I head west on the last stretch of the road in Connecticut variously known as Old Post Road or King’s Highway or Country Road or Connecticut Turnpike or US Highway 1 or the name it takes here in Greenwich, Putnam Avenue, to the New York border.  Strickland Brook widens substantially just south of Putnam Avenue before it empties into Cos Cob Harbor about a half mile south of the road, so it is easy to see why the road passes through at this spot as it is the first narrow part of the brook over which a horse or man could ford or a small bridge could be built.  A  few yards beyond the brook I reach the first of a series of short detours off Putnam Avenue called Old Post Road that were all part of the main road prior to the reconstruction of US1 in the 1920s, when the road was substantially straightened and the incline up the looming hill ahead was made less steep. This particular segment is called Old Post Road Number 6, so you can probably see how the nomenclature works, and is about 200 yards long before it rejoins Putnam Avenue.  I leave the commercial stretch of Cos Cob behind me and pass downhill through a residential area and reach a small creek at the bottom of the hill that is also plainly visible on Colles’s map at mile 37.

        Before me now looms the infamous Great Hill, more colloquially known as Put’s Hill.  As I said before, the gradient was made smoother in the early twentieth century, so driving in an automobile today it would be hard to distinguish this hill from any other incline.  Even for a walker the hill poses no significant obstacle.  This was certainly not the case in the eighteenth century. I will let the record speak for itself on this subject. The Reverend Manasseh Cutler, traveling from his home in Ipswich, Massachusetts in the summer of 1787 to New York to enlist the aid of Congress in setting up a company to settle the Northwest Territory, wrote perhaps the clearest description of the road to Horseneck: “ Arrived at Napp’s, in Horse Neck, about 10 o’clock.  The extreme heat prevented my riding on a very high hill, of most difficult access.  At a small distance from his house, the road ascends a precipice by different windings, which appears to me to be nearly sixty feet high and almost perpendicular.  As you approach it, it appears inaccessible; but nature has formed crevices in certain directions, which seem to have been designed for a road, and by labor it had been made tolerably good.” (1)

        Not surprisingly, Sarah Knight’s description was a bit more melodramatic.  On the way to New York she is more sober: “We hasted towards Rye, walking and Leading our horses neer a mile together up a prodigious high Hill,” but on her return she describes her trip in more dramatic fashion, writing about “Descending the Mountainos passage that almost broke my heart in ascending before...thro’ many and great difficulties, as Bridges were exceeding high and of vast length, steep and Rocky hills and precipices (Bugg-bears to a fearful female travailer).” (2)  In a similar vein was the Frenchman Brissot de Warville, who traveled in a coach to New York, and wrote about his “struggle against rocks and precipices.  I knew not which to admire most in the driver, his intrepidity or dexterity.  I cannot conceive how he avoided twenty times dashing the carriage in pieces, and how his horses could retain themselves in descending the staircases of rocks.  One of these is called Horseneck; a chain of rocks so steep, that if a horse should slip, the carriage must be thrown into a valley two or three hundred feet.” (3)

        James Birket, upon leaving the inhospitable Mead Tavern, wrote less dramatically: “From that Churlmeads at Horseneck we rode three miles of the most Miserable rode to Birom river...” (4) Hamilton actually seemed less critical of the road than usual when he described riding “a stonny and hilly road to Horseneck.” (5) I leave the final word to President George Washington who, on his way from New York to Boston on Friday October 16, 1789, mentions  “passing Horseneck, six miles distant from Rye, the Road through which is hilly and immensely stoney, and trying to Wheels and Carriages,” and writes that on his return home he was forced to stop in Rye “on account of some lame horses... The badness of these roads having been described as I went, I shall say nothing of them now.” (6)

*****

        Frederic Wood, in his Turnpikes of New England notes that a toll gate was set up on the west side of the hill near Horseneck Brook in 1792, the “proceeds to be applied to the maintenance of the road.  Thus was created the third tollgate in America.  This was an effort to improve conditions we have already noticed in the New York Advertiser’s statement of the road along the Sound being ‘rough, rocky, and uncomfortable’ and often unpassable for wheeled vehicles.  The road affected was a part of the Old Post Road between Boston and New York, a route which had been in use then for over a century, and which formed a part of the journey of Madam Knight.” (7)  In 1806 the Connecticut Turnpike Company was formed to improve the passage from the New York border to Fairfield, incorporating this section of the road, and many changes were made in the course of the road as I have described in previous entries. (8)  And so began the first of many changes to the road between Boston and New York.

