 Hi, everyone. Take that off so you can hear me. Look who's here. Rititan, yay! Rititan is an architectural historian with a keen interest in the social history and historic built environment of Burlington and Winooski. She is the director of cultural resources for the Roman Office of VHB, an engineering and environmental consulting firm. She received an MS in historic preservation from the University of Vermont and a BA in the history of art and architecture from Middlebury College. She also serves as the governor-appointed architectural historian member of the Vermont Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Please welcome again Rititan. OK, this, yeah, everyone can hear me OK? Great, wow, so smooth with all the technology, very relieved. So I'm so happy to be back here in person and to talk about a really, really exciting topic. And maybe some of you have heard some little stuff or maybe know a lot about the ravine that used to cut through Burlington. It has been a topic of interest to quite a few local historians and researchers. And I'm going to put a list of people at the end of this presentation who have already started doing a lot of research with research I've been building upon. And there's talk about creating a whole repository of information about this fascinating feature of Burlington and early Burlington that you can see here and there but is not that visible anymore. And so I'm going to start with a quote that was by the mayor of Burlington, Albert Katlin, on June 7, 1865. That's the time that Burlington was officially incorporated as a city. It broke apart from South Burlington. They had been one community and became more like an urban center where South Burlington was more rural. And this is an important quote because beginning in 1865 there was a really concerted effort to improve the infrastructure of Burlington. And the ravine plays a large role in that kind of late 19th century development of Burlington. So Albert Katlin says, we represent a young city which may in time be known and distinguished as the clean city of New England. It has just been launched upon a career that I trust will prove prosperous and happy. Its location for natural beauty is not equaled in any part of our country and for natural and acquired advantages in a business point of view for manufacturers and a general business character. Few places are its equal and none surpass it. And so that's the first use of clean city that has been identified so far, which is now the Anomagor for Burlington. But Katlin is talking about some of the natural features as actually being really advantageous to growth and think about the lake and how important that was for industry and transportation. And then I would argue the ravine can be part of that. So for those who haven't really heard of the ravine or maybe you've heard of it but don't really know where it is, this is a very approximate sketch that I made showing how it cuts through. And Pearl Street is up there and Main Street is here, their city health park. And it's going through all these neighborhoods, probably the deepest part of it. And we'll talk about that was right around here. That is the King Street, South Winooski area where there is a significant depression. And so let me show you a few early maps. Oh, and I put this up here. This is the LIDAR imagery that's done using ground penetrating radar. It measures and it maps out the literal surface of the ground taking away all the trees and all the other stuff. And you can see that there are some depressions that kind of line up where the ravine is or was. Here's an image now north, this pointing that way. So we're looking towards the east. Pearl Street, South Union Street. There is still a significant depression in this area. I'm going to show a photo later of it. That shows the approximate route of the ravine. Here's where it's going through the downtown. And those of you who have been to city market downtown might be familiar with that embankment or that retaining wall that's on the edge of the parking lot there. I'll show a picture of that later so you can see. That's the ravine. And then as you go down, there's a big parking lot off of King Street and Church Street that's in a depression. That's the ravine. And then as you go down Lower Church Street, the tallest building in Vermont, Decker Tower, is 11 stories, is sitting right there basically in a depression. That's the ravine, which makes it not look so tall or tower over. I don't know if that was done purposely or not. This is not a historic map, but this is about probably 1812-ish. This was done by a historian named David Blow. And he's been incredibly important in documenting Burlington's architecture and early history. So this is his hypothetical sketch of what Burlington might have looked like. That's City Hall Park. And we have Main Street coming up this way. Notice very little development on the east side of the ravine. It was just hard to get to. The bridges were rickety. It was just kind of haphazardly thrown together the bridges and these transportation routes. Most of the development early on is focused on the lake. This is about 1830. A sketch. And you can very clearly see the ravine here coming through here. And again, very little development. That's City Hall Park right there. And it's emptying out into this area here that was known as the Cove. It's kind of like where the rail yard is today and the water treatment plant in Burlington on the waterfront just south of Waterfront Park. And it was a wetland swampy area apparently. And it was known as the Cove. And here's another photo. This is, or map, excuse me, this is also 1830. You can't really see the ravine here. Someone, I