Chapter 1 DOT History

Early travel in Connecticut
Before 1895

COLONIAL ROADS

Bridges were also under the jurisdiction of the General Court. In 1651, the Court resolved that a bridge should be built over the Connecticut River at Hartford (although such a bridge was not to be built until 1810). Throughout the seventeenth century, the Court ordered that bridges be built in a variety of locations.

* * *

In 1670, when laying out a highway along the Connecticut River, the Court set the first standard width for a major road, calling for the road to be “six rod wide” (about 99 feet). This road formed a portion of the first post road, known as the Upper Post Route, the first of three declared as such when the Colonial post was established in 1671. These roads were meant to connect the newly conquered colony of New York, formerly New Amsterdam, with the Massachusetts Colony. The Lower Post Road ran along the Connecticut shoreline to Rhode Island, where it turned inland to Kingston, Rhode Island, and connected to Boston through Providence. The Middle Post Road connected Hartford and Boston via Coventry and Pomfret, Connecticut, and Mendon and Roxbury, Massachusetts. The Upper Post Road ran north from Hartford to Springfield, Massachusetts, and then east to Boston. Despite appearances on paper, these post roads were in some places barely passable paths. They were rock-strewn, boggy, and craggy . . . a fright to travel over. In good weather, a person on foot might travel 10 to 15 miles, maybe 18 to 20 miles on horseback. In 1679, the Court, in an effort to improve communication between settlements, ordered that the existing roads between plantations, as the towns were then called, be taken over and designated the King’s Highway, but maintenance still remained the responsibility of the citizens of the towns through which they passed. Their poor quality was further attested by the General Court’s order that the roads be cleared of brush until they were at least one rod (about 16 feet) wide. In the 1680s and 1690s, the Court ordered the laying out of the major roads between what were to become Connecticut’s major cities. The Court also designated a committee method by which adjoining towns could agree on the location of connecting roads. Consequently, by the end of the seventeenth century, many miles of primitive road reached across Connecticut. The Colony’s population was approaching 30,000 (the population in 1701) and road traffic had increased correspondingly. Travelers increasingly lost their way, so in 1698 the Court ordered that direction signs be placed at all road intersections or branchings.

The seemingly equitable method of compulsory labor for road building and maintenance continued through the eighteenth century, with a correspondingly equitable distribution of poor results. Roads were simply not maintained because few were willing to participate in the requirement of compulsory work, and the penalty for not working does not appear to have been well-enforced. There were not enough funds to build roads without compulsory labor, although attempts to raise funds for roadway maintenance were made. Even lotteries were tried – unsuccessfully. Roads in Connecticut generally remained little more than widened dirt tracks throughout most of the eighteenth century. Despite road conditions during that period, there was little apparent desire for dramatically improving existing roads or changing maintenance policies. Most of the trade in the sparsely settled colonies was local, and the proximity of most towns to sea and river travel minimized the need for an improved road system. Most residents were farmers who had neither the time nor the money to construct better roads nor to make adequate repairs on the ones in use. In a sense, because of the primitive nature of the local road system and the reliance on water for trade, the colonies were commercially closer to Europe than they were to each other. Communication, at least by land, between the colonies was very infrequent, as illustrated by the fact that in 1772 there was only one stage coach a fortnight (every two weeks) between Boston and New York. Road building in early America was hardly scientific. There were no highway engineers, and power equipment was centuries away. Road construction consisted of teams of men and horses clearing away trees, brush, stumps and logs and then pushing the remaining earth roughly flat. Heavy equipment might have consisted of a plow or some form of crude horse-drawn scraper.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE TURNPIKE ERA

