Riverside Avenue Topography

Visual timeline of the topographic history along the banks on Riverside Avenue

Ever since the human race has entered the new geologic epoch, known as the Anthropocene or age of humans, we have fundamentally altered our natural landscapes in order to meet out needs. Taking a closer look at Burlington, specifically Riverside avenue, one can find evidence of many landslides that have triggered along the steep bank that runs down to the Winooski river. Using different techniques like mapping and researching old newspaper clippings, one can attempt to make a story of what happened here in the past. Starting in 1872, a US coast survey can depict the topographic features around riverside ave, marking many trees along the slope and little development. Through the 1930's, there really wasn't much development on riverside avenue, and it stayed forest and field. In the 1940's development began and with that the city widened the road for more use. They did this by dumping fill along the bank to achieve a wider road. If you look above you can see a large gulley, that doesn't exist today, however this gulley produced a massive landslide in the 1950's which took out Riverside avenue and a couple houses.

The landslide of 1955 was marked as the biggest measured landslide to occur on that slope. After It occurred, the city filled the gulley in with trash, it was the Burlington landfill for years. There is also rumor that old abandoned cars were used as fill to fill the gap in the road. As more development occurred and more trees were cut along both sides of riverside ave, smaller landslides occurred due to dumping that individuals were doing illegally. In the 1980's engineers tried to stabilize the bank by making a road down it and putting new water management systems in to keep the surface dry. By putting more material on an already unstable bank, it's only a matter of time before the ground become to saturated and will give. This is what precisely happened on the night of Halloween in 2019. A property along riverside avenue had been dumping fill to stabilize their bank, cracks began to form, and on Halloween of 2019 after four inches of rain, the slope gave way. Today, evidence from the most previous landslide is very visible, nevertheless, if one can pick up on certain keys, one can see evidence of many previous slides, in the vegetation and fill that exists along the riverside bank. Moving foward, the city has zoned the area and stated that if anymore dumping occurs penalties will be brought.