Located at a narrow pinch point halfway up the four-hundred-mile stem of the Connecticut River, Turners Falls is today the sort of hollowed-out New England former mill town that compels the traveler to move through quickly. Gloomy brick buildings line its main street, and the only encouragement to tarry is the public lot that charges just five cents for a parking spot. But the most noticeable thing about the village of Turners Falls is that there are no falls. There is only a dam several hundred feet across that metes out water in greedy spurts to the rocks below. No plaque commemorates the damming or explains why the river’s progress was impeded in the first place. And there is no evidence whatsoever that before the dam the Connecticut River was an important salmon river, one of dozens of salmon rivers throughout New England and Atlantic Canada that made salmon an abundant wild staple for natives and early colonists alike. Today in my native land of coastal Connecticut, there is no direct experience or memory of local wild salmon as food.
