ABNORMAL PROFILE
The airline distance from the bend in Rocky River at Sherman to its mouth at the Housatonic is 2¾ miles, but the course of the river between these two points is 15 miles, or 5.4 times the airline distance. This is a more extraordinary digression than that of Tennessee River, which deserts its ancestral course to the Gulf and flows northwest into the Ohio, multiplying the length of its course 3⅓ times. The fall of Rocky River between Sherman and its mouth is 240 feet or 16 feet to the mile, and were the river able to take a direct course the fall would be 87 feet to the mile. The possibility of capture would seem to be imminent from these figures, but in reality there is no chance of it, for an unbroken mountain ridge of resistant rock lies between the two forks of the river. This barrier is not likely to be crossed by any stream until the whole region has been reduced to a peneplain.
Measured from the head of its longest branch, Rocky River is about 19 miles long and falls 950 feet. Of this fall, 710 feet occurs in the first 4 miles and 173 feet in the last 2½ miles of its course. For the remaining distance of 12½ miles, in which the river after flowing south doubles back on itself, the fall is 67 feet, or slightly less than 5½ feet to the mile ([fig. 3, A]).
Fig. 3. Profiles of present and preglacial Rocky River.
Elevations at a, b, c and i are from U. S. G. S. map. Elevation
at d is estimated from R. E. Dakin's records. Elevations
at e, f, g and h are from R. E. Dakin's records. The
U. S. G. S. figures for the same are enclosed in parenthesis.
In tabular form the figures, taken from the Danbury and New Milford atlas sheets and from reports of R. E. Dakin, are as follows: