The straight line distance from Guilford to Branford is almost exactly 7.0 miles.  But the day’s walk, like most of this trip, is anything but straightforward. This more mundane entry will document the types of decisions I make when planning and executing my walks.  The route I eventually travel to go from Guilford to Branford is 8.73 miles. This is 25% longer than the direct route and adds more than half an hour to what would be a walk of  2.5 hours were I able to travel directly to Branford on a level plain. And therein lies the problem: the land between Guilford and Branford is not a level plain.  It is in fact quite hilly and although these hills do not pose a problem in the slightest for a car and represent a small but interesting challenge to a cyclist, to a walker, to someone on horseback, or to someone pulling a cart with a donkey, the hills would have posed a considerable obstacle for the eighteenth-century traveler and were best skirted.

        A quick look at a topographical map (look at today’s map in “terrain” mode on Google maps as opposed to the normal street mode) shows that the route that was followed from an early date headed around some steep inclines.  Although the highest hills barely reach 250 feet, if you magnify the map you will see that the bunching of contour lines indicates that the climb is sharp if one follows the direct route. The northernmost part of the route to Branford skirts a hill of almost 250 feet before curving in a southwesterly direction and heading to the center of Branford.

        Not that the route that we call the post road was completely level: indeed the road reaches an elevation of almost 185 feet above sea level at its highest point, but the rise is gradual and the ground is firm, unlike much of the area near the coast which is mostly marshland. Leete’s Island Road (Route 146) was an early road as well, but it is actually even longer than the route I travelled, and it is unclear to me that the road extended all the way from Guilford to Branford at an early date.  Anyone who might know more about this is more than welcome to contact me so I can give as accurate a description of the early road along the shore of Long Island Sound as possible.

        Local histories provide some insight into the topography and roads of early Branford and Guilford, although they are somewhat short on details. One chronicler of the road recalled riding from New Haven to Madison in the 1860s in a carriage and mentions encountering the deep Guilford woods and the “steep Branford Hills...which are no more.”(1)  I am not sure what she means by the last comment as they seem to still exist; perhaps there was leveling of the hills at some point to make the road easier to traverse. A local history of the Stony Creek neighborhood of Branford discusses the original road leading to the shoreline village, which “caused discontent because it followed a windy old Indian path down from the King’s Highway (now Route 1). Built in 1710, it was probably Goldsmith Road, now an abandoned old road that used to more or less follow the Guilford-Branford town line.”(2)  Another book on the history of Branford describes the King’s Highway from New Haven and Branford: “to the Eastward it gradually deteriorated into a rough forest track which led to Guilford.”(3)  Ralph Smith also discusses the topography of the area in his History of Guilford: he describes Guilford Green as being “at the north end of a great plain” and says that “a large proportion of the land west of the West River and south of the post road to New Haven is poor.  Some of it is very stony, containing many rocky ledges, and some is swampy,”  while the area to the northwest, “extending into the town of Branford...is of a moderate elevation.”(4)  But a picture is worth a thousand words so I have included below several images from old maps of Guilford that show the topography and roads quite clearly. All of this information points to a circumlocutory walk from Guilford to Branford.

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         After a few hours poring over old maps in the Guilford Free Library I plot my strategy from a bench on Guilford Green. To my left a small group of kids, boys and girls, play tackle (!) football, wide receivers stumbling over piles of fallen leaves and the quarterback blinded by the sun low on the horizon on this chilly late fall afternoon.  Guilford Green is quite large and level, and is near the West River and the salt marshes south and west that lead to Long Island Sound. It was a sensible place to found a town on the Connecticut shore and indeed was the third town formed in the New Haven Colony, following Milford by about seven months in September 1639.(5)  Hamilton noted that “Gilfoord is a pritty town built upon a pleasant plain. In it there is a meeting house, upon the steeple of which is a publick clock.”(6)  Indeed the original church was one of the first in America to have a steeple clock, and the present church, which dates from 1830 and is located at the north end of the Green, also has a clock.  Birkett, who stopped at the house of “one Johnsons” also commented upon the “large Spacious green in the Centre of the Town and a fine country about it.”(7)

        Hamilton took about two hours to go from Guilford to Branford and arrived in New Haven three hours after that.  Birkett breakfasted in “West” Guilford and lodged in New Haven that evening, while Knight, who does not mention Branford, and took “the lane which turn’d down towards Guilford” and “arrived at New Haven about two a clock afternoon.”(8) In other words, all three who, to be fair, traveled on horseback, managed to make the journey from Clinton to New Haven in one day.  I am taking much longer, but then again I am trying to write about each town and give a sense of the road now and at the time my fellow travelers would have traversed this path.  Still, nice as Guilford is, it is time to head out on the road again. 

        I walk toward the First Church as well-dressed families make their way into the building for a service and turn left onto Broad Street. Here I encounter an old milestone on which I can possibly discern the H in New Haven and what looks to be a XIII (see photo below). This milestone is unlike the milestone in front of the Hyland House, which I believe is part of a more recent series of nineteenth-century milestones. This one is covered in lichen, is made of a granite-like material, and is much more worn down. In any case, I am probably on the right track so I follow Broad Street, passing a number of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century houses, to its terminus at the West River.  As the sun sits low in the southwest sky over the salt marsh, the beautiful scene makes me want to linger here longer and look for some migrating herons or egrets who might be lagging behind.  But I force myself to turn north away from the sun and walk alongside the east bank of the river on River Street.