don't know if you can see that, sort of drew it in over this map here. But again, shows that separation between the east and west side of town. What I think is interesting is you see brickyard right there. That would have been right in the embankment of the ravine. So already people are taking advantage of it to produce some local building materials. OK, so I'm going to move into now a discussion about the first utilization of the ravine. And this is absolutely fascinating. So this is an 1853 map that, believe it or not, shows the Vermont Central Railroad going right through the ravine. So someone had the idea. And this was the chief engineer of the railroad at the time, James Moore, to route the railroad through the ravine to connect to the spur line that came from Essex Junction west towards Burlington. And that's what follows the intervail today and crosses the bridge and goes through Manuski onto Essex Junction. Already by about 1849, 1850, the railroad had been built from the south up to the Burlington Waterfront. And the rail yard had been established there. So this route was the only way to get up to connect to that other spur. The only easy way to get there, because there's a big embankment on North Avenue there. There's a big hill here. So it was identified as the perfect place. And what's really interesting too, and I'll show you this close up from that same map, here we have City Hall Park to orient you there's Main Street and College Street. So here's the, and I'm sorry, it's a little fuzzy, but here's the railroad coming through. This is a passenger depot that was built right about where the fire station is right now. And the library, the Fletcher Free Library. It was somewhat down in the ravine, but it was lifted up a little bit because I'll show another photo that shows that there was a deep gully down here too and here. So just really interesting. It was a feat of construction for sure. So wooden planks were laid down at the bottom of the ravine and then the tracks laid on top of that. There was a lot of public discussion about whether or not this was a great idea. And think about even today, any large project happening in Burlington, there are a lot of people weighing in. Well, that was the case then too. So going through newspaper articles from around the early 1850s, fascinating, because you see all these views and recordings on public meetings that were being held where the public could come and voice their opinions. I found some really interesting verbiage about this in a newspaper called The Burlington Career. It was an anti-wig newspaper that was published only for a few years, late 1840s, early 1950s. Well, they were very opinionated about the railroad coming here and they were fully in favor of it. So they reported on a January 1850 meeting. And I'm gonna, I'll just say this now, be reading some quotes from newspapers because they are so fascinating how the newspapers are reporting development in Burlington throughout the 19th century. So they say, after due notice, the meeting was held at the town hall to express the opinion of our citizens in relation to the proposition of the Mont Central Railroad Company to enter the town through the ravine and place a passenger depot near the square. It was considered one of the most important meetings ever held here. It was both public feedback because another proposition and this is now me talking an unknown one had been met with public hostility. So another option for the railroad route. It was a lawful meeting that quote would result in a lawful resolution sanctioning the new route and thus an advanced tender to the company, the olive branch of peace and goodwill. So already we're just like caving and fronting to the railroad, which is the railroads traditionally had a lot of power. And they still do. Ultimately the proposition prevailed, but this is what the paper said about the opponents. When men wish to make a town bite its own nose off that they may monopolize its business or make a railroad walk Spanish means leave. We advise them to try some place besides Burlington. Apparently one of the opponents was the editor of the Burlington free press at the time of competing newspaper. And this is what the courier had to say. It shited him as not looking out for the welfare of the town. And the courier continues to say that the resolution being passed was one dictated by wisdom and propriety. The courier predicted that this would allow the town to grow in a more balanced way so that there would be no more crowding of everything down to the water's edge and render the growth of the town more equitable is what they said unhealthy. So that's really interesting. So they're seeing the railroad coming in as allowing Burlington to actually develop and spread out more. What was already happening is that you were, there was developing a socioeconomic divide by the ravine is that people with more money wanted to be away from the waterfront. They were able to purchase larger lots that were East up the hill and start erecting really nice homes in the hill section whereas laborers and mill workers and others were living in tenements and small homes near the waterfront to the west of the ravine downtown. And just a few notes about the central Vermont railroad and just to give a little bit of context of what was happening with railroads in Vermont at the time they were very new. They first started arriving in the state in the late 1840s but at the onset of this, and there was actually a lot of opposition to this route. And it was considered dangerous because it actually had to travel on a pretty steep incline because it was still kind of going up that hill to the Northeast. And the