*****

        The main difficulty I encounter as I climb the hill is the fact that the ploughs are spraying snow onto the sidewalk which makes it very difficult to walk. There is, however, too much traffic on East Putnam Avenue here to risk meandering up the hill on the street so it is quite a trudge up. Near the top I discover a small park adjacent to the road with a stone monument sitting at the crest of the hill.  I make my way across the snow-covered ground up to the monument to see what it is for and discover it is a memorial to General Israel Putnam’s legendary ride down the hill in February 1779.  The illustration below is an exaggerated recreation of the actual ride but does convey the sense of drama at riding a horse straight down a steep rocky hill with a posse of Redcoats hot on your tail.  The story is somewhat clouded by legend, but it appears that General Tryon had sent an advance raiding party along the King’s Highway from New York with whom General Putnam came into contact on the road at the top of the hill near what today is called Putnam Cottage. The soldiers recognized him and attempted to capture him.  Putnam had a better knowledge of the various “shortcuts” down the hill and plunged headlong down what has been called a cowpath, but what others refer to as a kind of natural staircase, rather than take the looping road visible to the right of the picture.  This ‘precipitous‘ action allowed him to escape as nobody dared to follow him and the legend of General Putnam plunging off a cliff on horseback was born. (9)

        The hill continues past the memorial park until it it levels off at about 180 feet above sea level, not much of a “mountain,” but high enough that the spire of the Second Congregational Church is visible from far away.  On the way, at 243 East Putnam Avenue, I pass Putnam’s Cottage, which I prefer to think of as Knapp’s Tavern, built in 1696 and listed the very next year in John Clapp’s Almanac for 1697: “From Rye, thence to Horse-neck, 7 m. thence to Dan Weeds [ ?? --it is hard to read this name] at Stanford, 7 m.”  Knapp’s is the place that Reverend Manasseh Cutler stopped at en route to visit Congress in 1787. It is also listed in Benjamin Low’s 1790 Almanac, still seven miles from Stamford but only five miles from the Widow Haviland’s in Rye, which we shall visit in the near future.  Knapp’s Tavern is on Colles’s map, near the Episcopal Church and a short distance east of the Congregational Church, at about 36.5 miles from New York.  The modern version of the churches are still roughly in the same location today. One other interesting detail to point out is Colles’s rendition of the road up the Great Hill. He draws a sort of loop that heads north before turning back south almost exactly where Old Church Road is today, near the Putnam Memorial.  Curiously, he does not indicate that the hill is particularly steep as he does a little further down the road near the Byram River. (see map entry 52)

*****

        The distance remaining to New York is becoming increasingly important to me as I near the state line.  Up to this point I have tried to remain focused on one town at a time in order to give the road and the towns along it the proper attention.  After all, one of the main purposes of this endeavor is to celebrate the journey not the destination.  It is inevitable, however, that at some point the traveler’s thoughts turn to the final destination, and the shadow of New York City looms increasingly larger over the landscape the closer I get, especially now, as I am certain that the scenery in the distance from the summit of the hill is that of New York State.  Perhaps if the name of the state and the city were different I would not already be anticipating my arrival. Regardless of the source of my anxiety, I must curb my urge to rush headlong through the next thirty miles to reach my destination. First of all I have to get out of Connecticut, and even then I must still pass through Westchester County before I reach the official city limit.  After that I must cross the Bronx, and, finally, I have to walk the entire length of Manhattan Island before I can truly say I have completed the goal I set out to accomplish when I started this project.  Each of these sections deserves to be given the same treatment as the towns I have visited in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and thus I will try to put off thinking about the elephant in the road ahead (elephant in the room? 120 million pound gorilla in the road? 120 million pound big apple? what is the appropriate metaphor to describe the big object that awaits?). 

        That does not mean I can’t use this opportunity to examine the math that almanac writers have used in calculating distances between the taverns on the road from Boston to New York.  One thing is clear--a lot of times they just made it up!  It is apparent that many almanac writers lifted material directly from other almanacs.  A careful perusal of the tavern lists sometimes shows that mistakes in simple addition were made that created abnormally short or long distances between taverns.  It is amusing to discover another almanac writer repeat the exact same mistake in their list (incidentally, when I was a teacher this was the easiest way to catch kids who copied assignments from other students).  What is more amusing is that most of the almanac writers knew enough to add up the distances they listed for each tavern to be sure that the sum was equal to the distance given as the total between Boston and New York. It is clear to me what happened when a mistake was discovered: they just changed one of the distances between two taverns to make up the discrepancy.  For instance, one almanac writer somehow skipped Stamford entirely, thus missing a seven mile stretch. Did he come up with less than the 278 miles which was considered the standard distance in the early eighteenth century? Not at all! Instead he made the distance from Branford to Guilford seven miles longer, probably after figuring out the math did not work and reasoning nobody would argue in the days before odometers and GPS and Google maps.  The twenty-first century teacher has caught you though, Mr. Tulley!  Let this be a lesson to all cheaters--you will eventually get caught, even if it takes three hundred years!

