Out-Doors
by Elizabeth Bassett

Wonders of the Winooski

I recently explored someplace new, not very far from home. For a brief moment it wasn’t raining, and I had volunteered to answer phones at Vermont Public Radio. Before donning my headset I wanted some fresh air. The Woodside Natural Area, a Winooski Valley Park District property, is in VPR’s neighborhood. Opposite Fort Johnson on Route 15 in Colchester, I took a nearly unmarked turn, crossed the railroad track, and stopped just short of the Authorized Vehicles Only sign at the entrance to the Woodside Juvenile Detention Center. Reassured by a high fence, I parked the car and set out on a wide mowed trail.
The shaded trail leads 0.2 mile from the gate to the meandering Winooski River. Trees arch over the tunnel that opens to a plateau with a picnic table high above the water. A trail follows the river for a stretch before turning inland connecting to the one-mile Woodside Loop that encircles frog and wildlife-filled wetlands. Marshes, ponds, likely beaver activity and cacophonous frogs and birdsong make it easy to forget Route 15 a few hundred yards distant.
In the Abenaki language, Winooski means “wild onion.” In Vermont today, Winooski means hydropower, recreation, fishing and much more. As early as 3000 B.C., natives settled near the Great Falls of the Winooski, between the towns of Burlington and Winooski. Early European settlers were drawn to the falls and the rich agricultural land in the river delta.
Along its route the Winooski spills down 26 waterfalls and cascades, more than any other river in Vermont. About three-quarters of the watershed is forested, 12 percent is in agriculture and the remaining land has been developed for a range of uses from rural roads and gravel pits to suburban and urban settlements. The Winooski watershed is the playground of about 200,000 people, roughly one third of Vermont’s population.
The path of the 90-mile river and its 690,000-acre watershed incorporates many favorite outdoor venues. The Winooski Valley Park District (WVPD) manages the largest urban agglomeration of recreational resources in Vermont. Seven towns in the lower watershed--Burlington, Colchester, Essex, Jericho, Williston, Winooski and South Burlington--share the costs of conservation and management. The district’s website, wvpd.org, is a resource for its 22 miles of walking and hiking trails, among them Colchester Pond, Delta Park (you bike through it if you pedal over the bridge from Burlington to Colchester), and the Ethan Allen Homestead. Its 17 properties include 12 miles of shoreline along Lake Champlain, the Winooski and Browns Rivers and Colchester Pond. An important note: hunting is not permitted at WVPD parks making them good places to walk during hunting season.
The WVPD website lists approved sites for fishing, boating, biking (Ethan Allen Homestead only) and picnic areas. WVPD’s “Canoe and Natural History Guide to the Winooski River Valley” is also available on the site. This thorough document includes paddling instructions, packing list, distances, put-ins, hazards and natural history, including geology and plant and animal life.
A few weeks ago we paddled in Burlington’s Intervale area, through the Winooski Delta. The biggest surprise was how far we traveled without reaching our intended destination. From the guide I learned that the distance by river from the Salmon Hole (at the hydro dam, Winooski One, beside the bridge between Burlington and Winooski) to Lake Champlain is ten miles. I might have guessed five, but never ten! (Suggestion: read the guide before you go!)
From Winooski One to the Ethan Allen Homestead is three miles. From the Homestead to the bridge at Route 127, perhaps a mile by car, is 3.5 miles. From Route 127 to the lake another 3.5 miles. Next time we’ll be more realistic and informed about our goals.
The meanders of a river are one of nature’s wonders. A pawn of gravity, water seeks the shortest path from its source (melting snow, lake, underground spring) to the sea. While its original route may be direct, over time other forces come into play. The slightest obstruction can shift a river’s current. As the river is deflected from one bank to the other, erosion takes place. On the inside of each bend, where the water flows more slowly, eroded sediment is deposited.
As the river makes bigger and bigger swings, the difference between the rate of flow on the inner and outer curves of the meander increases. So, too, do the erosion and deposition. The process continues over years, centuries and millennia until the curves meet. The channel then continues in a straight path, and the isolated meander loop becomes an oxbow (see photo).

Fascinating Winooski River facts
There are 90 dams in the Winooski River watershed, 15 on the Winooski itself. Only three of these, all on tributaries, were built for flood control. Electricity is produced at six dams on the main river and seven on tributaries.
The Winooski River begins in Cabot. It drops 1,700 feet in elevation and flows through 16 towns before entering Lake Champlain in Colchester. Including its tributaries, the Winooski River system is about 198 miles in length.
Many of its tributaries sport colorful names--Jail Branch, Muddy Brook, and Dog River among them. Some of the more familiar include Huntington River, Little River, Mad River and Allen Brook.
Most of the waters in the Winooski watershed support naturally reproducing trout populations. Vermont’s only native stream trout, Wild Brook, is joined by introduced populations of rainbow and brown. Smallmouth bass and walleye can inhabit much of the Winooski downstream of Bolton Falls Dam.
The gum wrapper someone tosses onto the sidewalk in Montpelier, a failed septic system in Middlesex, an eroding riverbank without vegetation to stabilize it, soil sluicing off a construction site or fertilizer running off a farm field, all diminish the quality of this vital resource in our midst.