ANOTHER GAP SPANNED
New Haven To Massachusetts Trail Gets Closer To Completion
Asign along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail depicts the construction of the 80-mile-long waterway as it entered the wilds of Cheshire in the 1820s. “This part of the canal was the most difficult and expensive to build,” noted canal historian Dr. Carl E. Walter. “Irish laborers worked in knee-deep mud to cut the canal through Cheshire’s swamps.”
Even nearly 200 years later, construction through the swamps of Cheshire has been difficult with the state spending two years and more than $4 million to bridge a mile-long gap in the popular recreation trail that runs through the heart of the state from New Haven to the Massachusetts border.
Last week the gap — connecting the Cornwall Avenue terminus with the West Main Street/Route 68 terminus — was opened and trail users can now travel 24 contiguous miles from New Haven to Southington. The trail is now more than 85 percent complete.
The canal — Connecticut’s version of the Erie Canal — traveled from Northampton, Mass., to New Haven. Barges pulled by mules and horses plied the 80-mile route.
Workers using shovels, picks and wheelbarrows constructed the 20- to 36-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep (4 feet of water) canal bed through 17 towns. Over its 20 years in existence, lumber, maple sugar, cider and cheese found its way south, while salt, rum, oysters and coal were towed north.
At the West Main Street end of the new trail is the former Ball & Socket Manufacturing Company. The former factory once made buttons of “every description” for everything from soldiers uniforms to garments between 1850 and 1994. Today, the mostly abandoned factory complex is known as Ball & Socket Arts, an effort to transform the buildings into a “world-class arts and entertainment complex” with art galleries, performing spaces, restaurants and retail establishments.
“According to a local historian,” noted the Ball & Socket Arts website, “there was a common saying in Cheshire that ‘sooner or later, everyone works at the Button Shop.’ Though metal buttons were Ball & Socket’s staple product in later years, the company made its name with fancy glass buttons known as ‘Cheshire Jewels,’ which are considered highly collectible today.”
Much of the trail passes through a heavily industrial area of town. You are going to have to be on the lookout for trucks traveling across the trail along a driveway. Privacy fencing screens much of the industrial buildings from view.
Concrete boardwalks and bridges take visitors across the sensitive wetlands of Willow Brook — the most natural part of the segment. The boardwalks are impressive, showcasing the picturesque brook while staying well above the swamps and wetlands — and giving visitors an idea of what the canal builders faced in Cheshire.
The new trail is nicely landscaped with rain gardens and flower gardens — one by the Petit Family Foundation in memory of Michaela Petit, 11, and her love of four o’clock flowers. Michaela and her sister Hayley, 17, and their mother Jennifer Hawke-Petit, were killed in a notorious home invasion in Cheshire in 2007. The four o’clock is the children’s state flower, and it is planted in the heavily landscaped garden along the edge of the new trail. The new trail also has a restroom building and picnic tables.
Crossing at West Main Street is a little problematic. You push a button and the signal flashes yellow and eventually a flashing red followed by a 15-second crossing. Beware that once you are across, people start driving through again disregarding the red flashing light and walk sign. So even if you see a walk sign in the distance, be wary of crossing.
The canal and railroad that once existed where the heritage trail now runs are gone. In its place is a multi-use path where visitors can come and relive the area’s storied past. During my visit, more than two dozen people passed by despite the rainy afternoon. Proof that if you connect the gaps, they will come.
If you go: The parking lot for the new section of trail is located along Cornwall Avenue off Route 68, just west of the junction with Willow Street. Visit http://fchtrail.org/pages/maps_south.asp for a map and more information about the trail.