Post Roads & Iron Horses: Transportation in Connecticut from Colonial Times to the Age of Steam

Introduction: The Land and Its First Inhabitants

| 1 Introduction The Land and Its First Inhabitants T ransportation is the vital link between a people and the land they inhabit; the means we choose to move ourselves, the resources we require, the goods we produce . By overcoming the limitation of distance, transportation makes possible the myriad of economic and social interactions that allow a community, a people, or an entire culture to thrive. Regardless of the mode considered—whether foot or horseback, ship or rail, automobile or airplane—the land between remains the common denominator of all transportation. It is appropriate, then, that the story of transportation in Connecticut begins with a look at the evolution of the state’s physical landscape, for the composition and arrangement of the state’s physical features—its valleys and uplands, harbors and river systems—as well as its location in the region impact that story in important ways by influencing the pattern of settlement on the land, the uses to which the land has been put, and the location of major transportation corridors. The Connecticut Landscape The physical landscape of Connecticut has been an ever-present influence on the story of the state’s transportation developments. Connecticut is positioned at the southern edge of New England, bound by the states of New York on the west, Massachusetts on the north, Rhode Island on the east, and on the south by the waters of Long Island Sound. As Connecticut has a land area of only five thousand square miles, extending approximately one hundred miles west to east and fifty miles south to north, travel within this state has always been quite manageable, even on foot. The state’s surface features can be divided into six geomorphic regions: a central valley bisected by an extended north-south ridge of exposed trap 2 | post roads & iron horses Geomorphic regions of Connecticut. (Michael Bell and Carolyn DiNicolaFawley . Courtesy of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection) rock; a western uplands region that can be further divided into a region of southwest hills and northwest highlands; a single eastern uplands region called the Windham Hills; and along the state’s border with Long Island Sound, a coastal slope that extends west and east of the central valley. Parallel north-south river systems drain the interior of each region: the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers in the western uplands, the Connecticut River in the central valley, and the Thames, Shetucket, and Quinebaug rivers in the eastern uplands. All these rivers are navigable in their lower reaches.∞ In contour, this landscape is neither too timid nor too bold in its variations . Within twenty miles of the coast, the land rises to an elevation of five hundred feet and then slopes gently upward from southeast to northwest, reaching heights of one thousand feet in the eastern uplands and two thousand feet in the western uplands. The highest elevation in the state is found at Bear Mountain in Salisbury, at 2,380 feet above sea level. The natural landscape we see today—its bedrock geology as well as its surface features—is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geologic 3.123] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 14:00 GMT) introduction | 3 change that has occurred in three phases: the collision and separation of continents associated with the drifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates; the erosion of an ancient mountain range formed as a result of these tectonic collisions; and most recently, a recurring cycle of glaciation associated with a cooling of the Earth’s climate. Over the eons these world-shaping geologic processes of continental drift, surface erosion, and repeated glaciation have each contributed to Connecticut’s topography. The following overview highlights the influence these processes have had on the settlement of Connecticut and its transportation history. Some five hundred million years ago, the configuration of Earth’s landmasses was quite different than it is today. North America straddled the equator and had a tropical climate, as did portions of what became the European continent. Further south, in the position of Antarctica today, lay the western portion of the African continent. In between was a chain of large islands called Avalonia, in an ancient ocean that geologists have named Iapetos. Driven by the convection heating of the Earth’s inner core, the dozen or so tectonic plates that comprise the Earth’s crust and on which continents and ocean floors rest, began to shift position, drifting atop this molten center toward one another. Over the...