The Great Falls of the Connecticut

Here in the village of Turners Falls, just off the road, the Connecticut River tumbles over the Great Falls — and this spot is one of the most important places in the whole valley, though you'd never guess it from the quiet water today.

For thousands of years, this was the great gathering place. Every spring the river filled with salmon and shad fighting their way upstream to spawn, and they piled up below these falls where they couldn't easily pass. So every spring, the people came — Pocumtuck, Nipmuc, Narragansett, Abenaki, nations from all over the Northeast — to net the fish, to trade, to plant, to see each other. They called the place Peskeompskut. It was a marketplace and a meeting ground and a feast, older than anyone could remember.

Today the falls are harnessed by a dam, but the fish still try to run, and folks built fish ladders to help them climb around it. There's a Great Falls Discovery Center in the village that tells the whole story of the river, and in spring you can sometimes watch shad climbing the fishway through a window. It's a peaceful place now. But Boone will tell you what happened here one May morning in sixteen seventy-six, because this beautiful spot carries one of the darkest days in New England's history.