BROOK BREACH AND TEACH
BY DON DOUCETTE
Through personal observation, there is/was a mystery brook associated with the Wannamoisett Country Club in Rumford, RI.
For want of an official name at this point, I refer to the brook as Wannamoisett Brook.
Headwater unknown and found at the western periphery of the country club, it appears that portions of the brook and related wetland features were altered to construct the lower western portion of the golf link – one surface feature is visible and surgically ditched while other sections of the brook are culverted, so typical of past development practices in urban Rhode Island.
Presently, just off the western bound of the golf property’s low point, exists a visible tiny patch of wetland presently displaying a bright green skunk cabbage community as a shouting wetland indicator.
From this wetland, it is surmised the brook is culverted through housing tracts to and through Phillipsdale and beneath Roger Williams Avenue toward the eastern brownfield shoreline of the Seekonk River. The brook’s confluence location remains at this point unrecognized.
These assumptions have only become manifest to this observer this week as the actual western periphery of the Ten Mile River Watershed remains being rediscovered and re-documented during this modern era of frequent open space disruptions, despite our current learned abilities and sophistications resulting from countless past historic events.
Other watershed mysteries remain in Rumford waiting to be defined during this modern era – case in point, mysterious flowing water beside the rail line near the Greenwood Avenue rail bridge just begging further field recon and definition.
The age of geographic study related to our local watersheds continues.
Don Doucette
“Ten Mile River Rambles”
Friends of the Ten Mile