About twenty of us gathered in the reading room of the Jacob Edwards Library in Southbridge this evening to heard Ed Hood, Executive Director of the Opacum Land Trust, speak about the changing landscape of Southbridge.  I had heard him give a similar talk about Sturbridge at the Publick House in late May, which was so fascinating that I wanted more, which is why as soon as I got out of work, I hopped in my car and sped through the driving rain to hear this city’s story.

After 21 years at Old Sturbridge Village, Ed Hood left that organization to take on a new challenge; in 2014 he became the first paid staff person for the now 15-year-old Opacum Land Trust.  Ed trained as an archaeologist; as his life’s work, he looked at the past and studied how human activity shaped the New England landscape since eons ago.  Now at Opacum, he faces forward and is charged with implementing the organization’s mission to protect land forever, into the far distant future.  The land trust, he noted, now has over 1000 acres under its protection; it serves the 13 towns in southern Worcester County, an essentially rural region, part of the Last Green Valley, a non-urbanized swath of land in the highly developed Bos-Wash metro corridor.

Looking at New England from an archaeologist’s, or a geologist’s, point of view, the last physical event of major significance here was the end of the Ice Age, ten thousand years ago, when the glaciers retreated and the landscape became suitable for human habitation.  The Native Americans whose presence in New England we can infer from their material artifacts were a hunter-gatherer society, though they did practice some agriculture, possibly as a result of cross-cultural exchange from Meso-American cultures in Mexico and even farther south.  In our area, the riverine systems were particularly important, and the most powerful tribe, the Nipmucs, were known as the “freshwater people.”  They lived in wigwams, hunted and fished, and traded with other tribes (for example, Sturbridge graphite was apparently a prized commodity).  As the English colonists pushed westward from the coast over the course of the five decades since the settlement at Plymouth in 1620, conflict with the Native Americans, certainly over land use among other issues, was inevitable.  After the bloody and bitter King Philip’s War, 1675-76, the Native Americans tribes as cohesive entities ceased to exist, and the pattern of land use in effect for millennia was broken.

As most of us know, Sturbridge was one of the first towns in this area to be settled: in 1720, a group traveled from Medfield to what they called the “pinelands,” a piece of land given back to Massachusetts by neighboring Connecticut.  In 1729, their petition to form a town was granted; the General Court instructed the settlers to build houses and “plow and plant English grass.”  Early settlers Henry and Daniel Fiske built their hut on a hilltop which still bears their name; another early settler, James Denison, lived across the river from them under a rock shelter, the stones of which can still be seen today.

Mr Hood asked us what we thought was the most important tool which the colonists used to shape the landscape; we gave answers such as the ax and the plow.  But the more correct answer would be “domestic animals” because of how keeping pigs and cows changed the landscape.  Cows in particular need to eat grass, which made growing hay critically important.  To this end, naturally occurring meadows were highly desirable properties for growing “swale hay”; as there weren’t enough of these, colonists drained swamps.  In the beginning, livestock roamed free; when they became a nuisance by trampling crops, colonists began to fence their fields and set up impoundments.  For fencing, they used the abundant wood (at the beginning of the colonial period, 90% of New England was forested).  Colonists also burned wood and refuse for fuel; eventually, although not in the early years, they built frame houses.

We don’t generally think of New England as a prime region for agriculture, as to us it looks wooded and hilly, but in the seventeenth century, the colonists encountered organic soil that had been accumulating for ten thousand years.  They began using it with a vengeance.  Unfortunately, due to poor agricultural practices, high-yield farming could not be sustained for long.  Without proper care, soil is quickly exhausted of nutrients; wind blows away topsoil; soil washes into rivers and streams.  Not only that, plowing mixes up soil, homogenizes and aerates it, loosens it so that the rocks beneath the surface start moving.  It is not surprising that people began to say that in New England, you grew crops of rocks.  When colonists ran out of trees to fell, they began using these stones for walls.

Two generations after Sturbridge was founded, the town was doing well.  For example, in 1795, there were 12 sawmills in town.  By then, the local economy was based on exports, mainly wood and agricultural products, which were shipped as far afield as the American South and the Caribbean.  The business model went something like this: remove all the trees, bring in the livestock, make cheese and butter for sale, open up more land (or move west when you run out of land).  In fact, Sturbridge had expanded to the point where the Pratts and Morses didn’t want to travel that far to Sunday meeting.  In 1811 they petitioned to form their own town, and in 1816 the charter for Southbridge was officially granted.

How do we know what life was like in early Southbridge?  We are fortunate in that we have a pictorial record, which, although somewhat idealized, presents a clear view of what was considered important to the town’s sense of itself.  Francis Alexander’s painting, Globe Village 1922, portrays a multistory factory, which was a major innovation at that time.  In fact, Globe Village began to define Southbridge as a manufacturing center.  Because of the region’s topography, water power was an important factor in the impetus to industrialization.  Consider that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were 300 mill sites in southern Worcester County.  Of course there were consequences to damming rivers, especially to migratory fish, but people thought differently about land use back then.  Even in Alexander’s painting titled Ralph Wheelock’s Farm, now in the National Gallery in Washington DC, the farmer is depicted as managing his land; it’s a portrait of progress and modern agriculture.  On this farm, dairying has been commercialized.

In Southbridge, the factories seemed unstoppable.  By 1865, six textile mills produced ten million yards of fabric worth four and a half million dollars; they employed 1400 men and women.  In 1869, American Optical was founded; because of the company’s national and international prominence, Southbridge became known as the “Eye of the Commonwealth.”  However, industrial development did not displace agriculture (mill hands had to eat, after all).  And think of the effort it took to convert all those woodlands to pasture and fields!  (By 1850, the percentage of forested land in New England was reduced to a low of 25%.)

The transformation of the New England landscape happened because of economics and attitude, which is to say, the way people thought about land.  Land was for making money, but land used so intensively for agriculture and grazing quickly lost value due to soil compaction and soil depletion.  Moreover, New England was becoming increasingly specialized as a manufacturing region.  Due to improvements in transportation, it became cheaper to buy wheat from the Midwest than to grow it here.  Farms were gradually abandoned, which meant that white pines took over.  In fact, by 1920, white pine was increasingly used for lumber, and we can see from advertisements for domestic architecture that the “Colonial Revival” style was being promoted.

Although it happened practically in our lifetimes, the reforestation of New England is a remarkable event in human history.  We are in a position now to study this event and ponder its causes and consequences.  To summarize: the basis of New England’s economy changed, and the forest grew back.  What does this mean for us today, looking ahead for the next one hundred years or more?  Ed Hood said that we have choices.  Massachusetts is currently the fourth most densely populated state in the US; in fact, between 2005-2013, we lost an average of 13 acres a day to development.  We don’t want to continue at this rate, because sprawl is not good for communities; land kept open as farms or forests is a better investment.  Land trusts like Opacum are not anti-development, Mr Hood assured us; the goal is optimal land use.  Can we get people working near where they live?  Can we support family farms selling specialty products?  Can we manage forests for timber and still replant trees?  Can we help private landowners manage their land to reflect their values?  A property like the 116-acre Claire Birtz Wildlife Sanctuary off Tipton Rock Road in Southbridge is a wonderful example of the benefits of this approach.  The sanctuary is open to the public for activities that bring people closer to nature, such as bird watching, hiking, painting, drawing, and kayaking, and thus contributes to the quality of life for Southbridge residents and all other visitors.