I begin today’s journey on the post road on a chain bridge over the raging Sarapiquí River in the Tirimbina Rainforest Center deep in the lowland rainforest of Costa Rica.  My wife and I were visiting this lush tropical reserve filled with fantastic birds, insects, plants, and animals in March 2009. We happened to be staying at the simple but comfortable lodge recently built to attract more ecotourists but which was, at that time, occupied primarily by scientists doing research.  A group of three scientists from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst were each researching different aspects of the forest related to bats, insects, and fish.  As we passed over the bridge straight out of an Indiana Jones movie that separated the research facilities and lodging from the primary rainforest on the opposite shore of the river, we got into a conversation about fish in the river that turned into a conversation about something closer to home: fish runs and the role of dams. 

        The Connecticut River, which I crossed the night before today’s walk by a much sturdier bridge (with a view quite different from that of Tirimbina, though spectacular in it’s own way), and its tributaries are studded with dozens of dams which are known to impede fish runs.  One solution has been to build fish ladders that allow anadramous fish (fish that breed in freshwater but live their adult lives at sea) to surmount the dam and continue upriver to spawning grounds as far north as Vermont and New Hampshire. In particular a great deal of money was spent, starting in the 1960s, to reestablish the salmon population of the Connecticut River which had been extirpated by 1800. Forty years and millions of dollars later only 82 salmon were recorded passing Holyoke, Massachusetts in 2008.  Did the program fail? The biologists on the bridge mention the results of a controversial dissertation published by Catherine Carlson in 1992 which suggested that the absence of salmon on the Connecticut River might have more to do with climate change than with the failure of the various breeding programs, which included the labor of thousands of schoolchildren. Carlson suggested that the abundance of salmon in rivers that empty into Long Island Sound, amply documented in the records of colonial settlers, was an anomalous situation that resulted from the “Little Ice Age,” a period from the sixteenth through most of the nineteenth century marked by much colder temperatures than had been recorded at most other times in history. To give one example of unusually severe weather during that period, New York Harbor froze solid in 1780, allowing soldiers to march, with artillery, from Manhattan to Staten Island.  Carlson’s study of fish bones found in archaeological digs of seventy Indian fishing sites scattered throughout New England led her to propose that salmon runs in the rivers of southern New England were the result of climate oscillation, that the colder weather allowed salmon to migrate up rivers south of the salmon’s normal range. Furthermore, she proposes that the decline of the salmon cannot be tied directly to dams, as many rivers further north have dams and the salmon runs continued there throughout the period following the end of the Little Ice Age.

        Ironically the fish ladders have proven to be an obstacle for a less well-regarded but nonetheless important fish in the aquatic ecosystems of the North Atlantic. Shad populations, which until very recently numbered in the hundreds of thousands at Turner’s Falls in Massachusetts, have plummeted. At least part of the problem lies in the fact that the runs were designed for the bigger and stronger nonexistent salmon, and the shad have great difficulty surmounting these obstacles. One of the scientists we spoke with on the bridge at Tirimbina told me he witnessed bulldozers being used to literally scoop up thousands of shad and herring stuck at the base of the fish ladders and dump them upstream! Apparently this situation will not improve in the near term, as there is an understanding between sports fishermen, who prefer salmon to boring old bony shad (although not John McPhee, who admires shad greatly, as described in The Founding Fish ), and the power companies that have legal standing. Thus the situation cannot be reviewed for another decade. So while everyone waits for the salmon to return to the Connecticut River, the shad and herring, the natural tenants of these southern New England rivers, are in dire straits.

*****

The travel diary of John Winthrop, Jr. certainly lends support to the idea of a “Little Ice Age.” Winthrop traveled from Boston to today’s Springfield on the Connecticut River, then made his way down the river to the colony at Saybrook on the west bank of the river at its mouth, in November 1645. Winthrop left Boston on November 11, and on November 12 it snowed for a few hours. By the time he reached Hartford, the Connecticut River had “frozen above the falls [at Windsor CT].” He had anticipated taking a “ferryboat” from Hartford to Saybrook but was obliged to go on foot as the river was frozen. Of course, since the very streams and tributaries he had to cross were frozen, Winthrop was able to simply walk over them.

        I usually do not put my golf clubs away for the season until the week after Thanksgiving, and occasionally I am even able to play into December in the Boston area so the weather that Winthrop experienced seems to have been unusually cold.  The earliest snowfall of greater than one inch in Boston since 1910 fell on November 10, 1976.  So, while it is not unheard of for it to snow in early November, the severity of conditions described by Winthrop have not been seen in Southern New England for at least a century.

