PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:
Nawkatunk
The first settlers
followed the tracks
the native people used
that followed the river
they called, "Naugatuck."
It was the easy way
through wilderness boscage
where native people hunted and fished
and where settlers soon built mills,
developed expertise in brass and copper
and later rubber,
and where imaginative people
built what they imagined.
When railroads shot up the valley
like vines up a sycamore,
opportunity drew laborers
sprouting families, churches and schools,
social clubs and selectmen,
societies and brotherhoods,
sisterhoods and neighborhoods,
unions and country clubs,
parties and alliances,
relationships that helped communities
endure and thrive.
Huntington, Birmingham,
Ansonia, Humphreysville,
Beacon Falls, Naugatuck,
Mattatock, Thomaston,
Wolcotteville, and Winsted became
the towns that made the world's copper and brass.
Along the river by Rimmon Falls
in the time before the settlers,
near where the brass mills used to be,
its told,
there was "this old tree,"
"Naw-ka-tunk,"
in the native tongue,
a sweet place in the shade
prized for good fishing.
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