Wadsworth Falls State Park

About Wadsworth Falls State Park

Spend a summer day in the fog near the waterfall or on a hot summer day on one of the many hiking trails in the National Park.

About 250 million years ago, the entire land of the earth consisted of a vast continent called Pangea.

At that time, large parts of the continental crust began to break apart as they moved in different directions. Wadsworth Falls State Park is made up of young Connecticut rocks located in the central part of our state. These younger stones are about as old as the ones we have today - the ones we have today - but much younger than the older ones.

Today, North America is divided into Europe and Africa, and then again into South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

When you try to stretch cookie dough or model ceramics, stress fractures can form, as they occur with clay models. Two such fractures formed in the same area, causing a long, narrow valley to fall below the level of the surrounding land.

In some places deep cracks formed and lava flowed from the surface of the upper mantle into the basin. Three such lava flows covered the surrounding plateaus and filled the valley, but sediments from the surrounding highlands washed out of the basin and continued to flow without flow into a still falling valley.

Now the valley has its own history as a result of a series of volcanic eruptions from the upper mantle.

In the intervening 200 million years, the plateaus were excavated as high as in the past, and the eastern side of the valley fell into the rock that now falls to the east. The basalt was chopped off and found its way back to its lower position, where it protects the valleys from erosion, but not vice versa.

The lava flow cooled and solidified into basalt, also called traprock, and the sedimentary rock consists of water - deposited sediments. Over a long period of time, these sediments can become so thick that pressure compresses them tightly. The groundwater that flows slowly through the grains gradually deposits minerals in them.

Start your exploration of the park by starting the trail right at the swimming pond. From where the path follows the edge of the stream, you reach a flat, rocky bottom at a point about 1.5 miles from the entrance to the lake.

This reddish-brown stone is a famous brownstone that has been mined in Portland for years and used for the construction of the Portland Convention Center and the Oregon State Capitol building.

Sometimes the outcrops can cover the water, but this is the rock used to build the Parliament building in Toronto, Canada. It was shipped from San Francisco to Portland to serve as building material for the US House of Representatives and other government buildings.

It is fine and grainy rather than smooth, but if you walk with your fingers you will feel the fine grains and sizes of sand that make up the texture of the rock and its structure in the water.

Arkose is a sandstone, which consists mainly of quartz, but also feldspar, and whose red colour is mainly iron and cement. Watch the stream flow down the hill on the left and then up the river on the other side.

Some layers of arcose are thin here, others are more depressed and some are thicker than others, but they are all the same.

If you look closely at the layers, you can see that some are coarser and others coarser than others, some even contain pebbles. There is another weathering, which means that the harder layers are less weathered by river currents than the softer layers.

When the river is low and slow, the water can only move fine sediments, and therefore the different layers represent weather changes. During floods, fast water could move pebble-sized material, while water during floods only moves coarse sediment. The layers that have formed in the stream have probably deposited sediment into the lake and then carried it back to shore, probably as a result of a flood or storm.

The Coginchaug River, which flows on the northwest edge of the park, is an important river that supplies industrial hydropower. There, the State Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection (DNR) and the US Army Corps of Engineers spent 40 years developing Wadsworth Falls State Park, Connecticut's first state park. The non-profit organization that is to manage the plans for the country is handed over to the state in 1942. Before he married and settled in Middletown, he held a position as a distinguished scholar and linguist at the University of Connecticut, and he remains an active member of the Board of Directors.

Nearby, one of Connecticut's first gun factories ran in the 19th century, and black powder was produced in the factory that Mr. Starr founded in 1794 at Powder Mill Pond, a business that literally went up in smoke in 1892. Today, the water of the pond serves as a reserve to fill the bone mill pond below.

The saucer-shaped pool, hollowed out in the plain south of Route 157, was paved with cement to prevent water from leaking out. The water, which is pumped from a series of interconnected wells along the river, is channelled into the pool and creates a circulation effect.

A flat path leads to the edge of the waterfalls, but others may want to explore the cold waters of Coginchaug for fish. The path system connects the waterfall with a series of paths along the river, from the foot of a steep hill to a view of the top of an old stone bridge. The paths lead over the stone bridges through a densely wooded area and past a number of old buildings.

Nature offers its own air conditioning in the form of air conditioning with whirlpool, hot water fountains and hot showers.

Take I-91 South to Route 9 South, turn left onto Route 157 and stay at the 6 / 7 stoplight on Route 66 in Middletown. Turn left on Route 156, turn right on the Route 91 exit, then left on Interstate 91.

From New Haven, take I-91 North on Route 66, turn left on Route 157 and look for Wadsworth Falls State Parkbe on the left.

From Middletown, take Route 9 North on Route 66, follow it to stoplight 6 / 7 and turn left onto Route 157, which will remain in Wadsworth Falls State Park. From New Haven, from I-91 North on Route 66 and Route 156, turn right onto Route 157 and pass Walgreens.