The Search for Lickingwater and the Making of Northampton
A Public Talk and Book-Signing with John Sinton
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Date:
Speaker: Location: Details: |
Saturday, December 1, 2018 at 2 pm
John Sinton, author of Devil's Den to Lickingwater: The Mill River Through Landscape & History Historic Northampton 46 Bridge Street, Northampton, Massachusetts Free and open to the public. First come, first served. A voluntary donation at the event makes programs like this one possible. |
Devil's Den to Lickingwater: The Mill River Through Landscape & History by John Sinton
(Levellers Press, Amherst, 2018) |
When English settlers first arrived at Nonotuck in 1654, they knew that they had come to a long-inhabited Native settlement that occupied a prized location in New England. Its geology had marked it as something special in the Connecticut River Valley, and Nonotuck had become part of the major crossroads of New England.
In this presentation, Sinton will talk about the physical creation of the Connecticut River Valley and of Nonotuck village. After the arrival of the English how did Northampton come to occupy primacy of place in the Valley for its first one hundred fifty years. Fort Hill, Meetinghouse Hill, Lickingwater, West and South streets, Main and Bridge streets, King and Market streets, Hawley and Green streets all play their parts in the founding of Northampton. But why those streets? And why no typical New England commons? |
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The central section of the presentation will focus on the Mill River itself, its major diversions in 1710 and 1940, and the role the river played in the formation and development of Northampton. Other topics include the phenomenon of frequent flooding and the location of Little Venice, a well-known section of Northampton in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The 1940 diversion of the Mill River out of downtown Northampton marks a turning point in the story of the Mill River, but not its final chapter. The presentation will end with a question: Why does the Mill River matter? Copies of Devil’s Den to Lickingwater will be available for purchase, and John will be happy to sign them. |
1913 Flood in Little Venice
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Born in San Francisco in 1939, I spent my first thirteen winters there and my summers on the Truckee River outside Tahoe City, California. I spent the next four years at school in New England, then returned to the West Coast for college, after which I left the Bay Area to spend my graduate school years in Indiana and Paris. After receiving a doctorate in Russian and Early Modern European history, I taught history for two years and then changed my life’s trajectory. I went to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as a post-doctoral scholar in environmental planning where I taught natural resource conservation from 1967-1972.
After a 4-year stint as principal in an environmental planning firm from 1969-1972 in Amherst, I went to the newly-opened Stockton State College in southern New Jersey to help establish an environmental studies department. I spent twenty-seven years there as an environmental planner while teaching environmental planning, history, and geography. I became active in the creation and management of the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, co-authored a book on it, and then studied and published articles on rivers both in the US and Europe.
I retired in 1999 and moved to the village of Florence, Massachusetts in the City of Northampton, living some two hundred yards from the banks of the Mill River. I became an environmental activist and an integral part of the resurgent Connecticut River Conservancy for whom I co-authored The Boating Guide to the Connecticut River: Source to Sea. I remain an honorary board member of the CRC and an adjunct professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. I am a founding member and current co-moderator of the Mill River Greenway Initiative based in Williamsburg and Northampton.
After a 4-year stint as principal in an environmental planning firm from 1969-1972 in Amherst, I went to the newly-opened Stockton State College in southern New Jersey to help establish an environmental studies department. I spent twenty-seven years there as an environmental planner while teaching environmental planning, history, and geography. I became active in the creation and management of the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, co-authored a book on it, and then studied and published articles on rivers both in the US and Europe.
I retired in 1999 and moved to the village of Florence, Massachusetts in the City of Northampton, living some two hundred yards from the banks of the Mill River. I became an environmental activist and an integral part of the resurgent Connecticut River Conservancy for whom I co-authored The Boating Guide to the Connecticut River: Source to Sea. I remain an honorary board member of the CRC and an adjunct professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. I am a founding member and current co-moderator of the Mill River Greenway Initiative based in Williamsburg and Northampton.