I am bringing up this question in connection with my previous question as to ‘how old is a tree?’ How old is a town? What do you use as the basis of making that determination?
Take my current town – Durham, CT. It is easy enough to look up on Wikipedia the year of incorporation of Durham – 1708. However, what does that tell us? Prior to this area becoming an incorporated English village, it was a place in the Native American world. It did have a Native-American place name, which, as I have been told, has been Anglicized to Cochinchaug. This name has been carried on, both as the name of the main river in town and also of the local high school. Apparently, it is a reference to the generally swampy conditions that then prevailed throughout much of what is present-day Durham.
Also, certainly before the town was incorporated, there were European settlers. How do we count history of a town before its legal incorporation into what we call its age?
From another perspective, perhaps the age of the town should be based on the oldest structures still existing in the town. I don’t know what the oldest structure in Durham might be – and the town does have many colonial era houses – but I don’t think any current structures pre-date the incorporation of the town. Wikipedia has a handy list of oldest buildings in Connecticut as well – List of the oldest buildings in Connecticut – Wikipedia. Durham does not make that list.
Let’s try a different approach. Maybe the town should be considered as being as old as its oldest resident? That would be interesting – consider the town as a living entity, which means that its oldest living component represents the age of living whole. A fairly random approach, however, and not really instructive in any really useful way.
Perhaps this is a better approach – consider the average, or median, age of the people that lives in a town and use that to determine the age of that town.
Due to the ubiquity of census data and demographic charts, finding the median age of a community is relatively easy to do. For instance, the median age for Durham, based on the State of Connecticut data, is 46.1 years old. Meanwhile, the median age for nearby New Haven is 30.7 years.
I suspect that this is a very interesting statistic for a good many people, including someone who is home-shopping. Where would a 25 year old prefer to live? What about a 50 year old? This might make a difference as to what the weekends are like.
Going back to New Haven and the more traditional way to determine age. The age of New Haven, in terms of original settlement by European colonists, has been thoroughly documented. In 1637, a group of Puritans visited the harbor and liked what they saw. The already settled Quinnipiac Indians presumably also saw where this was going and, needing leverage against the Pequots, who were already pretty much on the outs with the Europeans, made a deal. The rest is history, as they say, and there has been a lot of it since then in New Haven.
So, by my logic, New Haven could be called a young old town, or city, if you prefer. Let’s jump one town over, to West Haven, to carry on this discussion. West Haven is almost as old as New Haven, in terms of settlement, dating back to 1648. However, it is also Connecticut’s youngest city, in legal terms, having been independently incorporated only in 1921. Previous to that, it was legally part of Orange. Of course, throughout its history, there had been numerous attempts on the part of the part of the people of West Haven to incorporate independently, going back as far as 1784. So, in that sense, it is an old town. For the record, its median age is 35.
This brings up an interesting point, which also provides me with an opportunity to bring the discussion back to trees – does talking about the age of individual municipalities within Connecticut even matter that much? After all, so much of the story of towns in Connecticut is tied into the story of Connecticut, first as a colony and then as a state.
This reminds me of the distinction, in forestry, between a stand of trees and an individual tree, and how the determination of age for each also differs.
In traditional forestry, the basic unit of management is the forest stand. A forest stand is a group of trees, in one location, that share certain characteristics relating to composition, age, size, and so forth. Implicit in this idea is that these trees are also being shaped by internal stand dynamics. The stand is a true unit in terms of it providing a way of viewing all of the various factors that are highly influential on how the trees within the stand are growing and how they have developed. Among these factors are soil characteristics, similar hydrology, or stand initiation. Perhaps the majority of the trees in this stand date back to a single disturbance event – a major storm or a timber harvest – that has set things in motion for this particular group of trees.
That doesn’t mean all of the trees in the stand will be of the same age. Some might pre-date the initiating event and some may have grown in later, either because their germination lagged behind the rest of the trees in the stand or because they are understory trees, waiting for their opportunity to find their way into the canopy.
The state, and the colony before it, might considered as analogous to the forest stand. Look, for instance, at the western United States. Cities and towns in western states are, largely, much younger than eastern cities and towns. Eventually, however, those western cities and towns in a contiguous area chose to form together into a larger, primary management unit – the state. It is a recognition of similar influences, concerns, problems and constraints by the municipalities that led them to join together and, eventually, become a state. While not implying this sort of consciousness to trees (that is a human thing), we can say something very much like that about the trees in a forest. To the managing forester, it is often the stand, rather than the individual tree, that is the focus of her or his concern. It is because of stand dynamics, which can be more than the sum of the dynamics affecting each individual tree, that most attracts her attention.
Stand age and tree age should not be considered as the same thing. They can be very different.
July 4, 2023
