New Historical Museum Exhibit

By Ann Havemeyer
There is a borer beetle at work at the Norfolk Historical Museum, but you will have to look closely to discover its handiwork. Visitors to the newly installed exhibition, Great Mountain Forest [GMF]: A Century of Conservation, may notice a small pile of sawdust next to one of the wood pedestals in the display. The beetle is feasting on sap still present in the wood. The pedestals, carved by Jody Bronson and his crew at Great Mountain Forest, are just part of the unique display system at the exhibition which also includes benches crafted from a 200-year old native red spruce that was felled after being struck by lightning. Each of the three benches has legs made from either white, yellow or black birch and provides seating for visitors to watch the video “The First Century of Conservation at Great Mountain Forest,” a stunning visual narrative created by Paul Barten, executive director of GMF.
The exhibition celebrates the work begun by Starling W. Childs and Frederic C. Walcott when they purchased 3,000 acres of cutover charcoal land from the Barnum-Richardson and Hunts Lyman companies in 1909. The Childs-Walcott Game Preserve (later renamed Great Mountain Forest) quickly became a Progressive Era experiment in the restoration and conservation of natural resources. The work was continued and expanded by Ted Childs, with the help of a succession of dedicated foresters, who developed a unique approach to sustainable forest management that includes traditional uses, scientific and historical research, education and experiential learning, and community service. Ted’s wife, Elisabeth, secured this forest legacy for future generations by permanently protecting 6,000 acres in 2003.
The exhibition includes a wide array of photographs and artifacts such as equipment used to survey and measure forests. Other key activities during GMF’s first century were purchasing the land, mapping the land, fire control, reforestation, forest inventory, wildlife management, maple syrup production and weather observations from Norfolk 2SW. Incidentally, those weather reports that you read every month in Norfolk Now are from the very same weather station that Ted Childs set up in 1932.
The exhibition was funded in part by a grant from The Connecticut Humanities Council and is open on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. through October 10.