Tuxis Pond,
occasionally spelled Tunxis, is a small pond located in the town of
Madison in
New Haven County,
Connecticut
Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...
.
The pond is in area. Three small streams run into it, and one runs out to sea. Tuxis Pond is about above sea level.
[ The shores are mostly rocky with little sand or soil. Many nearby businesses have taken the name of the pond, including a lumber company, bookseller, grill, highway, golf club, art show, and assisted living facility.
The pond was previously known to Native Americans as ''Tuxisshoag'' or ''Tuckshishoag''.]
Flora and fauna
The pond is home to a vast array of fish, amphibians, and reptiles, as well as semi-aquatic mammals and birds. Other native birds and mammals use the pond as well. The most common bird seen there is the piping plover
The piping plover (''Charadrius melodus'') is a small sand-colored, Passerellidae, sparrow-sized wader, shorebird that nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America. The adult has yellow-orange-red legs, a black band acro ...
.
The pond is surrounded by trees on most parts, as well as grass and shrubs. The pond itself is host to several varieties of water plants. The areas surrounded by trees are a small, typical New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
forest, mainly deciduous trees with some evergreens. The underbrush, too, consists of all the expected grasses, mosses, ferns, and shrubs. The canopy provides adequate shade for some cooler climate lichens. There are many fungi, as well. There are often algal blooms
Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular microalgae, suc ...
in the warmer months.
Folklore
The Algonquin in the area claimed that Odziozo, the great giant, created Tuxis Pond after following a flock of geese from his newly carved-out Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain ( ; , ) is a natural freshwater lake in North America. It mostly lies between the U.S. states of New York (state), New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canadian province of Quebec.
The cities of Burlington, Ve ...
. They led him down the glaciers to what today is Madison. He scooped out some earth, forming the pit that would become Tuxis Pond, and flung it out to sea to create Tuxis Island. As he flung it, a single rock fell from his hand and is now known as Samson Rock. This rock has a somewhat foot-shaped groove in the top, supposedly from when Odziozo turned around to go home and stepped on it. The pond filled up with the water that splashed out of the sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
when Tuxis Island hit the water.
This same legend was sometimes told by Europeans with the role of Odziozo being given to the biblical Samson
SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...
.
See also
* Tuxis Island
* Samson Rock
*Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain ( ; , ) is a natural freshwater lake in North America. It mostly lies between the U.S. states of New York (state), New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canadian province of Quebec.
The cities of Burlington, Ve ...
* Rock Dunder
* Odziozo
References
Ponds of Connecticut
Landforms of New Haven County, Connecticut
Madison, Connecticut
{{Connecticut-geo-stub