HOLYOKE -- The Connecticut River Valley is one of New England's iconic pastoral landscapes. Painters have captured its verdant bottomlands and sprouting feathery elms, with the hummocks of the Holyoke Range in the distance.
The picture was dramatically different 190 million years or so ago. The air dripped with humidity, the temperature soared to subtropical levels. Packs of dinosaurs slogged through a swampy landscape dotted with lakes. Some (Grallator cuneatus) were golden retriever-size, others (Anchisauripus sillimani) as big as lions. The largest (Eubrontes giganteus) stood 10-15 feet tall and ripped through flesh with double rows of teeth. All walked on their hind legs, their outsized heads alert for prey, their long tails dragging through the mud.
Proof of all this lies on the west bank of the Connecticut, where the dinosaurs' footprints, 134 in all, are preserved in rippled sandstone.
A short walk from the Route 5 roadside parking area leads to a tilted gray slab, and there they are: a busy smattering of three-toed impressions, some overlapping, many indistinct. But the occasional stunner of a clear, deep Eubrontes print, about a foot long and half as wide, with curving toes ending in claws, summons the neck hairs to attention. These creatures were real, and their feet looked like nothing on Earth -- at least not anymore. Dinosaur Footprints is a postcard from a lost planet.
In fact, the area is rich in dinosaur tracks. In 1802, on his farm a few miles away, Pliny Moody found the first dinosaur footprints to be documented in North America.
This rock was mud when the dinosaurs roamed across the plain; gradually, sand filled in the impressions. Over a great deal of time, geological forces pressed them into stone. This bit of rock, about as big as the floor of a single-car garage, also contains plant fossils, according to the sign in the parking area. But it must take a very practiced eye, and much hunkering on the rock, to see them.
The day my husband and I visited, someone had circled most of the distinct footprints with white chalk, which removed the fun from discovering them ourselves, not to mention making the site feel violated. Though managed by the Trustees of Reservations, a private nonprofit conservation and preservation organization, with help from the state Department of Environmental Management, the site is unattended, and it's likely that chalk is the least of the vandalism problems here.
The Connecticut River gleams beyond the footprints, and we decided to walk down to the shore to see if other tracks lay along the water's edge. We found some immediately -- railroad tracks, accompanied by a sign advising visitors that they proceed at their own risk. More slabs of sandstone, their surfaces worn away to reveal dozens of layers, tilted into the water. Black-painted graffiti, an illegal fire ring, and broken glass signaled that this is a place best visited with a friend in tow.
Walking the water's edge, we noticed the same rippled patterns of the ancient lake bed in the stone, but no footprints that we could see. Then something stopped me in my own tracks: the fine three-toed tracks of shorebirds cross-hatching the fresh mud -- an echo through time. Birds, scientists theorize, are the closest relatives of dinosaurs walking the planet these days.
We headed back up the bank, having spent about 40 minutes exploring. Was it worth the drive? Compared, perhaps, with the vast relics of the Badlands in South Dakota or Dinosaur National Park in Colorado, it lacks drama and scale. But how many dinosaur prints lie beside a main road in New England, for any passerby to see and touch? How often can any human being press a hand into such an ancient impression, sensing the weight of the creature whose foot sank into the mud on this very spot? Dinosaur Footprints is a patch of earth peeled back to expose a window into time, a past so distant it cannot be imagined, only marveled at. For that experience, it is priceless.
If you go . . . How to get there Jane Roy Brown is a writer in Western Massachusetts.
Take either Route 2 or the Massachusetts Turnpike west to Interstate 91. From Route 2, take 91 south to exit 18 and follow Route 5 south toward Holyoke for 5.2 miles. Entrance is on the left. Park in the small roadside pullout. From the Mass Pike, take 91 north to exit 17A (Route 141 east) toward Holyoke. Turn left onto Route 5 north and follow for 2.2 miles. Entrance is on the right.
Dinosaur Footprints
Route 5, Holyoke
April 1-Nov. 30 sunrise to sunset.
Admission free.
Trustees of Reservations
413-684-0148 (West Region office)
www.thetrustees.org
