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    Route 15:: The Road to Hartford
    Route 15:: The Road to Hartford
    Route 15:: The Road to Hartford
    Ebook141 pages1 hour

    Route 15:: The Road to Hartford

    By Larry Larned

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    About this ebook

    Hartford is an old New England river city separated from its eastern neighbors by the Connecticut River. With the opening of the Merritt Parkway in 1940 and construction of the Wilbur Cross Parkway inviting traffic from Boston and New York, the Connecticut legislature realized a new river bridge at Hartford would be a must for local and through traffic. This became a reality in 1942, when the Charter Oak Bridge was opened to traffic. By 1948, the system of roads and highways numbered Route 15 was completed, with Hartford as its focal point. The character of the three Connecticut parkways, the Berlin Turnpike, the Hartford Bypass, and the Charter Oak Bridge is described in Route 15: The Road to Hartford.Highway historian and retired highway engineer Larry Larned, author of Traveling the Merritt Parkway, has appeared in television and radio interviews speaking about Route 15 and the nation's early roads. Route 15: The Road to Hartford presents images from his forty years of collecting and documenting Connecticut roadside culture, architecture, and engineering. His detailed account of the road to Hartford includes personal recollections of traveling Route 15 as a youngster and studying the details along the way-the tollbooths, the bow-tied gas station attendants, the families on picnics at rest stops.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439628430
    Route 15:: The Road to Hartford
    Author

    Larry Larned

    With an extensive background in civil engineering, author and retired highway engineer Larry Larned combines images from his personal collection with a thoroughly researched and informative text to tell the story of the Merritt. Larned also draws images from local historical societies, the State of Connecticut archives, private collections, and newspaper files. Traveling the Merritt Parkway captures not only a part of Connecticut's history but our nation's as well, as transportation became a booming industry in the twentieth century. Join Larry Larned in celebrating the history of the Merritt, and the many who have enjoyed its unique bridges and scenic vistas.

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      Book preview

      Route 15: - Larry Larned

      nation.

      One

      PARKWAY MAGIC

      Parkways became part of the American consciousness during 1924, when the Bronx River Parkway was constructed through the Bronx and lower Westchester County, New York. Other parkways quickly followed, including the Hutchinson River, Cross County, Saw Mill, and Taconic, but the Merritt Parkway became the charmer of them all. Fully opened to traffic during 1940, the Merritt’s character was influenced by the 19th-century city-beautiful style. This style was popular during a period of American road-building history when attention was devoted to linking urbanized regions with graceful highways built through natural surroundings.

      As construction progressed on the Merritt Parkway, a project intended to alleviate congestion on U.S. Route 1, Connecticut State Highway Department planners turned their attention to the next link in Connecticut’s parkway system—the Wilbur Cross Parkway. Studies conducted during the late 1920s and early 1930s indicated serious traffic congestion between New Haven and Hartford on U.S. Route 5. A portion of this traffic was finding its way to Boston while avoiding the tortuous shoreline route of U.S. Route 1, suggesting that an improved road to Boston could become a future highway route. With these concerns in mind and the Merritt Parkway project under way, Connecticut legislators voted to construct the Wilbur Cross Parkway all the way to the Massachusetts state line at Union, Connecticut. This legislation also called for the Wilbur Cross Parkway to pass around Hartford, with one river crossing seven miles below the city and another river crossing above the city. Both the devastation of the 1936 flood of the Connecticut River in Hartford, which had partially isolated the city, and the realization that the congested Bulkeley Bridge was the sole river crossing between the cities of Hartford and East Hartford forced the legislature again to study the Wilbur Cross Parkway route.

      The legislature passed a bill in 1939 to finance the planned Wilbur Cross Parkway by charging tolls on the nearly finished Merritt Parkway. This legislation included building a new bridge across the Connecticut River in Hartford—the Charter Oak Bridge. The same legislation postponed the construction of the new bridge below Hartford and specified a temporary merge of the Wilbur Cross Parkway into U.S. Route 5 north of Meriden. This temporary connection was a political victory for the business interests along the Berlin Turnpike, located just north of the parkway merge to U.S. Route 5.

      The Milford Parkway was authorized during 1941. The two-mile section of the Wilbur Cross Parkway joining the toll station with U.S. Route 1 was renamed the Milford Parkway with its own set of distinctive bridges designed by George Dunkelberger. With a bold stroke, the legislature guaranteed the creation of a new route through Connecticut that emphasized parkway design at the southern end.

      On November 1, 1949, Gov. Chester Bowles of Connecticut cut a ribbon at one end of the West Rock Tunnel to open the final eight-mile section of road from Greenwich to Union.

      THE END OF THE HUTCH, THE BEGINNING OF THE MERRITT. Motorists driving into Connecticut on New York’s Hutchinson River Parkway were greeted with this view of a manicured landscape during 1946. Merritt Parkway landscape architects paid particular attention to blending new vegetation with existing natural growth.

      CONNECTICUT STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT LEADERSHIP. Commissioner James H. MacDonald is shown with his senior Connecticut State Highway Department managers during 1907. The department had just completed a study identifying a workable system of interconnected roads for the state. The proposal was passed by the Connecticut legislature during 1913. It established 14 trunk-line routes connecting hundreds of road segments. A similar proposal established Route 15 during 1948.

      RIPPLES CUT, WINTER 1935. This section of the Merritt Parkway was referred to as Ripples Cut. Located within one mile of the New York–Connecticut state line, the Ripples Cut section of the Merritt

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