        Sometimes the distances listed must be based on sheer ignorance of the geography, or, perhaps more generously, there is something I am missing about the route that changed over the course of time.  In the very earliest almanacs from the 1690s that first began listing the mileage between taverns along the road, the distance from the Post Office in New York to “Knap’s at Horse-Neck” where I am now standing, can be calculated by adding up the distances between individual taverns. Adding up the numbers from John Clapp’s 1697 tavern list, for instance, results in a distance of 43 miles. A century later, Benjamin Low’s 1790 list yields a total distance of 39 miles between the same two locations. Christopher Colles’s 1789 map shows the distance to be about 36.5 miles.  Who is correct?  Part of the problem seems to lie in the fact that early tavern lists record the distance from the Post Office in Manhattan to Kingsbridge at the northern tip of the island as 18 miles, while on Colles’s map the distance is no greater than 14.5 miles, a 3.5 mile discrepancy. That leaves 25 miles from Kingsbridge to Knap’s  by Clapp’s calculation, 24 miles on Benjamin Low’s tavern list (he gives 15 miles as the distance required to traverse Manhattan Island from north to south, more in line with Colles’s figure), and 22 miles based on Colles’s map.  Since Low and Colles were published close to each other, the discrepancy cannot be explained by road improvements and must come down to a miscalculation, or a deliberate detour on the part of Low.  If you calculate the distance between the taverns Low lists, which are all plainly visible on Colles’s map, the discrepancy can be nailed down more specifically.  Low records the distance from Horton’s in “Maroneck” (Mamaroneck) and Haviland’s in Rye as six miles.  Colles’s map shows Haviland’s almost exactly at mile 31, while showing two separate buildings called Horton’s only a few hundred yards apart from each other (I will have to investigate this!) between miles 27 and 28. The math-- 31-27=4 --seems pretty straightforward to calculate the maximum possible distance between the two taverns along the Post Road.  Conclusion: typo and/or math mistake.  As Colles’s map has been incredibly accurate thus far (and I have followed it for forty of the seventy-two miles) I tend to favor Colles in any argument. Thus I would say that, rather than Clapp’s 43 miles or Low’s 39 miles, I have 36.5 miles to go to reach the southern tip of Manhattan.  Perhaps en route I will discover some change in the road that would account for the discrepancy between Clapp and Low; until then I will stick with Colles.  I will come back to this subject in a future entry and discuss the changes in the  tavern lists over time which is actually pretty illuminating.  Right now I need to focus on the last three miles in Connecticut.

        The townhouse in Greenwich was located here in Horseneck near the Second Congregational Church. There is no townhouse shown on Christopher Colles’s map of the Greenwich area as the soldiers under General Tryon who burned Norwalk and Fairfield, and chased General Putnam to the edge of the “cliff” in February 1779, burned the building down that same day, and it was not rebuilt until 1836.  From this fact alone it is apparent that Horseneck was already the center of life in Greenwich by the eighteenth century.  In 1854 when the Borough of Greenwich was created, I suppose they could have called it Horseneck, but I think we can all agree that the name has an unseemly ring to it.  Better to call the center of Greenwich the same name as that of the town.  The town house today is on Greenwich Avenue a few yards past the Congregational church.  From Putnam Avenue,  Greenwich Avenue descends steeply away to the coast, and resembles nothing if not the High Street of some English county town like Guilford or Shaftesbury, which I suppose is not accidental.  That this is still the center of town is illustrated by the fact that the post road changes from East Putnam to West Putnam after passing Greenwich Avenue.  Hamilton found the town of Horseneck to be “scattered,” however, which implies that there might not have been any real “center “ at all at the time.

        At the top of Greenwich Avenue is another one of the replica milestones similar to the one I saw in Stamford. This one helpfully tells me I am 27 miles from the county seat at Fairfield.  Since Colles shows Fairfield Center at mile 63 from New York, the number on the stone implies that I should be 36 miles from New York, as shown on Colles’s map, which works based on the observations above about the location of various structures on his map and their contemporary location.  Colles produced a set of six sheets covering 72 miles from New York to Stratford. As this is the midway point I would expect to have three sheets left to cover and a quick look at the map shows that mile 36 is at the very top of Sheet #3 on the right hand strip (they read from right to left).  Halfway down the right-most strip map on Sheet #3 is the Byram River, with the words written along the east bank of the river “Enter Connecticut.”  That is my destination today.