Vermont central was plagued by problems as many other railroads were at the time including its competitor, the Rutland and Burlington railroad. By 1855, the Vermont central had faced bankruptcy and the state appointed Charles Linsley as the railroad commissioner to provide oversight. He was succeeded by George Perkins Marsh who some of you have heard of, a very famous scholar and conservationist. Marsh in 1858 as part of his position mandated that Burlington replace the line through the ravine by finding a new path to line to Essex. So it's Marsh, the conservationist, his rationale I don't know behind it and I'm sure there is material out there and that's definitely put that on the list of research topics. But so already by 1858, this line was considered not great and what really, oh, here's more of an overview from 1857 showing how it went through. Oh, this is it, this is just, I just threw this in here. This is Burlington City Hall in the 1850s replaced by the current building. But what's interesting is you see an embankment here. That's kind of, because there was a much more significant slope down towards the ravine, this would be Main Street right there. The railroad tunnel was built under North Avenue and that was in 1861, it opened on May 17th and it rerouted trains from that central route through the ravine north along the waterfront and then it went left from there and traveled under North Avenue to a new rail line that kind of went along the edge of the intervail. And this is considered one of the earliest successful railroad tunnels built in the U.S. It was really celebrated at the time and it was designed by Charles Linsley's son Daniel Chipman Linsley and he was a railroad engineer. He worked all over the country out west in the plains designing railroads and it was built with Islamat Limestone and Winooski Brick. So at the time Linsley was the chief engineer of the Vermont Central. He was also working for the Northern Pacific and he briefly served as a Burlington mayor in 1870. He also eventually becomes the street commissioner and I'm gonna circle back to him when we talk about the next phase of development in the ravine. When he died in 1886, he was actually working on the plans for the 3rd Avenue L in New York City to the first elevated urban railroad. So this was really celebrated, it worked. It got the trains out of the central city and this shows now the two routes. So the purple now being the new route to avoid the central city, the red being the route through the ravine. And here in 1862, the rail is still there. The tracks are still there because apparently it was used a couple of times when work was being done on the tunnel. There was a landslide at some point right at the tunnel embankment. So they kept the tracks there for a while. They were removed fully in 1863. So here now we see a view of Burlington. This is 1869 without the tracks. And the ravine is kind of shown here already. There's starting to be talk about filling it in and figuring out what to do with it. This is a giant pond that was down in that depression at King Street. And I'm gonna show you now just some photos, some historic photos of what it looked like. So there's the pond, it's amazing. So this is what we have today. If anyone's familiar, this is King Street going here. This is South Manuski behind this building. This is the hood plant. And then this is looking up, that's the back of the Chittending Courthouse, County Courthouse, huge depression there. And the railroad actually was built somewhat on a berm that crossed through part of this pond. And this is the first photo I showed, but I'm gonna talk a little bit more about it right now. It's absolutely fascinating. So this is taken from the steeple of the College Street Congregational Church, which at the time was known as the Third Congregational Church. So here you are looking Southwest, that's Main Street. This is about where the library is today. This, I think, was the train station or it's built where the train station was when the line went through the city. But that is definitely another research topic. I'm not sure what this building is. It's hard to find, there actually surprisingly aren't a ton of photos of the ravine that have been uncovered. So here we have Church Street. This is where the Chittending County Court Building is now. This was the former court building which burned in the 70s that was behind it. And here is that big pond and that depression looking the opposite direction from the previous photo. And this is what you see today. And this is a photo that was in a Burlington Free Press article. So I wanna make sure it's properly credited to Joel Banner-Baird. But this is a low point all in here. If you remember the Midtown Hotel, the last longer there, but really coming right down here below the fire station is there's a, what looks like a ravine or a deep depression there. So this gives you a sense of the changing landscape. It's fascinating, changing built environment. Here's another view looking probably from Church Street area up towards the College Street Congregational Church. And you can just see it kind of a little bit here. You get a sense of how there's a bit of a depression in that area, but there's some better views right here. This is one of the better views we have showing what these bridges look like. It's no wonder that not long after well probably already by the time this photo is taken maybe in the mid late 1860s, people desperately want to fill in the ravine. These bridges are not easy to maintain. The railroad went through them thinking of all the vibrations and now how heavily trafficked they are because by this point by the 1860s Burlington's development