One of the best areas to view the oxbow is from the Summit House
porch, southwest corner. This is part of the Mt. Holyoke Range /
Joseph Allen Skinner State Parks. The present Summit House is built
on the site of the first summit house in North America. There are
many trails in the area including the M and M trail, and caches.
The park is open from 10 to 6. On weekends and holidays there is a
$2,00 fee to drive to the top and park. You can walk, bike and ride
horseback the trails at any time. The road past the Halfway house,
where you can park and take the Halfway House trail to the top, is
uphill and winding with hairpin turns. The park entrance, a
infomation kiosk and parkng is on Mountain Road off of Route 47.
20,000 years ago the last glacier, which covered this area under
a mile of ice, formed a dam near Rocky Hill, CT. This dam created
what is called Lake Hitchcock. This lake covered most of the
Connecticut River Valley under 200 feet of water and extended 150
miles north into Vermont. About 10,000 years ago the dam broke.
Since then the CT river has been meandering over the old lake bed.
All rivers flow in a sinuous pattern, depending on many factors:
the climate. the shape of the channel,the erodibilty of the
surrending landscape,the amount of warer, and its velocity. If the
riverbank is made of erodible material, the force of the water
tends to cut it away. On the opposite side of the river, the
current is slower and sediments settle out and build up. Over time
the curves grow larger and develop into enormus loops. Eventually
the land between the loops erode away and the river loop is cutoff
and an oxbow lake is formed. In 1840 this happened in Northampton
and shortened the river's length by 3.5 miles. To claim credit you
must submit, along with your log, a picture of you, a team member
or your gps, with the oxbow in the background like my picture. If
you can't submit a picture, at the park entrance there is a
information kiosk with a bird on it, email me what the bird is.
