Connecticut's two-pocket woodland - Great Mountain Forest

American Forests, Jan-Feb, 1994 by Mary Verner

For more than eight decades, the Great Mountain Forest has been managed for low-impact logging, natural species succession, and habitat diversity.

Starling Childs wove his way comfortably, as a five-year-old can, among the students and professors from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies who combed over his 6,400-acre playground last August. "That's a hemlock, and there's a sugar maple," he said, identifying species confidently. With a pet raccoon perched on his shoulder, Star looked the part of a young man who might study forestry someday himself. If he does, little Star may carry the ideals of Connecticut's unique Great Mountain Forest into the fourth generation. While we students scurried around the well-worn halls of the camp buildings, Star scampered out toward the beaver dam. And the gentleman who had been making possible this initiation for neophyte foresters for the past half-century slipped unobtrusively through the back kitchen door, bearing fresh-picked blueberries and a smile and handshake to welcome his guests. Nothing in his manner revealed the fact that Ted Childs controls the largest privately owned forest in Connecticut.

However, as we became acquainted with his land and its managers, we were convinced that Ted Childs has a remarkable commitment to managing his exceptional forest for commerce and preservation. He is maintaining the conservation dreams of his father, establishing a precious legacy for his son, and promoting progressive forestry through education.

The Childs forest land stretches broad across the Litchfield Hills in the highest part of the state's Western Upland physiographic province. The climate in these northwest hills differs significantly from that of the rest of Connecticut. Prevailing westerly winds whirl across the short, steep slopes and contribute to the region's nickname, Connecticut's Icebox. All the record lows in the state have been documented here.

The physical conditions of the site presented a barrier to development so significant that early colonizers referred to it on their maps only as "The Great Mountain." After charting its location in the midst of their farmland settlements, they left it alone.

One virtue finally enticed white men into the Great Mountain Forest: its timber. During logging's heyday in the late 1800s, the trees of Great Mountain, along with most other forests in the Litchfield Hills, were felled en masse, primarily to make charcoal. Bog iron was discovered just southwest of the plateau, and a mining operation was opened at nearby Salisbury. Two major iron companies used the surrounding forests as a source of fuel, "coaling" the wood to make charcoal, which in turn fired the smelters. Some species were skinned for tanbark to supply nearby tanneries. Others were chopped for lumber to construct villages that were hammered up around the timber-based industries so common in those times.

Now, in the late 20th century, a different standard of value imparts to Ted Childs' wooded landholdings a preciousness that grows with time. In the last three decades of rapid urbanization, a trend toward deforestation has gained momentum until now at least 3,000 acres of Connecticut forest are converted for development each year. Most forested areas that remain have been designated for public control or surveyed and subdivided--just waiting for the next construction boom. The regenerated Great Mountain Forest also has been scrutinized for commercial potential, but it differs in being both surveyed and delegated for public use, in an extraordinary private management scheme that began more than 80 years ago.

The present bounds of the Great Mountain property were accumulated in increments, beginning with a purchase in 1909 by Ted Childs' father, Starling W. Childs, and his partner, Frederick C. Walcott, a U.S. senator. These two philanthropic businessmen, who shared a concern about the plight of wildlife along the overhunted eastern seaboard, gradually acquired 3,000 acres to be used as a game preserve. Ted Childs continued to enlarge the preserve with his own purchases beginning in 1934, accumulating a total of 6,400 acres and maintaining his father's objectives of developing favorable habitat for wildlife and allowing the forest to recover from the intense exploitation of the charcoaling days.

After the iron companies abandoned the hills, gray birch was the initiator species that first reforested the land, giving early shade to other saplings that wriggled up from the burned-over scrub and brush. In low-lying areas, moisture-loving species such as fragrant redcedar and colorful tulip poplar and dogwood reclaimed the riverine soils. Hickories and oaks pioneered the lower slopes, and hemlock, white pine, and red spruce colonized the hillsides. Maples, beech, ash, and black cherry soon entered the picture, and the former charcoal ovens became a healthy, diverse ecosystem. Because the Messrs. Childs have allowed these trees to age without widespread cutting since the turn of the century, their woods now rank among the oldest three percent of forest stands in Connecticut.