Church Pool

Church Pool. . , In the 19th century, water power created the industrial heartland of the Barkhamsted area here., Doolittle Wagon Shop , The Doolittles built this shop and made wagons and carriages at this site from 1830 to 1869. Many Doolittle carriages and wagons were driven to Hartford to be shipped by boat to Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC., The Taylor family operated a wagon shop on this site before 1830, which would have been on the old Wolcott Rd. Iron bars from Salisbury, CT were hauled by this spot on the way to Hartford by way of the dirt road that still closely follows the river to New Hartford., In its final years, the wagon shop was home to the Roger's Rake Company that made hay rakes, corn knives, scythe snaths, and axe handles, which were shipped to New Jersey, New York, England, and Australia. The building was torn down in 1930., View up the raceway , The raceway ran along East River Road for about 1,500 feet to a low dam, which pushed water out of the river and into the wagon shop pond. The raceway provided power for a sawmill, wagon shop, coppers shop, and blacksmith., Church Pool , In 1878, when the height of the Greenwoods Dam in New Hartford was increased to 27 feet, the water power at this site was greatly reduced and a steam engine was installed for a more dependable power source. The remains of a steam boiler lay in the river for many years after it exploded in 1913. This is a typical summer water level before construction of upstream flood control dams., Survivor Strain , In 1993, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) started the Brown Trout Survivor Strain program. The concept of the Survivor program is to use fish that survive in the river (both stocked and wild fish) to produce the next generation of fish. The rationale is that the environment selects the fish with the best adapted genes to survive, and this breeding program conserves and reinforces those genes and characteristics. Each fall CT DEEP collects close to 50 males and females for spawning: 100-125 fish total. The selective use of river captured fish, "holdover" or wild broodstock have conserved desirable Brown Trout genetic traits that appear to have supported development of the resident wild Brown Trout population. Since the program began, the wild Brown Trout population has grown from 0% to nearly 40% of all Brown trout in the river in its first 25 years for the 6 mile stretch of year-round catch and release only., The West Branch of the Farmington , River provides an ideal location for this program due to the year-round cold water releases from Goodwin Dam, as well as the catch and release section of the river which was first established in 1988 and has become a world class fly-fishing destination., Historic information courtesy of Walt Landgraf, (Inset) , For more than 12,000 years, Indigenous people have used and stewarded the lands and waters in what is now known as the Farmington River Valley. The river was once called Wattunkshausepo - "fast flowing and winding river." It was later shortened to Tunxis - "the beautiful river that ripples down through the hills." At the time of European colonization in the 1600s, Algonkian speaking groups, such as the Tunxis and Mahican tribes, would have called this area home. Due to displacement and disruptions there are currently no tribal lands along the river, but Native American communities, including descendants of these groups, still live throughout Connecticut and across the continent. Their continued presence and legacy can be found in the landscape.