Richmond boulder train goes under CR

Richmond Land Trust's John Mason and Tom Mazur with one of the train boulders

Up in the hills near Perry's Peak in Richmond, strung out over the Taconics into New York, lies a famous assembly of rock. The Richmond "boulder train" is obscured by woods today, but 160 years ago this geological feature helped scientists unlock the secrets of glacial movement.

This is probably the moment to introduce Lucius W. Kingman of Denver, Colorado. Kingman, as it happens, is not a 19th century geologist. He is alive and well, and, until recently owner of a significant portion of the land west of Route 41 that includes the boulder train. Before selling some of the land last spring, he donated a conservation restriction on 110 high-ground acres to the Richmond Land Trust and the Resources Council.

First described by Dr. Stephen Reed in 1840, the boulder train excited phenomenal interest. There were several elongated and parallel "fingers" of boulders draped over the hills. The boulders were composed of rock unlike anything around them. After Reed's death in 1876, a Mr. Benton argued that an ice-sheet many thousands of feet thick must have torn the boulders from Fry's Hill in Canaan, NY. These boulders, embedded in the middle of the ice sheet, travelled southeast as the glacier moved. When the ice melted, the boulders, showing no scrapes or striations, were deposited where they rest today.

Doubters and visual-thinkers would have had an easier time grasping the theory in the late 1800s than they do today. Back then, most of the land was cleared of trees, and the boulders, some of which are as big as a house, would have featured prominently on the landscape. Today, the forest has swallowed these rocks, and many a would-be trainspotter has returned from the woods frustrated.

We're afraid we can't give away precise directions to the boulders, at least not yet. The boulder train is on private property that is currently posted. But be assured, the land is protected and the train is still there, a cloaked reminder of the ice that once scoured our Berkshires.