        *****

         Strangely, the man who founded the Saybrook Colony in 1635 had surprisingly little to say about the town when he visited in November 1645. Perhaps he already thought of Saybrook as yesterday’s news as he was seeking to found the new colony that became New London.  Winthrop spent five days in Saybrook before he could cross the Connecticut River to continue his journey but says almost nothing about his stay. 

        None of our other fellow travelers stayed in what is now the town of Old Saybrook, although all mention crossing the river and passing through the town.  Hamilton, on August 27, 1744, mentions that he “could see the town of Seabrook below us on the western side of the river,” an indication that the ferry travelled to a spot north of the town. Indeed the ferry rights were acquired by John Whittlesey in 1662 and remained in the family until 1839.  John Whittlesey, who improved the road leading from the ferry in 1720, ran a tavern near the ferry slip in his family’s building which still stands at 40 Ferry Road and dates back to the late seventeenth century. The ferry landing, at the southernmost narrowest point between the two banks of the river, is almost three miles north of the historic center of Saybrook.

        All of our travelers were either in a great hurry, or else the reputation of the Whittlesey Tavern, also listed in Low’s 1775 Almanac at Saybrook Ferry, must have been poor. Only Knight stopped for a meal, which was so disgusting to her, that she “left it, and paid sixpence a piece for our Dinners, wch was only smell.” (Knight, Friday October 6, 1704)

*****

        “By right of discovery, Connecticut belonged to Holland,” states Katharine B. Crandall in The Fine Old Town of Stonington.  Well no, by right of discovery it probably belonged to the ancestors of the Algonkian-speaking tribes that lived there when Adrien Block sailed along the Connecticut Coast in 1614. But point taken: why is Connecticut not a Dutch stronghold, or at least why isn’t there any inkling of Dutch heritage as there is in the Hudson River Valley? The answer is, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity that presented itself and were beaten to the punch by English settlers from Boston.

       Saybrook is not called ZeeBrugge or New Rotterdam or Kievits Hoek in large part because of the settlement of Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River by English settlers led by John Winthrop, Jr. from Boston in 1635. The Dutch had established trading posts stretching from what is now New York on rivers all along Long Island Sound in the early seventeenth century and had one here at the mouth of the Connecticut River called Kievits Hoek, as well as one near present day Hartford sixty miles upriver.  The English though had settled America in larger numbers and planned on staying permanently at their settlements, unlike the Dutch trading posts, which were seasonally occupied by traders and then abandoned. The Connecticut River was the transition zone, the area in which Dutch and English interests collided.

        Winthrop and company settled the area in 1635, in anticipation of the coming of Oliver Cromwell. Upon their arrival they discovered a Dutch shield proclaiming possession of the territory but no Dutchmen.  Winthrop and his men tore it down and replaced it with their own shield.  The Dutch returned at the start of trading season, only to find the English firmly entrenched and a fort under construction, and left.  By 1654 the trading post near Hartford had also been abandoned, thus ending the early Dutch history of the Connecticut River. That Dutch settlements were somewhat more successful around the Hudson River is evident from the many place names of Dutch origin there, although I suspect the only Dutch speakers now are recent transplants from Amsterdam.

*****

        The Liberty Inn is located near the exit ramp off Interstate 95 as it reaches the west bank of the Connecticut River. Because the motel is close to the ferry landing site and the Whittlesey house on Ferry Road, I am still obliged to walk a couple of miles to reach the center of Old Saybrook--as Hamilton noted, the town is somewhat south of the ferry landing slip.  I cross underneath Interstate 95 and rejoin US Route 1 which is called Boston Post Road and is a continuation of Ferry Road. I follow this road through a nondescript area typical of many I have encountered on this journey as I pass through the outer reaches of towns. After a mile I stop for breakfast at Pat’s Kountry Kitchen for a hearty breakfast of pancakes and sausage. I think the Niantic Diner is better for breakfast-- but this place is still pretty decent. Am I the only person who thinks breakfast in America is one of the great values? There are an abundance of places in small town America that prepare lots of simply cooked food at a reasonable price almost always with unlimited coffee.  When walking a lot, nothing beats a good breakfast, especially when there is uncertainty about where I might be at lunchtime and the possibility that I might have to forego a meal.

            Another half mile walk on Boston Post Road brings me to a small street called Stage Road which veers right for a short distance before intersecting with the old Middlesex Turnpike, the first turnpike built in Connecticut, which follows the river northward to Hartford for forty miles, as a small milestone at the start of the turnpike informs me. A left on the Middlesex Turnpike brings me to the junction of Middlesex Turnpike, Boston Post Road, and Main Street, which is actually the first stretch of the turnpike if you are traveling from Old Saybrook to Hartford.  On the way to this spot I pass the Old Saybrook Train Station, which serves Amtrak as well as the Shore Line East trains which ply the route along the coast from New London to New Haven. Most trains from New Haven stop at Old Saybrook; only a few make the through trip to New London.