spread eastward and it just got busier and busier by the 1860s after the Civil War there was a building boom incredible population growth. The industry at the waterfront was just so successful. So lots of traffic. These bridges were a real nuisance. This is looking the opposite direction now. This is from the College Street Congregational Church looking west and this is, I don't know if you can kind of see this, the Fletcher Free Library is right over here on the left, another view of the bridge. And here just a couple of views today of that area. So this is the city market parking lot looking down into that depression. The Memorial Auditorium is kind of, sorry the YMCA building frames this side of that deep gully there and then here's behind the fire station that's downtown. And by 1869 people want to fill in that ravine and that comes out of Catlin's speech very much too is this concerted effort to organize the city into departments and tackle the problems. And one such problem is this is a deep gully that white street there was South Manuski but it ended right around Main Street or right between college and Main. That's his deep gully. And then you see at the very right there it says garbage. So this was not a clean place and the ravine really got a bad name. So it was smelly, it was dangerous for kids. Lawsuits started popping up against the city with injuries involving the ravine. There was a blacksmith who sprained his ankle when a fragile sidewalk right next to the ravine gave way as he was walking on it, unstable ground. And it really became a priority issue after the Civil War. And there was a fear of infectious diseases as well. And anywhere where there was stagnant water and trash and human waste gathering was considered a real danger. So William B. Lund in 1869 he was the Burlington Health Officer. He offered an encouraging update and he said, and this is in an annual report that was put out by the city. Burlington is in a sanitary point of view most signally favored. Situated on land that gradually rises as it recedes from the lake it is afforded good opportunity for drainage. The sandy nature of the soil in the Northern and Western portions where the population is densest favors the speedy absorption of moisture while on the hill and along the ravine and in the Southern districts the very presence of the ravine provides a channel for the removal of water. That said, he still had some real criticisms and concerns. He said, the streets are made the receptacle of a great amount of rubbish, garbage, night soil, just human waste, dead animals and filth of all kinds. The health officer has earnestly endeavored to correct this evil with only partial success. There ought to be an arrangement made under the direction of the street commissioners for the systematic cleaning of the streets. Sestools and privies have been the subject of more complaints than any other cause. So the street commissioner is the one who does end up developing the city sewer system and that is Daniel Linsley. So after he designed the tunnel, he went out West, worked for railroads back there, came back probably in around 1870 sort of briefly as mayor and then became the head of or the superintendent of streets. And he basically designed the sewer system. He also designed the water system in the waterworks. So down next to the Moran plant at the Burlington Waterfront, there is the Burlington Waterworks building. There is still the pump being used that was designed around 1869, 1870, pumps water up the hill from the lake to the large reservoir that's right next to the UVM campus on Main Street. And so he designed that whole system. That was kind of falling into place by the time he decided to really tackle the sewer system. And he began to advocate for the main line to be built through the ravine and then all the other sewers would come and feed into it. He said, the dullest observer can hardly fail to have noticed the great change that within the past few years has taken place in the character of the little thread of water that flows down the ravine. 10 years ago it was a comparatively clear and limpid stream and horses and cattle drank freely from it. Now, for most of the year, it struggles along a black and putrid mass of filth disgusting to the senses and spreading on every side in its death-breeding vapors. I think he made his case pretty well and between 1873 and 1880, the sewers are built. And it was a system of brick and stone culverts and pipes and sluice ways resting on concrete saddles that followed the ravine into the lake. And here's an early plan. I don't know. I haven't been able to attribute this to his drawing, but it does show the ravine and it does show different points where there will be sewer lines going in. Some of the sewer lines that were down the hill from the ravine towards the lake actually ended up going directly into the lake. Others, particularly up in the north part of town and the east part of town, were feeding into the ravine because they were using gravity. Here are some sketches. This is from Engineering News from 1887. This is kind of like what these types of culverts and pipes looked like. So there was brick and it sat in this concrete saddle. Usually, I think the brick is, well, let me see. He actually gives some of the dimensions right here. He described the walls are eight inches thick and the cross section is about the shape of an egg in some areas, an area of about seven feet. So that's what you see up there. And they were placed about 10 to 12 feet below the grade line of the street. So lower than the lowest sellers along that line because they were going through the ravine and they were gonna be building, built on top