Transportation
This
topic by its very definition is not place-specific; most modern
accounts of agents of transportation must of necessity deal with
an area much larger than a state. Thus it is doubly important
that students of Connecticut transportation first read general
works in the field. The Harvard Guide to American History comes
to our assistance once again; try Volume I, pages 417-24.
Edward C. Kirkland’s Men, Cities and Transportation:
A
Study in New England History, 1820-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1948) is standard. So is George Rogers Taylor’s The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860(1951; reissued
by M. E. Sharp of White Plains, N.Y., in 1976), which, however,
has less New England focus.
A
general history of transportation in Connecticut has not been
published, but one does exist in mimeograph form. It is History
of Transportation in Connecticut, by Theodore P. Moser,
H. Jackson Tippet, and Irving K. Butler. This work of about
400 pages
in two volumes covers colonial road-building, turnpikes, and
canals in Volume 1; and railroads, steamboats, bicycles, trolleys, automobiles
and airplanes to 1937 in Volume 2. It is an excellent study, with
full citations and a bibliography. A companion volume, “Study
of Transportation in Connecticut,” is an anonymous typescript
digest of Connecticut statutes dealing with transportation from
the beginning to 1935. There are copies of both works at the State
Library, but you will not find the latter unless you bump into
it by chance— or unless you know the call number, which is D.
P693tr. S. Another general work, though limited in scope, is
“The Naugatuck Valley,” a doctoral dissertation by John C. Herbst,
Jr., University of Michigan, 1953. The author’s object is “to
determine the significance of the road in the development of settlement
by white men in the Naugatuck Valley from earliest times to the
present day.” (p. 1) Herbst, an historical geographer, defines
roads so as to include canals and railroads. A short study of
ninety-three pages, it is almost exclusively descriptive-narrative.
The
first chapter of Thelma Kistler’s work, cited below under “Railroads,”
treats transportation in the Connecticut River Valley generally
before the coming of the railroads. Transportation historians
should not overlook the annual reports of the Connecticut Society
of Civil Engineers. There are scores of articles dealing with
highway and bridge construction and other relevant topics. One
of those is Joseph P. Wadhams, “The Regulation of Transportation
in Connecticut,” Annual Report (1933), which begins with
stage coaches and comes down to the age of automobiles.
The
history of transportation in Connecticut divides nicely into
four
well-defined eras, those of colonial road-building, turnpikes,
railroads, and automobile highways. In addition, side trips
must
be taken to view canals and steamboats.
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