        Old Saybrook is the first town in Middlesex County, a county formed from parts of Hartford and New London Counties in 1785. Middlesex County has a population of of only 155,000 in 369 square miles, so it remains lightly populated relative to the counties to the west, just as New London County and Washington County in Rhode Island were lightly populated. But it is the most densely populated of these three counties and the Connecticut River is a clear boundary that marks my entry into the New Haven Metropolitan area. Granted New Haven is still forty miles away and Old Saybrook does not exactly feel particularly urban, but the train line, crossing the river, and the slowly increasing number of Yankee fans are indicators that I am in the transition zone leading to the next major region of Connecticut.

*****

        Main Street in Old Saybrook is straight and very wide, no doubt a byproduct of the turnpike. It is lined with pleasant restaurants and small boutiques, as well as more practical businesses like dentists and fitness clubs, and institutions like the Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, the Fire Station, and Town Hall, just off the Town Green. Old Saybrook might have a population of only 10,000 but it certainly punches above its weight in the quality and quantity of commercial establishments on Main Street. 

        Which leads me to a question. If Saybrook is the original settlement on the Connecticut coast and is at the mouth of the largest river in Southern New England, why is it so small? Why did it lose out to New Haven and New London as an important port?  One clue lies in Winthrop’s actions-- the founder of the colony actually abandoned it to start another colony at the mouth of another river, New London on the Thames, just a decade after establishing the Saybrook Colony.  What’s more, the Saybrook Colony early on merged with the Connecticut Colony, accepting a subordinate role to Hartford. Part of the problem with the colony was the political situation in England- the colony had been established with the idea that Oliver Cromwell would settle there to escape the dangers he faced from the royal government, but he turned the tables and within a decade was leading a revolution that saw him rule England for a decade and put Charles I to death.  No Cromwell, no financial backing, no colony.

        However, colonies thrive primarily owing to the economic advantages of their setting and Saybrook, which superficially appeared to be well poised to play a major role in the trade on the Connecticut River, had practical problems that prevented it from becoming a major port. The biggest problem was that there was no decent harbor. Another problem was the shifting sandbars at the mouth of the river that made it difficult for ships to navigate. Another factor in the demise of Saybrook was the rise of Hartford upriver, closer to the products that the river could provide and the capital of the united province of Connecticut which was formed from the merger of the various colonies of New London, Connecticut, and New Haven in 1662.  Thus Old Saybrook by 1670 had a mere 193 inhabitants compared to 633 at New London, 743 at Hartford, and 875 at New Haven.

*****

           Indeed, not only was the Saybrook Colony bypassed in favor of other settlements in Connecticut,  the settlement of Saybrook was slowly left behind by the people of Saybrook. A map of the mouth of the Connecticut River by Ezra Stiles drawn in 1748 shows the ferry crossing from Lyme north of Saybrook and the road I have traveled today from Saybrook Ferry to the center of Saybrook. The road stops at the Church Green near the intersection of Main Street and Old Boston Post Road. The original settlement of Saybrook however was a mile to the south and east on a peninsula that pokes out into the river. Today it is the site of Fort Saybrook Monument and is somewhat distant from the center of town, which has focused on the north/south Main Street axis since 1729 when the church was moved from Saybrook Point to its current home at the south end of Main Street.

            Not to pile it on, but... the one chance to hang onto some significance as a major player in Connecticut slipped through the fingers of Saybrook in 1716 when the college chartered there in 1701 was moved to the more convenient town of New Haven and was renamed Yale in honor of the man who provided financing for the move.  When I say chartered I actually mean that commencement was held in Saybrook from the first one in 1702 until 1713. The ministers who founded the Collegiate School were expected to move to Saybrook but none did, and most instruction happened in the homes of various ministers scattered throughout Connecticut. Hence the plaque near the cemetery honoring Saybrook as the original home of Yale is the first of many one can find in various Connecticut towns claiming to be the site of Yale College.