        I descend the hill, cross Horseneck Brook, and head up another hill.  Putnam Avenue in Greenwich, although a busy thoroughfare, has had quite a lot of interesting scenery and places of interest. The mile or so west of Greenwich center, however,  is more typical of US1, lined as it is with automobile dealerships and other commercial buildings.  At the top of the next hill I encounter another of the replica milestones, indicating 28 miles to Fairfield. A few yards beyond that I take another short detour on one of the extant Old Post Road short stretches I mentioned earlier (this one is #2; I am not sure what happened to Old Post Road #5 and #4, although Edgewood Avenue, which I passed a few yards behind me, seems like a candidate for Old Post Road #4.  The junction of Putnam and Edgewood Avenues is the site of the “Fairfield 28” milestone).  Old Post Road #2 becomes, confusingly, Old Post Road #3 about halfway along its length.

        Colles shows the road in this area winding through hills. It is certainly hilly here and these small offshoots of Old Post Road from Putnam Avenue seem to make sense based on the map. Holly Lane, which is the name of the street on the other side of Putnam Avenue from the junction of Old Post Road #3 and US1, looks a likely candidate for part of the old road so I cross the busy main road and follow the quieter Holly Lane for a few yards, until it too rejoins Putnam Avenue.  A few yards down Putnam Avenue another fifty yard walk on Old Post Road (presumably #1) allows me to escape the increasingly treacherous main road.  The snow is piled higher onto the sidewalk than in earlier stretches as there is no shoulder here, making the last few yards in Connecticut a difficult one.  I commiserate with my fellow travelers at this point about the state of the roads in Connecticut as I head down the last hill to the Byram River.  It is clear walking down this hill that a good deal of blasting must have occurred to build US1 because there are great chunks of sheer rock lining both sides of the road. 

        Incongruously, near the bottom of the hill, by the river, is an old colonial house built by a Thomas Lyons, sitting on a picturesque corner lot.  It would be a beautiful scene except for the fact that here at the river, a complicated traffic circle has been set up to shunt traffic in various directions, making it exceptionally noisy, with a large amount of traffic, as well as difficult to cross the street.  Suddenly my urge to get out of Connecticut becomes very strong, and I dash across the busy street to reach the Byram River Bridge.  Ahead of me is a sign saying ‘Welcome to New York, the Empire State.”  I cross the narrow and somewhat disappointing river ( I have built up this border crossing in my mind to such great proportions that I imagined this river being about as wide as the Mississippi; instead it is only about 20 yards wide), and my journey through Connecticut is at an end.

*****

        I have traveled about 40 miles on Colles’s map from the bridge at the Housatonic River to the bridge at the Byram River, the entire length of Fairfield County.  More to the point, I have traveled on foot along the entire coast of the state of Connecticut, a distance of 143 miles.  Hamilton claims to have ridden 155 miles in Connecticut and was glad to see the back of it.  Birket states that upon entering the “Government of New York... we had not seen such cheer since we left Rhode Island,” and both travelers had very nice things to say about New York, as did Sarah Knight, surprisingly, as we shall see.  I am happy to be in New York, but my assessment of the state of Connecticut is much more positive.

        Prior to this trip my only experiences with Connecticut were limited to visits to New Haven and Hartford, and a two week AP Biology training course at the Taft School in Watertown. I have also taken the train and driven through the state on countless occasions, but rarely stopped, in my haste to get to New York and points south.  The towns of coastal Connecticut were a mystery to me, names I saw on maps or on road signs, glimpses I caught looking out a window of a vehicle passing through at 65 miles hour, and not much more.  This trip has given me an entirely new perspective on Connecticut and the memories of the beautiful scenery I observed, the interesting things I learned, and the people that I met in many of the towns will stay with me forever.  I found the people neither “churlish” nor “enthusiastick,” but rather friendly and welcoming, and I rarely encountered anyone who was not at least polite.  I have for the most part only positive things to say about Connecticut and look forward to returning to the small towns, especially Stonington, Niantic, and Old Lyme, as well as the cities like New Haven very soon. 

        One complaint I do have though: could you make your state a little shorter? Nearly half my walk has been in Connecticut and 40% of the total distance I will end up traveling will have been in Connecticut.  Anyone who thinks the states of New England are puny should walk across Connecticut.  It should not take the four months I spent traveling and writing about it, but it might once you start walking because you will want to stop a lot and smell the nutmeg.