Our Rural Heritage: Our Roads
Ever since we started the Rural Heritage series, initially meant to tell the stories of our old barns while they were still standing, and expanding, by popular demand, to other aspects of our town’s history, residents have asked us to explore our roads, particularly how they were given their names. Who was Calvin Burnham? John Mack? Sarah Pearl? Who were the Reillys? The Hammonds? The Bennetts? What special features christened Cedar Swamp Road? Windy Hill? Brook Street? Where was the Parsonage? The Old Town Pound?
While some of these answers seem simple enough, even obvious, the task has proven to be more cumbersome than expected. First of all, forty-seven roads are a lot to cover, researching geographic and historic facts, folklore, surveys and maps. Thus we decided to approach the topic over time, and to start with the only state and federal roads that run through town: Route 97 and Route 6.
Route 97, the state highway which runs north and south, extends from Route 44 in Pomfret to Route 12 in Norwich, and here in Hampton, from the Abington to the Scotland lines. Prior to its designation as a state highway, the northern portion was named “Pomfret Road”, as in the road to Pomfret, though the northernmost portion was once also called “Grow Hill”. Most of our early farms were situated there. The southern portion was named Pudding Hill, meant to describe the muddy conditions of spring when it was a dirt road. Those who walked to the schoolhouses would tell us that mud was more difficult to trudge through than snow. A portion of Pudding Hill was called “Shaw Hill”, and later “Jewett Hill”, for the former owners who farmed there.
“Route 97” was commissioned on January 1, 1932, when the State renumbered nearly every one of its highways in Connecticut. However, Pomfret Road was not part of the State highway system until 1934 when Route 97 was rerouted, turning Station Road over to Town maintenance. Another portion of Route 97 near Old Kings Highway was also realigned in 1949. With the renumbering, the original names for Route 97 fell away, except colloquially, until the development of the 911emergency system which assigned every home, and potential house lot, a street name and number. Until then, mail addressed to “Charlie Halbach, Hampton”, for example, could be delivered. The 911 system reinstituted the names “Pomfret Road” and “Pudding Hill”.
In the middle of Pomfret Road and Pudding Hill is Main Street. The 1759 map at Town Hall shows the street with only the Meeting House. The one drawn in 1858 shows several homes along the route. Referred to as “the village”, “the town center”, “Chelsea Hill”, “Hampton Hill”, or simply, “the hill”, it has always lined some of our most important institutions, the Congregational Church, the Town Hall, the library, the blacksmith and other shops, the Post Office, the General Store, the inn, the Grange, and the elementary school, now at the southernmost end, formerly in the building that now houses Town Hall, and originally, near 237 Main Street where old deeds show a schoolhouse before those of the seven school districts were established for neighborhoods.
At one time, Main Street diverged into two roads, with, like so many New England villages, a town green, or “common”, in the center. It became one road when it was finally paved. Later a foot path east of the street was maintained for years by the “Village Improvement Society”. We always walked along the village this way; except for parades, I can’t recall walking on the actual street until the seventies. There are still remnants of the path, some very visible, even paved, and others, a narrow, dark smudge in the lawns in front of the houses there, like a shadow.
Our Main Street was once part of the original Route 6.
Route 6, also known as “the Grand Army of the Republic Highway”, is the only U. S. highway in town, the transcontinental highway extending from Long Beach, California to Provincetown, Massachusetts traversing nearly 3,200 miles. Our segment runs from the Chaplin to the Brooklyn line.
- S. Route 6 was one of the original routes in the United States Numbered Highway System, which was established in 1926. At the time, the named segment ran from Provincetown, Massachusetts through Rhode Island and Connecticut, to Brewster, New York. Later it would extend through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado, and finally to California’s Pacific shoreline, completing its distinction as a coast-to-coast highway. Traversing nearly 3,200 miles, Route 6 is the second longest highway in the country, after Route 20, which runs from Boston, Massachusetts to Newport, Oregon. Nor was Route 6 the oldest transcontinental highway. That designation belongs to the Lincoln Highway of 1913, subsequently renumbered, in the main, as Route 30. Like the “Lincoln” highway, Route 6 also has an association with the Civil War.
In 1934, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War started to promote the designation of U. S. 6 as “the Grand Army of the Republic Highway”. Starting with Massachusetts, each state adopted the proposal and in 1948, approval of the name was finalized. A formal dedication occurred on May 3, 1953 in Long Beach, California where the monument erected states: “…In memory of the heroic services and unselfish devotion of the Union soldiers, sailors and marines who laid down their lives on the altar of sacrifice during the Civil War…For what they did and dared, let us remember them today.”
With the development of the 911 system of addresses, the highway was split at its intersection with Route 97, with the eastern segment named Providence Turnpike, and the western, Hartford Turnpike. Interestingly, the old stone, road side markers, reused and found in the foundations of old homes, and even old gravestones, are carved with directions such as “Right Hand Road to Boston, Left Hand Road to Worcester”.
At one time, East and West Old Route 6 (and the portion of Main Street which connects the two) were part of the Route 6 corridor, hence the name “Old” was attached to those sections when the highway was rerouted, around 1950. “East” and “West” were added with the establishment of the 911 address system.
Yes, the “Grand Army of the Republic Highway” ran straight through the center of our town for several years. In rerouting, with the segment starting at the western entrance to Old Route 6, and ending at the eastern entrance to Old Route 6, the transcontinental highway cut across the three farms along this new section of Route 6. Three tunnels were installed beneath the highway to allow the farmers’ cows to be brought to pasture, and return to the barn.
Imagine the vehicles — cars, trucks, tractor-trailers, tour buses — our Main Street would be subjected to daily, and nightly, in today’s world of traffic. But pedestrian safety, wear-and-tear, and aesthetics were not the reason the new portion of Route 6 was installed to circumvent the town center. It was the steepness of the hill. During storms, trucks could not climb the eastern portion, and it was also dangerous to descend in treacherous conditions.
One of the hill’s legendary stories involves one of the largest farms and families in the town’s history. While driving down the hill on a wintry night in 1936, Al Vargas’s truck became disabled. He approached a lone farmhouse where the woman, a widow who lived alone, let him use the telephone and wait in her home until his truck was fixed. Mr. Vargas, a widower with five children, stopped the following week to “thank the good woman once again,” after which the visits continued, and eventually, the two married. Mr. Vargas farmed there for years, re-marrying when his wife passed away. He and his third wife, Addie, raised sixteen children there, some of whose children and grandchildren still live in town and share that road’s role in their family’s arrival here.
Growing up, East Old Route 6 was called “Hampton Hill”, and still is when folks are remembering sledding adventures, and West Old Route 6 was “Brown’s Hill”, undoubtedly from some resident. The name remains on Brown’s Hill Marsh in Goodwin Forest.
These wide highways and many of our town roads originated along the paths of Native Americans, like the Nipmuck Trail, that stitched the landscape before Europeans set foot on our shores, later to branch off to connect the homes and farms, the churches, the stores, the schoolhouses, the taverns that comprised our community. These are the only two that have the distinction of connecting Hampton to other towns in Connecticut, and to the rest of the country.
Dayna McDermott