Lake Hitchcock by Mary Ellen Copeland
Last fall I attended a fascinating historical society meeting about the federal dam that was planned for West Dummerston in the early 1940’s. As I understand it, the plan was to build a massive flood protection and recreational dam across the West River near the current railroad bridge abutments at the base of Black Mt. creating a huge lake that would have flooded West Dummerston and everything above it. Newfane common would have been an island. However, these government officials hadn’t reckoned with the people of Dummerston. Popular opposition was strong.
Outraged residents fought this project for years. A photo of a group of surly looking men local posing with their deer rifles got wide attention. The dam builders took their plans and hit the road—and to my knowledge have not been heard from since.
But if local geologists John Warren and Roger Haydock, are to be believed, if this dam had been built, it would not have been the first time that a lake flooded West Dummerston and environs. After the glaciers receded some
8,000-11,000 years ago, the rubble they left behind effectively dammed the
Connecticut River in the area of Middletown, Connecticut for a time, causing a great lake, now known as Lake Hitchcock, that extended north through Connecticut, Massachusetts and as far Littleton, NH. Much of the land on the east side of town was under water. This lake flooded the tributaries as well, coming up the West River well past West Dummerston.
The dam gave way, slowly they think, about 5,000 years ago. Clues that confirm the existence of this lake include the gravel deposits that we are currently using for road building, the rich agricultural soils on the east side of town, clay deposits where Salmon Brook enters the Connecticut, and terraced sand banks along the West River. We explored some of these deposits and learned more than I can remember about the old lake on several field trips with John Warren. On a hike on the Nature Conservancy Trail up
Black Mountain off of Quarry Road soil samples found, not the expected forest floor soil, but sandy lake deposits. Layers and layers of them, laid down over the many years that the lake existed.
Ed and I learned a lot more about all of this when we traveled with Roger
Haydock of the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center to the new
Hitchcock Museum on the Amherst Campus in Amherst Massachusetts.
There we saw astounding models of the old, but not ancient, lake, that, if it

continued to exist, would have made Dummerston into a really different kind of place, a resort town, much the same thing that would have happened to West Dummerston if the proposed federal dam had become reality.
The Hitchcok Museum is a great family day trip and I urge any of you who haven’t been there to take the time for a visit. In addition to models that show the way our lands got to be the way they are, it boasts the largest collection of dinosaur footprints in the world (I understand we had dinos here but the footprints have since been obliterated), and skeletons from long extinct species like the saber toothed tiger, a mammoth, an Irish elk and lots of dinosaurs.
If you are interested in other field trips and educational programs sponsored by the Bonnyvale Environemental Education, check the Conservation
Commission website at www.dummerstonconservation.com.