Natural Bridge State Park (Massachusetts)
Natural Bridge State Park is a Massachusetts state park located in North Adams, Massachusetts, in the northwestern part of the state. It contains the only natural white marble arch/bridge in North America. The "natural bridge" for which the park is named, according to geologists, is 550 million year old bedrock marble, carved into an arch by the force of glacial melt water over 13,000 years ago.
Formerly the site of a marble quarry from 1810 to 1947 and privately owned tourist attraction from 1950 to 1983, the site became a state park in 1985. The arch and associated quarry have long attracted attention from hikers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1838, who wrote of it (among other local features) in his An American Notebook.
Read more about Natural Bridge State Park (Massachusetts): Hudson's Discovery, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Mills
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We drive on, we drive on.
When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944)