lakes. Its White Mountains are home to the presidential range, a series of five majestic mountains dominated by Mount Washington, the tallest peak in New England at 6288 feet. New Hampshire lacks Vermont’s agrarian culture because its mountains are high and jagged and because its boulders and stones are too heavy to remove.

Boundary squabbles, though now resolved, remained contentious until well into the twentieth century. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, both the colony of New York and the colony of New Hampshire claimed the land which became Vermont, thanks to conflicting royal land grants. Eventually, Vermont was declared an independent state in 1777 and remained so until 1791. In that year, Vermont paid New York thirty thousand dollars to settle outstanding land disputes and was admitted to the union as the fourteenth state. Vermont was never any country’s colony and joins Texas as one of two states to have been independent republics. Entry into the union did not end boundary squabbles with New Hampshire, however. Although most states sharing a river boundary with a neighbor have agreed on the middle of the river as the boundary, not so New Hampshire and Vermont, who quarreled over which bank was the proper border. It was not until 1934 that the dispute was resolved by the United States Supreme Court, which decreed in The State of Vermont v. The State of New Hampshire that the low water mark of the west bank was the boundary. Having been awarded the entire breadth of the riverbed and its vast water resources, New Hampshire now became the steward of all its bridges. Although the Supreme Court opinion does not explain the reasoning behind its decision, it may have been based on the 1791 compromise facilitating Vermont’s admission to the union whereby New Hampshire law governs the river.

Robert Frost aptly described the symbiosis of the two states in his poem “New Hampshire”:

She’s one of the two best states in the Union

Vermont’s the other. And the two have been

Yokefellows in the sap yoke from of old

In many Marches. And they lie like wedges,

Thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end,

And are a figure for the way the strong

Of mind and strong of arm should fit together,

One thick where one is thin and vice versa.

In the same poem, Frost also referenced the river:

New Hampshire raises the Connecticut

In a trout hatchery near Canada,

But soon divides the river with Vermont.