The Oxbow Since Thomas Cole - by Jonathan Moldover (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Thomas Cole climbed Mt. Holyoke in Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1833 and made a sketch of the oxbow curve in the Connecticut River to the southwest. He used the sketch and his field notes three years later when creating his iconic oil painting of the Oxbow. It embodied his artistic techniques and his philosophy of man's role in nature, thereby epitomizing the Hudson River School of art.

It is hard to imagine when driving across the Oxbow today on Interstate 91 in Northampton that this is the same landscape. Instead of pastoral farmland, there is a cardboard-manufacturing plant, the largest marina on the Connecticut River, and a community of homes-not to mention the highway itself. And the island is now on the Northampton side of the river, not the Hadley side, as in Cole's time. While exploring how these changes occurred, the author and his wife became involved with an oral-history project, interviewing residents of the Oxbow. Those interviews became the impetus for this book, interweaving quotations from the interviews with photographs and a well-researched historical narrative. It tells the story of how nature and man changed the island and the remarkable resilience of the Oxbow community.

Review Quotes

"Jonathan Moldover has gifted us a full history of the Connecticut River's "Oxbow," the one made famous in Thomas Cole's iconic 1836 painting "View from Mt. Holyoke." Cole himself would have loved delving into Moldover's readable and beautifully illustrated book, which covers the history of that storied place from Native times to the present. Moldover brings the Oxbow alive with his description of the Oxbow's natural history and through the voices of the people who still live along its banks. Highly recommended for lovers of American history and landscapes."

-John Sinton, historian and author of Devil's Den to Lickingwater

"I enjoyed reading this solid, well-researched history of a place that millions have seen pictures of, yet remains largely unknown. The stories collected from local residents are important additions to the historical record, useful for future generations."

-David Glassberg, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"Jonathan Moldover's engaging book takes us beyond Thomas Cole's idyllic view of Northampton's Oxbow community from atop Mt. Holyoke. Residents on the ground tell us in their own words what it was like to witness farming decline, forests turned into lumber for external markets, and factories come and go. His is a veritable microhistory of economic change and the uneasiness that prevails in a once self-sufficient neighborhood that has become a recreational destination for outsiders."

-Dr. Robert E. Weir, labor historian