Moving Around: A Century of Transportation

Early Roads and Water

Many early roads in Connecticut, and elsewhere, were actually well-worn, ancient pathways used by Native American peoples for commerce and migration. Connecticut’s first formal ‘road’—possibly one of the ancient Native American pathways—was marked-out by 1633, and by 1635, the ‘New Way’ or the Connecticut Bay Path (later the Boston Post Road) started to spur settlement along their routes, resulting in the planning and building of additional roads to connect cities like Hartford and Windsor. Later, in 1670 and 1671 with the establishment of the Colonial Post, roads connecting Boston with New York via Hartford and Providence, Rhode Island were built. Unfortunately, these primitive roads were often nothing more than widened dirt paths in many places. They were often impassable due to lack of upkeep and from mud after heavy rains and flooding. Throughout the seventeenth century and for much of the eighteenth, Connecticut relied heavily on its water routes—the numerous rivers, harbors, the Long Island Sound, and the oceans—for communication and commerce between its major cities and the outside world.

< After the American Revolution, Connecticut granted franchises for the building of ‘toll’ roads or turnpikes, and in 1792 the first turnpike in Connecticut and in New England (the second in the country) linked Norwich and New London. By the 1850s, 1,400 miles of turnpikes criss-crossed the state. This scene is of New Hartford around 1836, viewed from the Albany Turnpike, now Route 44. The Congregational Church is at the far right. Of particular interest is the heavily forested Bare Spot Mountain, also known as Jones Mountain, in the background. Later in the nineteenth century, much of Connecticut’s landscape was devoid of thick forests due to increased need for wood for building ships, homes, and other structures.

Southeast View of Wolcottville, Torrington
Ink drawing by John Warner Barber
ca. 1836
Photo CD: 2827
File: img0004.pcd

< This view is of the central part of Wolcottville, now, Torrington around 1836. The large white building with a cupola near the center of the scene is a woolen factory. The scene illustrates how towns and villages clustered near the sides of roads and then grew outward. One might imagine that most of the wood used in construction of the town came from forests that once occupied the many open fields in and around the town

Stagecoach on a Dirt Road, Plainville or Farmington
Photograph by William Allderige
ca. 1885
Photo CD: 0555
File: img0029.pcd

< Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries most people walked where they needed to go; or they may have ridden a horse or ridden in a horse-drawn wagon or carriage if they had one. Extensive travel was generally not affordable to the average citizen and most people seldom traveled or moved to a new location farther than fifty miles from where they were born. Commercial transport for those persons who did have extra money or a sense of adventure was available in often rough-riding stagecoaches, while horse or ox-drawn wagons, driven by teamsters, transported freight.

< Covered bridges, built on stone abutments and piers, were an early innovation in bridge design. The wooden ‘cover’ was actually built to protect the wooden roadbed and the main weight-bearing wooden structure underneath from extreme weather conditions that would rot and deteriorate the wood, causing the bridge to collapse. With regular, proper maintenance, many such bridges would last for fifty to one-hundred years. The Kingdom Bridge in New Hartford spanned the Farmington River for the Albany Turnpike, now Route 44.

< This image shows the intersection—literally and figuratively—of older and newer forms of transport on Main Street in Hartford on May 6, 1898. Horse-drawn wagons, carriages, and men on bicycles crowd the street lined by commercial stores. Many storefronts have awnings. The large wagon in the center, drawn by two horses, appears to contain sacks of coal. Trolley tracks run down the middle of the street.

< Winter presented challenges for travelers and traveling, especially before the days of self-propelled, large-size snowplows that could clear a street in one pass. Cities particularly had a tough time because snow could not be plowed to the side of the street; it had to be removed and dumped elsewhere. Worse yet, there were no machines that would blow the snow, it all had to be removed manually—with a shovel. In this image from December 26, 1909 taken in Hartford’s City Hall Square, men in heavy winter clothing shovel snow from the streets and sidewalks into a waiting, large horse-drawn bobsled with two sets of bobsled runners.

< Even in winter people still had to get to the store for supplies and the vehicle of choice would have been a sleigh. Travel in winter had its good and bad points. A snow-packed road was often much smoother than the same dirt road in spring, summer, or autumn. However, the one horse open sleigh or ‘cutter’ was very cold to ride in and necessitated bundling up in layers of warm woolen clothing, gloves, and hats, with a heavy lap robe on top. Often, a foot- or lap-warmer containing a few hot coals or heated soapstone under the blanket would help give additional warmth for the ride.

< Waterways provided another sort of highway. Even as the oceans separate the continents from each other, they offer a means by which the peoples of the world mingle their cultures and resources. At the time of the American Revolution, nineteen of the twenty largest towns on the continent were seaports, even though less than 10% of the population lived in them. Connecticut, with its many harbors, rivers, and the Long Island Sound had many ports that played a central role in the transport of goods and people by water. The three-masted bark Alice, in port at Mystic between 1903 and 1905 represents the long legacy of sea transport at the end of the sail era. At the left of the image just behind the stern of the Alice is the trolley-car house and power plant for the electric street railway on the Groton side of the Mystic River.

< In the early 1800s, Connecticut tried to improve its system of water transport by developing several canals and locks, notably the Windsor Locks near Enfield in 1824, and the Farmington Canal built 1822-1835, connecting New Haven to Northampton, MA. This engraving depicts a horse-pulled canal boat with passengers possibly on the Farmington Canal—the church steeple in the background resembles the steeple of the Farmington Congregational Church. Plagued by poor water supply and bank erosion the Farmington Canal was closed in 1847, to be replaced with a steam railway.

Link to other essays in this Journey:

>> Introduction: Moving Around: A Century of Transportation
>> The Revolution of Steam on Land and Sea
>> Making Connections
>> ‘Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley’:
      Early Urban Mass Transit
>> Currents of Air
>> Your Own Set of Wheels: The Bicycle
>> Your Own Set of Wheels: The Automobile

>> Guideposts
>> Suggestions for further reading