Clark Creek Falls

Clark Creek descends roughly twenty feet in a series of short ledges and slides beside State Route 82 in Haddam, Connecticut. The drop is modest by the standards of New England waterfalls, and for years it went largely unrecorded. It appeared in none of the state’s waterfall guidebooks and carried no official name, despite lying within sight of a highway that carries traffic between State Route 9 and the East Haddam Bridge. The name it now goes by came into informal use among those who stopped to look at it.

Stone rockwork stands at the head of the cascade, the remains of a grist mill that worked the creek in the nineteenth century. How much of the falls is the creek’s own work is not certain. Observers have noted that part of the drop may have been shaped by the mill, and that the stream may have been shifted into a new channel when State Route 82 was built. Public access to the falls and the mill foundation rests on a collaboration between the town of Haddam and the Connecticut Department of Transportation, which holds the right-of-way along the highway. The arrangement makes a place reachable that thousands of drivers pass each day without ever seeing.