Ye oIde commute

Written by Jim Cameron
Tuesday, 23 March 2010 08:24

When the big storm hit last week, like many in my town, I was left in the cold and dark for several days. The Darien Library became my second home, affording me a chance to finally read historian Kenneth Reiss’ The Story of Darien Connecticut, an excellent new book.

What I found was that the story of this “bedroom” community’s growth was intimately linked to transportation.

As early as 1699, roads had been laid out on routes still used today. But where today those roads are lined with trees (whose felling by the storm left us without power or passage), by the mid-1700s most of Southern Fairfield County had been cleared of all trees to allow for farming. Those mighty oaks taken out by the storm were not as old as we’d thought.

In the 1770s the maintenance of Country Road (now known as Old Kings Highway) was the responsibility of the locals. Every able-bodied man and beast could be enlisted for two days each year to keep the roads in good shape. Traffic back then consisted mostly of farm carts, horses and pedestrians.

By 1785 there was only one privately owned “pleasure” vehicle in all of Stamford, a two-wheeled chaise owned by the affluent John Davenport.

At the end of the 18th Century, it was clear that we needed more roads; and the state authorized more than 100 privately funded toll roads to be built. The deal was that, after building the road and charging tolls, once investors had recouped their costs plus 12% annual interest, the roads would revert to state control. Of the 121 toll-road franchises authorized by the state Legislature, not one met that goal.

One of the first such roads was the original Connecticut Turnpike, now Route 1, the Boston Post Road. Another was the Norwalk to Danbury “pike,” now Route 7.

Four toll gates were erected: Greenwich, Stamford, the Saugatuck River Bridge and Fairfield. No tolls were collected for those going to church, militia muster or farmers going to the mills. Everyone else paid 15 cents at each toll barrier.

The locals quickly found roads to bypass the tolls that were nicknamed “shunpikes.”

Regular horse-drawn coaches carried passengers from Boston to New York. And three days a week there was a coach from Darien to Stamford, connecting to a steamboat to New York.

The last tolls were collected in 1854, shortly after the New York and New Haven Railroad started service. An 1850 timetable showed three trains a day from Darien to New York City, each averaging two hours and 10 minutes. Today Metro-North makes the run in just under an hour.

The one-way fare was 70 cents versus today’s $12.25 at rush hour.

By the 1870s, Darien was seeing what we today call “transit-oriented development,” as full-page ads lured city dwellers to newly built homes near the Noroton station, which opened in the 1870s.

In the 1890s the one-track railroad was replaced with four tracks, above grade and eliminating street crossings. The trolleys arrived.

The Stamford Street Railroad ran up the Post Road, connecting in downtown Darien with the Norwalk Tramway (rattling along Railroad Avenue, now known as Tokeneke Road); the latter also offered open-air excursion cars to the Roton Point Amusement Park in the summer.

Riders could catch a trolley every 40 minutes for a nickel a ride. There were so many trolley lines in the state that it was said you could go all the way from New York to Boston, connecting from line to line, for just five cents a ride.

The trolleys were replaced by buses in 1933.

Fast forward to the present, where we again are debating tolls on our roads, possible trolley service in Stamford, and transit-oriented development is all the rage. Have things really changed that much over 200 years?

Jim Cameron has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years. He is chairman of the Connecticut Metro-North/Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or trainweb.org/ct. For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see talkingtransportation.blogspot.com.

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