Park River (Connecticut)

[1][2] Between 1940 and the 1980s, the 2.3-mile (3.7 km) river was buried by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent the spring floods regularly caused by increased surface runoff from urban development.

[4] In 1633, fur traders from the Dutch West India Company set up Fort Goede Hoop at the Park and Connecticut rivers' confluence.

[5] The first English settlers arrived in the area in 1635; the following year, the Reverend Thomas Hooker led 100 of his congregation to form a new settlement north of the Dutch fort.

Damaging floods in 1936 and 1938 led to a public works project to move the lower part underground, which was started by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1940.

Twain and his wife Livy built an elaborate home overlooking the North Branch floodplain, where he enjoyed seeing its marshes and wildlife from his house.

[12] Mark Twain and his family lived in what is now called the Mark Twain House from 1874 to 1891, a period when he wrote three famous books (two novels and a memoir) that feature a much larger river, the Mississippi: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).

The nook was filled in before 1934 to allow construction of a row of apartments on Farmington Avenue, and a new straight channel for the North Branch was dug to the west of it.

[13] That channel was buried after 1965 to create land for athletic fields for the nearby Hartford Public High School, and for a parking lot for the Twain House.