        Today the picturesque triangle formed by Main Street, Old Boston Post Road, and the evocatively named Pennywise Lane also seems to have been bypassed by time in favor of the more commercial Boston Post Road (US 1) a mile away at the north end of Main Street. The white Congregational Church sits placidly across the street from the charming Deacon Timothy Pratt Inn housed in a building from1746.  Next door is the store of the Humphrey Pratt Tavern from 1790 (or so a sign tells me). Lafayette apparently made a purchase there in 1824 (and perhaps used the toilet, but the sign doesn’t inform us about that-- in a future entry I need to document the number of Washington and/or Lafayette references I have encountered on this trip. Believe me, it will take a full entry to go through all of them!)  The one clue (besides the omnipresent traffic) that we are not in the eighteenth century but rather in modern multicultural America is the latest incarnation of this establishment, a store selling Moroccan food and “home accents.” 

        Old Saybrook did not itself become “Old” until 1852 when the town of Saybrook split into two parts, the northern section maintaining the name Saybrook until the twentieth century when it was renamed Deep River (which to me sounds like the title of a movie about paddle steamers on the Mississippi). Somewhat confusingly, there is also in the town of Old Saybrook a Boston Post Road and an Old Boston Post Road.  The Old Boston Post Road is the road established by 1683 to connect Saybrook to the settlements west of the Connecticut River. This is the road that Hamilton, Birket, Knight, Stiles, Dwight, and all travelers would have taken prior to the development of what is now the Boston Post Road, also known as US 1.                 

        Sometimes the two roads merge and run as one, but frequently the older road takes a more circuitous route to the same destination, heading north to the head of a river instead of barreling over a bridge at the often wide mouths of the many rivers that pour into Long Island Sound.  The old road always goes through the historic center of town as this was the destination of most travelers seeking food and shelter.  Boston Post Road (US1) often avoids the center as the road was built for the burgeoning car culture of the early twentieth century and was built for speed, hard as that may be to believe considering how slow a drive along that road seems today. Later still the Interstate was built to bypass Boston Post Road for the same reason, to speedily move travelers through the landscape of southern Connecticut to the “more important” destinations of New York, Boston, and other major cities.

        But as the readers of this blog are well aware by now, I prefer to linger in the small towns through which the old road passes, savoring the unique atmosphere of each town. I enjoy discovering the unique aspects of these small towns, the small differences and sometimes the big differences that give each town a special character unlike that of their neighbors.

        I spent my teenage years in a ranch house in Braintree, Massachusetts that was originally built in the 1950s as one of hundreds of identical houses in a development at the south end of town.  By the time my family moved there in the late 1970s each house had acquired its own identity-- a small deck added to the back, a family room built on the side, a carefully manicured garden, or, in our case, sky-blue vinyl siding (the shockingly bright color chosen, my mother claimed at the time, because it reminded her of the colors of her native Bermuda). These towns are like the houses of Braintree Highlands: each has developed a unique character even though they were cut from the same original cloth. Some have “additions,” growing and growing like New Haven until the small town underneath is difficult to find. Some have added “sky-blue vinyl siding,” often in the form of development that changes the look of the town until it no longer retains its original charm and has become something else.  Some, like Old Saybrook, have managed to retain the classic New England town charm while simultaneously encouraging development along Boston Post Road. 

        I have spent, and will spend, a considerable amount of time walking on and writing about US 1.  For the moment I am happy to be on Old Boston Post Road, savoring the peaceful atmosphere, walking under large maples as they turn glorious shades of orange and red, passing through neighborhoods of elegant eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses, and skirting the edges of salt marshes and estuaries. As I head down Old Boston Post Road and make my way out of Old Saybrook I find another milestone by the side of the road, tucked away near some bushes and almost covered by vegetation.  This milestone has the number eighteen inscribed in Roman numerals and the letters NL, a reference to the fact that eighteen miles have passed since I left New London.  A 1775 almanac lists Shipman’s Tavern in Saybrook as eighteen miles from New London, and a 1697 almanac similarly lists John Clarke’s Tavern in Saybrook as eighteen miles from New London. Tulley’s Almanac of 1698 and Prince’s Almanac of 1732 also list the distance from New London to Saybrook as eighteen miles.  My route has necessarily been longer as I walked over the bridge on the Connecticut River instead of taking a ferry across.  But by walking slowly and looking around I was rewarded for lingering by the discovery of this stone.

        The downside of lingering is the urge to look into every nook and cranny of a place. I have only scratched the surface of this town and all of the other towns I have traveled through and written about and yet the entries can easily become quite lengthy. This is not just a product of my tendency to prolixity but also a testament to the richness of the history and culture of this country and surely lends credence to Blake’s famous lines about “seeing the world in a grain of sand.”  I had intended to cover eleven miles in this entry but have succeeded in writing only about little more than two miles.  I am thankful I have not decided to write about every grain of sand. I would still be in Boston.

        Well, time to move on. But that cafe on Main Street looks so inviting. I think I will linger just a little longer. The road will still be there when I finish my coffee.