Date: Fri 30-May-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

Railroad-Hawleyville-Mitchell

Full Text:

Long-Gone Railroads Once Made Hawleyville A Thriving Hub

(with photos)

BY KAAREN VALENTA

If it hadn't been for the invention of the automobile and the subsequent

decline of the railroads, Newtown residents probably would be describing

themselves today as living "in the greater Hawleyville area."

"In railroad schedules printed in the early 1900s, Hawleyville was printed in

capital letters, much bigger than the names of Newtown and other towns. That's

because Hawleyville was a major junction - at the peak, 153 trains passed

through daily," said Mary Mitchell, a local historian.

Today a single track is all that remains in Newtown of the 19th Century

Housatonic Railroad, which pioneered railroading in western Connecticut in the

1840s. But this line, which stretched from Bridgeport to Pittsfield, Mass.,

was a real boon for Newtown, Ms Mitchell told the members of the St Rose

Women's Club recently during a program about railroad walking trails -

rail-trails - in Newtown.

Uncovering the history of the railroads in Newtown, and the subsequent

publication of the Newtown Trails II book by Mary Mitchell and Albert

Goodrich, started quite by chance when the two friends were out hiking in

February 1992 and stopped to chat with Crawford Benedict near his former home

on Currituck Road.

"Al asked him why Tunnel Road was called Tunnel Road," Mary Mitchell recalled.

"Mr Benedict said it was because of the 250-foot long tunnels which the

Housatonic Railroad blasted out of solid rock in the 1840s."

Studying old town maps and records, some borrowed from railroad buff Bob

Stokes and former Newtown Historical Society President Ed Storrs, and poring

over back issues of The Newtown Bee , the two learned that by 1849 the

Housatonic Railroad had reached Pittsfield, and on New Year's Day, 1850,

passenger traffic began.

"Newtown at that time had five or six villages connected by muddy footpaths

and cart paths," Mary Mitchell said. "The railroad made Newtown into a modern

town."

The Area Becomes

Hawleyville

Originally the area around Hawleyville was called Lands End. It was mostly

woods and farmland owned by Glover Hawley and his relatives. When the railroad

reached Newtown in February 1840, it demanded one-quarter mile of Glover

Hawley's farm, claiming its right of eminent domain which had been granted by

the state. Mr Hawley agreed - as long as station was named Hawleyville.

"In 1850, Glover Hawley built an opulent Italianate house for his wife and two

daughters," Ms Mitchell said. "He then left and went to California to prospect

for gold. He came back with quite a bit of money, then died. The family left

and the house became an inn - really more like a boarding house where railroad

people stayed."

Other businesses sprang up in Hawleyville: Blackman's Hotel and Saloon,

Baker's Furniture, The Village Barn nightclub, the Hawleyville Inn, Borden's

Creamery (one of five dairies in the town), and the Platt Lumber Company.

The Housatonic Railroad also established stations in Newtown, on the north

side of Church Hill Road, and in Botsford. In the 1872 the Shepaug Valley

Railroad built a line through Newtown along Pond Brook Road and up to

Litchfield. The Danbury & Norwalk Railroad built a line from Bethel to

Hawleyville that same year.

In 1881, the New York & New England opened a line from Waterbury to Brewster,

N.Y., through Hawleyville. At this time, a new station was built to serve the

four railroads.

"By now there were 13 tracks in the switching yard, which was located behind

the lumberyard," Ms Mitchell said.

Jesse James (no, not the outlaw), who was stationmaster in Hawleyville from

1890 to 1934, reported in The Newtown Bee that in the early 1900s, 153 trains

of all sorts - passenger, milk, freight, livestock and mail - passed through

the station every 24 hours.

The Busiest Station

There were other stations as well: the Sandy Hook station on Glen Road and the

North Newtown Station near Echo Valley Road were part of the old New York &

New England line, and the Shepaug line's Hanover Springs station near Hanover

Road.

But at Hawleyville travelers made connections for Waterbury and Hartford,

Bethel, Norwalk and New York, Newtown, New Haven and Bridgeport, as well as

all of the Housatonic Valley and western Massachusetts. It was a busy place.

In 1890 Alpheus Geer Baker, a former Litchfield resident who became a cattle

driver on the Texas-Colorado trails, came to Hawleyville and opened a

twin-gabled store on the north side of the tracks where he sold stoves, parlor

suites, pots and pans and other household equipment. In 1897 he also built a

chapel on Hawleyville Road (Route 25), which is now used as a workroom for an

upholstery shop.

William Honan, Sr, operated a combination feed and grain store and general

store in Hawleyville from 1912 to 1955. The building, now the site of the

Hawleyville Deli, also housed the post office after 1941 until it moved to its

present location in the former Platt Lumber Company building.

William A. Upham was another catalyst in the development of Hawleyville. In

1916 he rented the Baker store - later buying it - and started a business

selling peanut butter. When the outbreak of World War I cut off his supply of

peanut oil, he took another initiative, turning the building into a factory to

make tea bags which originally were sold by Sir Thomas Lipton to the

restaurant and hotel trade.

"Over the years, Mr Upham's businesses provided quite a source of employment,"

Ms Mitchell said. "He later retired and sold the building, which became

DeSherbinin Products just before World War II. It is now the site of the

[Teddy & Arthur Edelman Ltd] leather company."

Rail Service Declines

Mr Upham also built a miniature golf course, set up a volunteer fire

department, and, in 1928, created an elaborate Japanese Tea Garden complete

with a restaurant, ponds and bridges.

But with the increasing popularity of the automobile luring the public farther

afield on day trips, novelties like the Tea Garden began to lose their appeal

and the railroads began to lose passengers and profits.

In May 1919, The Newtown Bee deplored how often trains were late. Service was

poor. In 1930 Glover Hawley's house was demolished, followed two years later

by the demolition of the Hawleyville station. Service through Newtown was

discontinued in 1936. The railroad bridges were dismantled in 1948.

"In 1949 the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, which had bought up

almost all the railroads, pulled up the rails and sold them for scrap, and

sold the land," Mary Mitchell said.

Only the Housatonic Railroad has kept its identity. For 12 years it ran

excursions from Canaan to Falls Village then, in December 1992, the railroad

bought the Conrail portion from Falls Village through Newtown to Derby.

Old railroad beds are usually easy to find today because they follow a

straight line and have limited amounts of vegetation growing on them.

"Cinders, which the firemen threw from the locomotives, are very hostile to

the growth of vegetation," Ms Mitchell explained. "And lots of old railroad

paraphernalia still can be found alongside the tracks."

The old rail beds make excellent hiking trails, so Mary Mitchell and Al

Goodrich asked the current owners of the land for permission to create public

rail-trails there. Although some declined, enough agreed to enable the pair to

create the trails which are described in their second trail book.

The book, with its history of the railroads and maps of the rail-trails, is

available at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library for $15. All proceeds are donated

to the library.