* * *

CANALS, FERRIES AND RAILROADS

* * *

Railroads became dominant in Connecticut during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1837, just eight years after the first locomotive – the Stourbridge Lion – was brought to the United States from England, the first railroad line in Connecticut was completed, connecting Stonington with Providence, Rhode Island, with connecting steamboats to New York City. Industrial growth and railroad development fueled each other during this period. Suddenly, manufacturers whose plants were close to raw materials and sources of cheap water power had easy, all-weather access to major markets. Investors in railroad companies were primarily wealthy bankers and industrialists, such as New Haven’s James Brewater and Joseph Sheffield, but many municipalities purchased stocks in these companies as well. The New York & New Haven Railroad opened in 1848 linking Connecticut to New York by 1849. In the north-south direction, the most important line was the Hartford & New Haven line, which opened in 1839 between the state’s alternating capitals. Five years later the line was extended north to Springfield, Massachusetts. Rails ran up the Housatonic River Valley by 1842. The Naugatuck Valley was connected to the sea at Bridgeport by 1849, and Norwalk and Danbury were connected in the early 1850s. Rail lines along the coast opened between New London and New Haven in 1850, and between New London and Stonington in 1858. The trains still had to use a ferry to cross the Thames River until a drawbridge was completed in 1889. Railroad’s prominence in transportation seemed assured. In 1840, there were 102 miles of track in the state, and by 1850, there were 402 miles of track. By the Civil War, with 601 miles of track, Connecticut had the highest railroad density in the country. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad was the most prosperous enterprise in New England. In 1872, the Hartford & New Haven merged with the New York & New Haven in 1872 to become the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (New Haven Railroad). Regulation of railroads in Connecticut came on the heels of Connecticut’s first major train disaster in 1853. A New Haven Railroad engineer ignored an open drawbridge signal at Norwalk. The train, carrying many doctors returning from an American Medical Association conference, careened into the river, killing over 20 people. As a result, the first railroad commission was formed that year to ensure public safety on the railroad. Authorized by an “Act to Prevent Injuries and Destruction of Life Upon Railroads by Railroad Trains”, the Board of Railroad Commissioners was charged with inspecting railways in the state, regulating speeds, standardizing signals, and implementing directives for safer operations. By 1900, virtually every town in the state was connected by rail. Rail expansion continued until 1920, when there were 938 miles of track in the state. This boom in rail transportation was not unique to Connecticut. After the Civil War, the whole country became committed to the railroad as the basis for a national transportation system. The Transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah, and major land subsidies amounting to over 130 million acres were granted to fledgling rail companies to stimulate the construction of new rail lines into the uncharted western territories. By the 1870s, the unrestrained monopoly power of the railroad industry began to be felt by farmers, particularly in rural areas, who had no choice but to pay high prices for shipping their goods into the cities. Widespread complaints brought about government involvement, and in 1887, the United States Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to oversee the railroads. Basically a measure to satisfy the “populous clamor”, this legislation had no real teeth because it did not establish rate guidelines or enforcement provisions, although it apparently did result in lower rates to some degree through the requirement for rail companies to post their rates publicly. More than anything, the creation of the ICC was a harbinger of government control that would later become integral in the railroad industry.

THE TROLLEY-CAR INDUSTRY

DECLINING ROADS

LEAGUE OF AMERICAN WHEELMEN

THE GOOD ROADS MOVEMENT

The first road in Connecticut, if it could be called that, was the Connecticut Path. This trail was already marked by 1633, when an English settler by the name of John Oldham traveled upon it to investigate the Connecticut River Indians’ invitation to colonize the area, as English settlers had done in Massachusetts Bay. By 1635, the “New Way” into Connecticut was well marked by John Cable and John Woodstock, agents acting for William Pynchon, who had formed the plantation at what is now Roxbury, Massachusetts, and who had an interest in colonizing new lands and opening fur-trading routes. This “New Way” or Connecticut Bay Path, later known as the upper Boston Post Road, was settled so quickly that by 1638 the General Court, the Colony’s legislative body, ordered that roads between Hartford and Windsor be laid out, and in 1640, that roads between the early towns be maintained. Soon thereafter, the construction, care and maintenance of highways was formally placed on the towns by the General Court, primarily to ensure the care of the route between the Connecticut Colony in Windsor and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This route was used by Connecticut Colony founder Reverend Thomas Hooker and his assistant Samuel Stone in 1636. In 1643, the Court ordered each Municipality to appoint two officials, known as surveyors, who were given the power to “call out every Teeme and person fitt for labour, in their course, one day every yeare, to mend said highwayes wherein they are to have a spetiall to those Common wayes which are betwixt Towne and Towne.” This compulsory labor statute was enlarged in the 1650 Code of Laws, which authorized financial Penalties on those men who failed to meet their annual road work obligation of two days work a year: “if any refuse or neglect to attend the service in any manner aforesaid He shall forefeit for every dayes neglect of a mans worke two shillings sixpence, and of a Teame, sixe shillings . . .” This act formalized a custom that dated at least from medieval England. It would continue to remain in effect until the nineteenth century, providing the main source of workers for road and bridge construction.The American Revolution accelerated the demand for road and bridge building in the late eighteenth century. By the end of the war, however, many roads were impassable. Because Connecticut towns had contributed a great deal of money, material, and manpower to the war effort, they were unable to finance the repair of roads. And yet, improved roads were vital for the livelihood of the growing population of almost 200,000. After Connecticut attained statehood in 1788, the newly formed state lacked sufficient public capital to undertake a wholesale upgrading of the highway system. Subsequently, the Connecticut General Assembly granted franchises for the creation of private toll roads, a common practice in Great Britain. These roads were known as turnpikes because of the shape of the entrance gates on the roads. There were two forms of turnpike franchises in Connecticut. The first was that in which an existing old road, badly in need of repairs and beyond the resources of the town, was presented to a turnpike corporation organized for the purpose of putting it back in good shape and maintaining it properly. The second was for the creation of an entirely new road, cutting across fields and forests to shorten travel distances. To create this turnpike, the General Assembly would first pass an act describing the route and laying out the proposed road. After declaring it a public road, the Assembly would then strip the road of its public character and a corporation would be authorized for the purpose of building the road and operating it as a turnpike. Under this method, the towns were required to purchase the land and to build any necessary bridges, while the corporation merely had to build and maintain the road itself. As a result, the majority of the financial burden was placed on the towns. Despite town protests, turnpikes continued to be formed in this manner through the turnpike era. This form of franchise was not eliminated until the mid-1850s.