Lantern Hill, elevation 491 feet (149 m), is a hill located in

North Stonington North Stonington is a town in New London County, Connecticut which was split off from Stonington in 1724. The population was 5,149 at the 2020 census. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of whi ...

New London County New London County is in the southeastern corner of Connecticut and comprises the Norwich-New London, Connecticut Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut Combined Statistical Area. There i ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

Name

Lantern Hill The hill's white

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

cliffs are said to shine in sunlight when viewed from the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

(Caulkins 1895; Crandall 1949). Some consider the hill to be "Tar Barrel Hill," where barrels of tar were burned on August 11, 1814 to warn residents of the approach of the British during the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...

(Philips 1992); however, "Tar Barrel Hill" may be what is now known as "Jeremy Hill" to the southeast (Heermance 1935).

Geology

The hill is composed mostly of high-purity milky quartz and it occupies the inactive Lantern Hill Fault, which runs south into the Atlantic Ocean. Analysis of the quartz reveals that it is 238 million years old—the mid-Triassic Period of the

Mesozoic Era The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last Era (geology), era of Earth's Geologic time scale, geological history, lasting from about , comprising ...

in geologic time, according to current theories. The formation of the fault and the quartz are associated with the early formation of the Atlantic Ocean (Altamura 1995; Altamura 2003).

Land use

David D. Mallory began commercial mining of the hill's silica in 1870 (Haynes and Boylan 1976); the quarry closed when the

Mashantucket Pequots The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is a federally recognized American Indian tribe in the state of Connecticut. They are descended from the Pequot people, an Algonquian-language tribe that dominated the southern New England coastal areas, and t ...

acquired the land in 1994. Lantern Hill is the southwestern terminus of the

Narragansett Trail The Narragansett Trail is a hiking trail in Connecticut and is one of the ''Blue-Blazed Trails'', maintained by the Connecticut Forest and Park Association and the Narragansett Council, and The Rhode Island chapter of Scouts BSA. The trail ...

, a hiking path maintained in Connecticut by the Connecticut Forest and Park Association (CFPA 2005). The hilltop offers views of the Atlantic Ocean and the surrounding countryside, including the Mashantucket Pequots' Lantern Hill Reservation, the Mashantucket Museum and Research Center, and the Foxwoods Resort and Casino.

Image gallery

References

External links