of it once they filled it in. So here's 1877. So I think what I have been able to figure out is the first part that was filled in was that area we saw in the picture right next to the College Street Congregational Church. So it's between College Street and Main Street. And the sewer line went through there. This was an opportunity to bury the sewer and then fill it in and create level grounds. And so they went hand in hand, the filling in of the ravine and the building of the sewer. But you still see some significant depressions here. This is behind the Chittenden County Courthouse in this area. And as you go down King Street, this is that kind of depression area. Oh, here is that depression area. And then up here, that's Pearl Street right there. So between Pearl and Union, there was quite a large depression that was still not filled in. This shows you the old custom house that stood where the Chittenden County Courthouse is today. And this was one of the last areas to get filled or it was filled in later than other areas just because how significant the gully was and how deep it was. It's about 25 feet deep in that area. And here's an 1880 quote, from the Burlington Clipper, which was one of several newspapers in town at the time. And it reported that the work of filling up the main street ravine kind of in this area where they're just starting with old crockery, tomato cans, dead cats and brush is going triumphantly. This combination will make a very solid and rich foundation, which I'm not sure how exactly there was sinking. I don't know if some of you remember and I can't remember what year 74, maybe it was that the Fletcher Free Library that a corner of it was really, really compromised. And there was the potential that building would be taken down just because of the integrity of the ground underneath it kind of giving way like a sinkhole. So, you know, just in general work was slow and progress was really slow. One of the reasons is it was just finding materials was a lot. There was a great material to use that was generated down at the waterfront and that was sawdust. The same material that was used to create all the flat lands down at the waterfront that was kind of happening around the same time, 1870s for lumber storage. So waterfront park, all that flat area at the waterfront today was all filled. So there was sawdust, they were using what they could. And, you know, this was a particularly challenging area around here. This is what you see today there. There's the courthouse now. This is the Wilson Hotel down Church Street. If some of you are familiar with that, but notice how the embankment used to be up here and there was kind of a grade. And when they started filling in the ravine, they didn't fill it up to grade on the banks and the edges of the ravine. Instead, they kind of, they had a lower grade there. And you can see that by how this was the original entrance right there. And what's really interesting is that South Winooski Avenue was not really fully laid out until 1906 almost and fully filled in in this area. Oh, what was that? Okay. I don't know why it's doing that. Okay. That's kind of fun. 1890, you see the ravine sewer almost completely created though. Even in the areas where it wasn't filled in yet, the sewer was in place. And this is a sewer line. I've just highlighted it in blue so you can see it a little better on this 1890 map of Burlington. And let's see. One of the problems, you know, was that there was a lot of opposition in the newspaper or one newspaper article kept referring to these people as grumblers. And they were, you know, kind of really criticizing these people for holding the work up. In an 1882 newspaper, oh, I do want to mention this because of this quote. It was reported that everyone will be glad that the ravine sewer nuisance has at last to be abated. The work should have been done years ago and that is referring to the area behind the courthouse. Two sentences later, this same newspaper article reports, they did another thing which will suit the public. This is a city. And that was to disapprove of the action of the trustees of the Fletcher Free Library and raising the salary of the library to 1,212. So she was sense of some of the issues in Burlington at the time. And, you know, the balance was really, was in place by 1885. And, you know, here what's really interesting is as the ravine gets filled in to all new building lots open up, you know? So now suddenly there's buildable area and that was really important at this time as Burlington is just growing and growing and growing. And that's kind of what you can see here. This isn't exactly how this was built because here, again, is that courthouse. This is church street. You don't have a ton of buildings sitting around there, but at least it was planned. Still in 1886, there was a lot of discussion about the ravine in the newspapers. And one thing that I love that I noticed is the idea is the word sewer was actually used as a verb at the time. And there was a call for sewering certain areas of the city by the newspapers, for example, between St. Paul Street and King Street, which is an area of a big depression. And, you know, again, it talks about keeping built diseases in check. And then this was also really interesting is once the sewer is getting built, it seems like people are really excited based upon newspaper articles that I'm reading and how it expanded requests were coming in to have sewer lines installed throughout the city via petitions. So one alderman inquired as to what some of the street committee would have on hand if all of the sewers asked for were built. And another alderman answered that, don't worry, these sewers will be