Salt Hay and Mosquito Trenches

I set out on the East River from Foote Bridge. The sun is coming through a high haze of clouds, but it is definitely sunny. The temperature is about 40F and heading to 50F, and there is a moderate wind, supposedly out of the west. The tide has been falling for the last hour and a half and within the first mile, I will start to pick up the ebb current.  I flush six Mallards and six Black Ducks from Pocketknife Corner and fifteen migratory Canada Geese from the Gravel Flats. Just below the Flats, I spot a large bird flying up the river. It's a mature Bald Eagle and before it gets to me it turns away heading out over the East Woods.

Pocketknife Corner

The other day I went down a rabbit hole of aerial photographs of Connecticut, looking over the places that I have canoed to see how the land has been altered. The most interesting photos were the first series, black and whites from 1934. The photo of the East River Marsh was particularly catching. It shows that the marsh was trenched about a much as it could possibly be, sometime before 1934.

The East River to the left, Neck River at the bottom, with Bailey Creek
branching off between the two rivers.

I knew that the marsh had been trenched, but not to that extent. Curious about when this happened, I found a 1912 report from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station on controlling the mosquito plague along the coast. Mosquitos were a big problem at that time and the majority of them hatched in the extensive salt marshes along the coast. (This is particularly interesting because I will paddle all summer long in the area without being bothered by mosquitos one bit). The East Marsh is a high salt marsh - it floods only a couple times each month, with the surface growth being mostly spartina patens - also know as, salt hay, a grass that stands about 8 inches tall. High salt marshes feature numerous shallow ponds, which provide habitat to crustaceans, food for birds, and nurseries for mosquitos. The trenches were, of course, for draining the surface of the marsh. The report also points out that by 1904, half of the states salt marshes had been drained for the purpose of farming spartina for packing, bedding and mulching material, at $7 to $12 per ton, in 1912 pricing. Draining the marsh increased the yield by removing the shallow ponds and by causing the ground to be firmer and easier to move machinery on.  In fact, the Neck River still has remains of corduroy road protruding from the bank, which enabled the farmers to get their hay to the river and loaded on boats. In the above photograph, the corduroy road is on the Neck River where it turns sharply up the image and goes a short way up Bailey Creek to where there is the ruins of a tide gate/bridge. The corduroy road is currently about 3 feet below the surface. In some places, the trenches cut through the corduroy road.  I haven't been able to find out when the trenches were dug, other than before 1934. It is likely that some trenches were originally dug for farming, and other for mosquito control. The mosquito trenches are deeper (24-30 inches) and longer lasting than the farming trenches. Some of the trenches in the photo are, at this time, easy to spot, while others have filled in enough to no longer be obvious.

In the Sneak

It takes an hour to get to the main salt marsh below the railroad bridge. There is still enough water to paddle the Sneak, which starts as a man-made trench and joins a natural tightly meandering channel, into Bailey Creek. But the water is still too high to spot the corduroy road. I follow the creek down to the Neck River, tehn over to the East River, and head back. The wind evens out the remaining ebb current that I have to paddle against.