Thirty years ago, this field was in pasture rented to Charles Jacque and his family for their Jersey dairy herd. The dairy operation stopped in the early 1980’s. Then, 15 years ago, the Town and the College joined forces with the US Fish & Wildlife Service to clear the field of invasive shrubs to create grassland bird habitat. Recently, Prof. Ethan Clotfelter and others have installed more than 200 tree swallow nest boxes used for faculty and student research projects. Looking south from this field, there is a good view of the Holyoke Range.
In the Geology Defines the Landscape exhibit at the Beneski Museum of Natural History major topographic features of this view are related to the underlying bedrock geology. The crest of the range is held up by the resistant volcanic rocks of the approximately 200 million year old Holyoke basalt. The long, gentle south slope of the range (not visible from this side) is the tilted top of the lava flow. The skyline of the Holyoke Range is interrupted where the Holyoke basalt has been offset along a series of faults.