built at the expense of the property holders. So once a main line got installed, well, so part of the reason, some of the reason that these lines reach certain streets and neighborhoods is that the neighbors petition the city to have the line go on their street and they footed, if not the whole bill, at least a portion of it. And an 1886 newspaper article reported that petitions for the sewers seem to be fashionable these days. And the fashion in the board of alderman is to grant the petitions. There is no luxury so cheap and so desirable in the city as a sewer. They practically cost nothing from the city treasury except the interest on the money advance from the time of doing the work till it's collected back from the property owner, the budding it. So, I mean, that just speaks to how important this infrastructure improvement was. It effectively cleaned up the city. And as these sewers are being built and areas get cleaned up, I would think that that really encouraged, you know, people to start thinking much more about waste management. And here I'm just gonna go through a few photos now, just a few more minutes. Oh, this one I'm gonna show is because this is the current sewer map of the city. They have a GIS map mapping out all the sewer lines. And here's the ravine sewer line mapped out there. I highlighted it so you can see it a little better. But this is now what the city looks like after. I'd say this is probably a late 1800s photo with maybe just the period of time when it's being filled in that looks, this is the College Street Congregational Church again. And you see still the bridge railing there, but it doesn't look like there is a deep gully anymore. And then of course, this is what it looks like afterwards. Here's another view. This is probably around 1905, right after this building's built in 1904, that's the Fletcher Free Library. And in between these two buildings and occupying part of the ground under the libraries where the ravine was. Here's a view looking east along Main Street. Church Street is right here. This is the City Hall at the time. And this was the major problem area here. This was like right at the intersection of Winooski and Main Street. And that's where there was that giant depression that took a while to actually fill in. That's what it looks like in 1929, the strong theaters there on the left burned down in the 70s. This is looking west on Main Street. So now fully filled in. And this is really interesting. This just shows you that between 1900 and 1906 is when Winooski, South Winooski Avenue was finally connected through Main Street to the south. So here's Maple Street. This is Church Street right here. South Winooski ended right up there, right around where Main Street is, that's King Street. And there were a couple blocks where it did not go through because of the large depression there. And then finally by 1906, it gets connected. And that southern part of it was actually called Elm Street at the time. So it was almost like its own separate street. I think once they were connected, not long after that the entire corridor was called South Winooski. Another area that was a little slow to develop was around Isham Street. This is north of Pearl Street. This is a residential area. Isham Street was developed in around 1906 or early 1900s, 1906, 1905. This is a 1906 map, but these are the properties on this side of the street, west side of the street. This is a deep gully it's called. So they're not able to develop that side of the street. And this was kind of like a development that got subdivided from the Hickok estate that they were the family that owned a ton of land in this area. And around between 1885 about in 1905, they parcel it out into building lots. And that area is developed very quickly. And then I'm just gonna end by showing a few views today. These are mostly taken from street view. I've walked the ravine route but didn't have good pictures of everything. But this is Decker Towers right here. And that's that tallest building in Vermont. It's a beauty, you asked me. And here is the ravine as it dips down there. This is lower church street. So I have that little map at the bottom there. So you can kind of see where it is to orient yourself. This is on the opposite side. Decker Towers is here. This is looking north now crossing Paul Street as you look down towards the soda plant, which is on Pine Street there. That's that kind of collective of makers and artists and food producers now. And so the ravine kind of went through that area. You still see a depression right there. These are some views up north a little bit. This is on South Union Street here, kind of looking east towards where there was the ravine. And you can tell because there's a retaining wall along the back of those properties there. This sits in more of a depression that wasn't filled in like the area to the east of these properties. And then this is in Pearl Street looking south down this property here. Those are condominiums on the left there. There is a pretty significant depression there as well that is a vestige of the ravine. And this is just who I wanna give some thanks to. Mary O'Neill, Hugo Martinez, Kazan, Jean and Amirati, Brennan Gauthier, Joel Banner, Baird. And I realized I should have added David Blow to this list. So these are some of the historians who have done already a lot of digging into the ravine. And so definitely they have been leading the cause. So I would just wanna acknowledge them that, and now we're trying to take this research even further and further. That's what I've done. So first of all, I wanna let you know that this lady wandering around, been taking photos and we've asked her to, in case