        As I turn, I notice a sign on the house at the corner of Broad and River Streets which indicates that the “regicides” were hidden for three days in 1661 in the cellar of this building. If you recall, in the last entry I discussed the fact that the New Haven Colony harbored three of the judges who voted to execute Charles I, which was partly the reason the colony was folded into the Connecticut Colony shortly afterwards.  Not only is this a beautiful walk, it is full of evidence of the antiquity of the road.  Soon I reach Boston Post Road (US 1), which bypasses the center of Guilford to the north. Again, to reiterate for those who might be confused, the name Boston Post Road was given to many stretches of US 1 when it was constructed in the early twentieth century. Parts of Boston Post Road incorporated older stretches of the original road, but much of the newer highway, which was designed for automobile traffic, bypassed the crowded downtown areas of many towns along the route. This junction is a good example: Boston Post Road in Guilford bypasses the Green, which is reached by Boston Street from the east and then reconnects with the original road here at River Street. From here, the road heads northwest out of the historic district. 

    But first there is one more small detour on the old road: instead of heading straight west I arch up and over Boston Post Road for a few yards on York Street, passing what appears to be an old stone but which is illegible, and then passing two more early eighteenth-century houses, and finally crossing the West River at a point a few yards north of the current highway on a small bridge. I rejoin Boston Post Road for the next few miles.  A house from 1790 indicates this road too is quite old and the Westside Cemetery on top of a small rise above the salt marsh on the west side of the road confirms the antiquity of this route.  Apparently (according to Ralph Smith) the cemetery originally was located on Guilford Green but was moved here in 1877.  The houses start to thin, and I start to head uphill away from the center of Guilford as the sun gets lower in the sky.

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        After a few minutes I pass Bishop’s Orchard Farm Market and stock up on cider doughnuts, local cheese, bread, and cider, along with a few apples. There is an intriguing road called Peddlar’s Road which branches off left, but I followed it on the maps in the library and it seems to be a somewhat longer road with more hills, leading to the same place further up the road so I decide to stick to Boston Post Road.  As I approach I-95 a flock of White-Throated Sparrows flits through the underbrush on the side of the road, a sure sign that snow cannot be far behind.  On the older maps the road I am on is sometimes called Moose Hill Road and sometimes Stage Road, indicating it also served as a long distance road after the arrival of stagecoaches. The Dragon Turnpike I mentioned in the last entry most likely was not a turnpike like others developed at the time--there is no clear straight road from New Haven eastward, and it is likely the developers of the turnpike utilized the preexisting roads, hence the red sandstone milestones and the name Stage Road.

        A few minutes after I pass under the interstate highway, I pass a Volvo dealer and a “transfer station,” what used to be called the dump.  I cannot think of another dump I have passed on the entire route to date.  The road gradually but noticeably heads uphill and the sides of the road occasionally become difficult to walk along as the shoulder disappears and the ground adjacent to the road slopes sharply away.  Soon the sun sets, and I am obliged to stop at the Guilford Suites on the road from Guilford to Branford.  I sit in my comfortably appointed room to eat the food I purchased at the farm, review my notes, get some rest, and head into Branford tomorrow morning.

*****

        I am up early to continue my walk to Branford. If Hamilton, et. al. could get to New Haven in a day I will certainly give it my best shot today. Six miles to go until I reach Branford Center and about 13 in total to New Haven.  After a couple of cider doughnuts and some cider to start me off I head out into the drizzle of a chilly late fall morning.  In the daylight I can see that I am in a small commercial area somewhere between Guilford and Branford Center. However in a short while I pass an abandoned house that clearly dates from the colonial period.

A little after 8 a.m. I reach the Branford line just as a Red-Tailed Hawk zooms overhead. On the right is a curious nineteenth-century faux-Gothic fantasy called Bill Miller’s Weddings (He presumably rents the building out).

        In Branford Boston Post Road is called East Main Street.  The road levels off at about 150 feet elevation (information provided by the handy Elevation Pro App on my iPhone), and it bends from northwest to southwest, indicating I have rounded the curve of the hill and am now heading back down towards the coast and Branford Center.  At 699 East Main Street I pass the house of Edward Frisbee.  Bicknell’s Almanac lists a tavern run by the Widow Frisbee in Branford. From my research yesterday I learned that Edward Frisbee died in 1690, so there might have been a Widow Frisbee at that time.  This building sits at about 180 feet above sea level and so is probably at the highest point on the road from Guilford to Branford.  I pass another farm called Hilltop Orchards, which may indicate that we may be about to descend.  Travelers may have welcomed the sight of a tavern after the uphill climb in either direction.

        Indeed I do begin to go downhill.  Soon I enter a major commercial strip that indicates I am near the junction with Interstate 95, which I will pass under again to reach the center  of town. I notice that commuter buses are dropping people at the side of the road along this stretch and that most of the people being disgorged onto the street are Hispanic.  They all seem to be heading to work at Denny’s or Howard Johnson’s or the Target, or one of the myriad other chain stores along this stretch. They are the only pedestrians I see beside myself. This commercial stretch continues unabated after I pass under I-95. After another few minutes I cross the Branford River at a narrow point.  I can see that the salt marsh widens considerably south of this crossing, which may also have played a role in the establishment of the road this far north.  Ten minutes later I break away from Route 1 as it skirts the north side of Branford Center as it did in Guilford, and follow East Main Street past Branford High School into the center of town.  This stretch of road is lined with modest nineteenth-century residences, a pleasant break from the commercial wasteland. ten more minutes finally brings me into the charming center of Branford.  Time for a cup of coffee at the Common Ground to reflect on the day’s walk thus far. Time to plan the rest of my day.  The walking is often the part of this project that takes the least amount of time.