Exploring the many colors of Connecticut’s Last Green Valley

By Jocelyn Ruggiero, Globe correspondent, October 14, 2020

There are few activities as New Englandy as a meandering autumn drive through a magnificent canopy of yellow, crimson, and orange, and there are few areas better suited to this as the stretch of countryside that runs from Northeastern Connecticut to South Central Massachusetts. Designated by Congress in 2014 as “The Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor,” the 1,100-square-mile swath is so named because, in a nighttime aerial or satellite view, it is singularly dark, bookended by the brightly-lit sprawl between New York and Boston. More than 84 percent of its 707,000 acres are forest and farmland. Replete with quaint 18th- and 19th-century town greens, homesteads, churches, and mills, in Connecticut, it’s home to 171 properties and districts listed in The National Register of Historic Places. Connecticut state historian Walter Woodward calls the region a “still-beautiful, still-rural, history-proud, and heritage-rich old New-England getaway.” Read Full Article