you're wondering, it's Susan Wagoner. Thank you for that. Kathy, I think there was a question. Is the what's called the ravine vulnerable to earthquakes? That's a good question. I don't know if like there has been a lot of seismic study in this area for buildings. I mean, it certainly doesn't come up in the work I've done, seismic retrofits. So whether, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I would think that anywhere there is fill, there's always gonna be a risk of a sinkhole or something like that. So it is monitored for sure. And now that like the sewer line, it's very modern is running through there. I think it's definitely the city probably spends a lot of times, but that's a great question and a good point, maybe. Yeah. Here's the second half of that. I used to work at GE down on Lake City Avenue. And the big parking lot that's now gonna be built into a big pool, a whole neighborhood. I remember that that was all Marsh originally. And through our parking lot, you could see the pillars from the old docks pump up. So periodically you'd see wooden little bumps. So that tells me that's not that stable. Yeah. And that whole area, it was all Marsh. I mean, think about the barge canal was dug out of a wetland. Basically it was very easy to create because it was all wet and marshy. And that's like, that's the whole area that the ravine dumped into. It was just this giant enormous wetland, which we could see on a couple of the maps there and they called it the Cove. Yeah. So the city of Burlington has decided they're gonna rip up Main Street this summer. Oh yeah. Yeah. And deal with the ravine. Yeah. The ravine. What do you know about that? So she was asking about the Main Street work that's gonna be happening and the ravine and how that factors in. So I don't know if you're all aware of, there's a big project basically starting, I think around Winooski or Union to improve Main Street all the way down to the lake, to Battery Street. And it's gonna create a more walkable, bike-friendly corridor. They call it complete streets. Anyways, but the ravine is an issue and there has been a lot of investigations into contaminated materials and that becomes a really big issue with the ravine. So I think pretty much any type of development that's happening on that land, I know this is happening at the YMCA where there is a proposed new development. Significant amount of testing, geotechnical work and all of that to probably, I know this because I work with people who do this. I don't know that much about it, but I have an overview understanding. So they're looking at soil profile to see stability and then they're looking for contaminated materials and that is factoring into this Main Street project. Yeah. I belong to College Street Church and I've seen some of these same pictures from our archives, but I'm really curious because our church was formed in 1863. The building wasn't completed until I think 1865, but I'm just so curious as to how that church in those pictures looks like they're sitting right on the edge of the ravine and how they built them with that. Yeah, and that is a really good question. I think you see a lot of, not that we have a ton of photos of it but you do see a lot of buildings built into it. I think in some cases for the industrial buildings, having those exposed kind of basement levels below grade might have been to their benefit in some way, but the church being right now, right there, I don't know how they would have done that and I think at that point already building lots were becoming a little scarcer. So maybe it had to fit into this tight lot and there was just enough space to do it but that would be an interesting story to dig into it a little more to see. Yeah, oh my gosh, that's really neat that there's a whole archive there. That's great. I'm sure there's even more pictures of the ravine. That I wish it's not my realm, but it's fascinating. And I think that is an area of research that now we're kind of starting to understand more about it. Where can we go next? Like that is one of the topics. Like how did this form or what, because it was unique. It was a stream bed, but it was quite a deep gully. It was almost like a gorge going through Burlington. Where did it originate exactly? That I don't know and I really wanna know that. Some underground spring or something coming down from the top of the hill area. So that's a good question that is, yeah, outside what I know right now but I definitely wanna figure that out. Can you hear me? Yes, very well, thanks. I understood that in the strong theater, strong hardware, that there were multiple, multiple basements going down under the buildings. I know that came up when it had the fire. Fire, yeah. And there's the big parking garage down there now. So it seemed as though they filled in but they built from the bottom up and then filled in almost filled in around it. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, well the strong theater, when you think about it, I think it was 1904 when it was built. And when you look at those two maps of that area with Winooski extending through and connecting through, that happens sometime between 1900 and 1906. So what you're saying is it could very well mean that they were happening at the same time. That building was being constructed, utilizing the low grade and then being built around it. The parking garage certainly is a good example of how the grade is really low there and how they could use it because it has multiple stories. So that's really interesting. I didn't know that about the strong, that's neat. Wonder what they did with all of those basements. Yes, hi. You just mentioned that it was a deep sort of gorge-like. My question is how deep and what kinds of fill build it? Yes. In addition to deadpats and tomato cans. It was deep and I think it varied. I know that that area that we just talked about was a problem area because it was large there and it was very deep. That one map showed 25 feet. If you imagine the train going through it, the bridges did not look at least the one we see in the photos to be arched or very much elevated above the grade. So deep enough, I'm not a train expert, but deep enough for a train to be able to pass under these bridges, but I think it varied probably in some areas. It was last deep and those were some of the areas that it was easier to fill in. I mean, if we look back, the grade, yes, exactly. And that was one of the issues with the railroad is because it was dealing, they were dealing with a grade. But if you look here, this is not super, oh, sorry, I'm doing my cursor, but it doesn't show up. Like if you look here, this is not, I don't know, I can't, maybe 20 feet, 15, 20 feet there. It's got some fill already, yeah, for sure. And this area, it's a little, I don't think this, we're seeing water here, but that was a pond at some point, whether they started filling it in or if it had dried up, but that does not look particularly deep right there and not a pond. So I think maybe they started at that point. So we don't know exactly, but 25 feet is shown on one map, so we do know. And other areas in that area around Isham Street that I showed you that map, it refers to that area as a deep valley. Yes, I think it did. I've been trying to find more information about what they used exactly. I think that's another research thread that we can explore all the time I have one day. But sawdust was cited in a newspaper article. So, but there wasn't enough thought. They were at the same time using sawdust and materials from Battery Park up on that bluff there with being brought down to the waterfront. So they were utilizing that. I think I read somewhere too that there were some stone embankments when the railroad went through that held up the bridges, probably through the stone in there too. I probably whatever they could. Yep. Excuse me, back to, this relates back to the College Street Church question and some other stuff. Do you know what the substrate is alongside the ravine or is their bedrock fairly close there or is it all pretty much soft emotional sediment? That's a good question. I'm not exactly sure. I know that the geotech studies that have been done around the YMCA and stuff were not encountering bedrock because I've been involved in that project just kind of understanding and navigating that project. And there is plenty of room to even go lower and get an underground parking there, I think two levels. So no bedrock there that they're hitting up against but I don't know if it's like along the sides maybe if there's ledge around the side that would be a good question. And I think just through more of that geotech type of analysis they know. Yep. Where did the railroad connect on the North end? Another, you know, let's see if I can find one of those maps again to get a better sense of that. This, oh, oh, looks like it somehow got disconnected. Thank you. Travis to the rescue. Oh, there we go. I don't know why. Sorry, I'm gonna not to make you dizzy or be too flashy. I can actually make this a little bigger here. We're seeing Manuski Avenue here at Maiden Lane, which was South Union Street at the time. There is that kind of triangle intersection there in the old North end where I think it's Decatur Street and Manuski and South Union come together. It looked like it was kind of pulling through there and then unfortunately this map ends. Let's see. This one maybe shows it a little better. Intervail again. It looks like it's maybe from what I'm seeing here around where the community health center is today. So when you think about the railroad down there, that is down and that is further North. So that's another really interesting thing. And that's, you know, early on I identified this. This is a big research topic that I think would take some time to really figure out but like how did it get there? You would almost think there would have to be a tunnel unless it was deep enough. There was an area there that was the city dump that kind of took you down a gradual road down into sort of a depression area at the intervail where they had the big landfill. That was much later. I wonder if that maybe built upon some grade already that went down there. So, yeah, put that on the list. This is the last thing I don't know. Maybe someone has started looking into it just on their own that I don't know because I do know that there have been a lot of people interested who are doing their own research right now. And that's why I know Mary O'Neill with the city and others have said we need a repository of everything ravine related where people can share what they've found out. One more question. Yeah, this is maybe a little tangential. I have a house on Maple Street just above Union and seeing all this development and realizing that sewer line didn't go in until 1869, you said, what did people use for sewer for that? That's the problem. There wasn't really one. So, yeah, I mean, exactly how that worked. I think it won't get to be an interesting discussion, but I think there were privies, there were holes dug, that type of thing. There wasn't a way to get the waste out underground. I don't know if people picked it up too and brought it somewhere. I'm sure part of it flowed into lots of it, dumped into the lake and maybe got carried away in the rain. It did, yes, yes. Oh, on that note, I was trying to make that not too icky of a discussion.