dgregg on 27 Feb 2008 09:14 pm
BioBlitz 2005
Our sixth annual bioblitz was held on June 17 and 18, 2005, in Bristol Rhode Island. RINHS, along with partners, Mount Hope Farm and Trust and Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology hosted this event at Mount Hope, in Bristol, RI. Over 100 scientists, naturlists, and volunteers came out and identified over 972 species.
Download the species list: Bioblitz 2005 Results
Together, Mount Hope Farm and Brown University own more than 500 contiguous acres that include a great range of interesting natural communities and habitats: working farmland, abandoned farmland in a variety of successional stages, mature hardwood forest, wetlands, and bedrock outcrops and upland. The land includes a mile of shoreline on Mount Hope Bay. The area for this BioBlitz was more or less coextensive with the former farm and estate owned during the first half of the 20th century by Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, businessman and brewery owner, and it has many interesting historical associations that will probably be reflected in the flora and fauna. During the Cold War, it housed a radar site for the Nike missile system, under Haffenreffer it was a dairy farm, and before that part of it was a Coney Island-style amusement park. Long ago, it was the home of colonial governors and of Wampanoag leader King Philip, who was killed there in 1676. The site is one of the largest undeveloped tracts in Bristol County, Rhode Island’s most densely populated county. The site faces north across Mt. Hope Bay towards the largest coal-burning power plant in the Northeast and much of the land has not been regularly open to the naturalist community.
102 Scientists and volunteers participated in Bioblitz 2005:
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Photos from the Event:
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on 25 Jul 2011 at 8:51 am 1.John Card said …
Do you have any more information concerning the Amusement Park that existed on Mount Hope in about 1900?
on 10 Aug 2011 at 2:19 pm 2.dgregg said …
Thanks for your question about Mount Hope. Although we’re not a history organization (natural history is about animals and plants, not human history) I happen to know that the amusement park at Mt. Hope was in business in the late 19th century. It was a destination for working people in Fall River when Fall River was jammed with immigrant mill workers. There were cottages to rent, a carousel, and other attractions and steamers put in at a pier to disembark visitors from Fall River. The park was bankrupt in the early 20th century when Mr. Rudolf Haffenreffer became interested in it. Haffenreffer was from a brewing family in Roxbury, Mass., and when he grew up he went into the same business in Fall River. By around 1905 he owned most of the breweries and beer business in the city. He probably viewed the amusement park both as a business to buy cheap and turn around for a profit but also as a market for his beer. He bought it, but never reopened it or sold it. He ended up buying more and more adjoining land and redoing buildings on it to improve it as both a working farm and as a summer home/country estate for himself and his family. Upon his death, some of it was sold, the rest was donated to Brown University. You should be able to find a book on the history of the estate and especially his interest in native american artifacts called “Passionate Hobby.” I know that the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society in Kingston sells it, as does the Haffenreffer Museum that is still associated with Brown.