The Mohawk Trail (Massachusetts Route 2) takes you through an harmonious human use of natural resources, which seems to coexist even in an industrial (or post industrial) land use.
The first detour from the Trail is a visit to the Natural Bridge, a spectacular natural geological formation, from Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era site of a marble quarry until 1947. The "natural bridge" is a 550 million year old bedrock marble, carved into an arch by the force of glacial melt water over 13,000 years ago and spans over the Hudson Brook. Nathaniel Hawthorne, visited the site in 1838 and wrote about Hudson's Falls in An American Notebook "The cave makes a fresh impression on me every time I visit it ... so deep, so irregular, so gloomy, so stern." a spectacular natural geological formation, from Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era site of a marble quarry until 1947.
The next encounter is Turners Falls, a nineteenth century industrial center. The village was founded in 1868 as a planned industrial community according to the vision of Alvah Crocker, to attract industry to the town by offering cheap hydropower that was made by the harnessing of the Connecticut River, through the construction of a dam and canal.
Industrial ruins in Turners Fall
One of the many unfortunately closed stores along the Mohawk Trail
Excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project
“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture"