(HOST) Commentator Edith Hunter often drives from Springfield to Weathersfield by way of Reservoir Road. Along the way she passes a nature reserve now busy with cross country skiers and winter hikers – and that reminds her of a story with a happy ending.
(HUNTER) Soon after the North Springfield Flood Control Project was completed in 1960, on land largely in the town of Weathersfield, Eleanor and Ray Ellis built their home on a newly constructed Reservoir Road. Their house overlooked the Project area.
Most of the Project area was what had been Lower Perkinsville. Sixty properties were taken by eminent domain; some were historically significant.
The Project encountered keen opposition from most Weathersfielders, but their sentiments were overridden by what was believed to be the larger good of flood protection for Springfield, and towns further south along the Connecticut River.
And so Eleanor and Ray Ellis looked down on more than a thousand acres of federal lands through which the Black River flowed, until it reached the new dam over the line in Springfield.
By the 1970s problems were developing in the use of the land. Motor bikes, a motorcycle track, an obstacle course, were tearing up the land; noisy high powered motor boats were skimming over Stoughton Pond. Increasingly citizens’ concerns were being voiced at selectmen’s meetings. In addition, the town of Weathersfield was having problems policing the area which had been leased by the Army Corps to the State of Vermont.
As early as September, 1971, Eleanor Ellis was circulating a petition to have the government lands used as a nature preserve. By May, 1972, Eleanor had been appointed Weathersfield’s Environmental Officer. This gave her added clout in her dream for a better use of the Government lands. Gradually, uses were limited, and when the state returned control to the Army Corps, real improvements took place.
Eleanor quietly put together a coalition of the Army Corps, the Ascutney Mountain Audubon Society, and town’s people. On October 1, 1978, the opening of Springweather Nature Area, marked the realization of her dream.
Springweather (the name is a combination of Springfield and Weathersfield) is made up of seventy acres leased from the Army Corps. It is free, open to the public, for birders, school groups, scouts, and individual nature lovers. Hiking trails are maintained by Ascutney Mountain Audubon members.
A wonderful addition are the historic markers that have recently been placed by the Army Corps throughout the area giving a capsule history of Lower Perkinsville.
On the 20th anniversary of the opening of Springweather, the name was appropriately changed to “Eleanor Ellis Springweather Nature Area.”
Writer and historian Edith Hunter lives in Weathersfield Center.