Paved Roads & Public Money. Richard DeLuca

the arrival of Thomas Hooker and his party of English settlers, who could be watched crossing the river on a raft to meet the “Native Americans” waiting for them in Hartford. The celebrations were attended by some 200,000 residents and out-of-town visitors and concluded with a stunning fireworks display and a nighttime illumination of the bridge and river area.²⁶

      As the Hartford Bridge neared completion, the General Assembly enacted a law (1907) that freed the remaining toll bridges in the state that were still privately owned, as well as two new toll crossings that had been erected across the Connecticut River since the Hartford Bridge was first freed in 1889, one in Thompsonville in 1893, the other in Middletown in 1896. With this act, the long and torturous journey to free the last privately owned toll bridges in Connecticut came to an end.²⁷

      Sand hogs at work, excavating the piers for the stone arch bridge below the water of the Connecticut River. Spanning a Century: The Buckeley Bridge 1908–2008.

       Courtesy of ConnDOT

       Stone arch bridges are built around a wood-framed falsework, which is removed once the arch is completed. Spanning a Century: The Buckeley Bridge 1908–2008.

       Courtesy of ConnDOT

      With all private bridge crossings back under public control, the legislature turned its attention to the problem of replacing the state’s remaining ferry crossings with bridges especially along major trunk line routes, such as the lower post road to Boston. That ferry crossings could be problematic in the early days of the automobile can be seen in the experience of one driver and his companion who were on an auto tour of Southern New England in the summer of 1901. In his memoir of the adventure, Two Thousand Miles on an Automobile, the driver recorded their rather quaint experience crossing the Connecticut River on their way from Providence, Rhode Island, to New Haven:

      At Lyme there is a very steep descent to the Connecticut River, which is a broad estuary at that point. The ferry is a primitive side-wheeler, which might carry two automobiles, but hardly more. It happened to be on the far shore. A small boy pointed out a long tinhorn hanging on a post, the hoarse blast of which summons the sleepy boat. There is no landing, and it seems impossible for our vehicle to get aboard; but the boat has a long, shovel-like nose projecting from the bow, which ran upon the shore, making a perfect gangplank. Carefully balancing the automobile in the center so as not to list the primitive craft, we made our way deliberately to the other side, the entire crew of two men—engineer and captain—coming out to talk with us.²⁸

      Such antiquated ferry service became more troublesome as time went on and the volume of traffic on the lower post road increased. In 1909, the legislature created the Saybrook & Lyme Connecticut River Commission, specifically to build a new bridge across the mouth of the river between Old Saybrook and Lyme. An existing steam-powered ferry had been handling traffic across the river for more than a decade, but with the volume of traffic crossing the river approaching fourteen thousand vehicles each year, a more modern, more permanent crossing was needed. The commission was authorized to build a low-level drawbridge across the river, to a maximum cost of $500,000, to be paid for with the general funds of the state. It was the first bridge to be built by and paid for by the state of Connecticut.²⁹

      The Saybrook Bridge was opened on August 24, 1911, by “a monster automobile parade” of five hundred cars. The design of the bridge was a Warren steel truss, 1,800 feet long, with a bascule-type draw near the western side of the span. Since there was some doubt at first as to where to position the draw section, the bridge’s chief engineer used the opportunity to conduct a unique experiment. “Two rowboats with red and white flags during the day and white lights at night were anchored at the edge of the proposed channel and all tug boat and steamboat captains using the river were asked to observe this channel and suggest to the engineer any changes desired by them in its location. The rowboats were shifted from time to time until the shipping interests using the river were satisfied with the location.” That way the final location of the draw span was determined.³⁰

      About this time, a new commissioner, Charles J. Bennett, replaced MacDonald as head of the state’s highway agency. At his urging—and with automobility now clearly here to stay—the one-man highway commission was reorganized into the Connecticut Highway Department (CHD), a bureaucratic agency more commensurate with the demands of the auto age. A deputy commissioner was hired to oversee all planning and construction, and the state was divided into seven construction districts, each with its own chief engineer. In addition, a superintendent of repairs was put in charge of maintenance, with each district assigned its own supervisor, foreman, and laborers. Meanwhile, a chief clerk was hired to oversee all financial accounts and record-keeping for the department.³¹

      Between 1915 and 1918, as part of its expanding duties, the CHD was made responsible for the construction and maintenance of all highway bridges on the trunk line system. With this authority, the CHD began replacing all remaining ferries along the lower post road with new bridges designed and built by state engineers: in Westport in 1917, in Stratford in 1921, in Groton also in 1921 (by converting an existing railroad bridge to auto use), and in Mystic in 1922.³² By the mid-1920s, with the trunk line system still expanding to include more miles of primary and secondary highways, all major river crossings on the system had been bridged to accommodate automobile and truck traffic. In 1923, bridge tolls were removed from all public crossings still charging them, making Connecticut, for the first time since its founding, a toll-free state—the only exceptions being those tolls charged by the last three ferries remaining in the state: the Windsor to South Windsor ferry, the Rocky Hill to Glastonbury ferry, and the Chester to Hadlyme ferry, all low-volume crossings on the Connecticut River, and all now under the auspices of the Connecticut Highway Department.³³

       A FEDERAL-STATE PARTNERSHIP IS FORMED

      Of course, the coming of the automobile and the need for better highways was hardly a phenomenon unique to Connecticut; it was happening nationwide. Perhaps the best measure of the speed with which automobility took hold of the nation—and the pressure for improved roads that increasing auto traffic placed on highwaymen in every state—were the sales of Henry Ford’s Model T, the first car manufactured at an affordable price with the common man in mind. Introduced in 1907 at a price of $850 (when most other automobiles cost several thousands of dollars), by 1915 the sales price dropped to half that amount. By that time, Ford had already sold more than one million Model T automobiles, which he joked, mocking the efficiency of his own mass production techniques, could be had in any color, “so long as it was black.” Over the next decade, Ford’s assembly line methods lowered the unit price of the nation’s most popular automobile even further, until one could be had in 1924 for a mere $290. By that time, ten million Model T Fords had already been sold, and production was approaching two million vehicles a year.³⁴ With thanks to Henry Ford and his Model T, the automobile went from being a luxury plaything for the rich in the 1910s to a necessity for the everyman in the 1920s. When a woman from Muncie, Indiana, was asked by a Department of Agriculture interviewer in the 1920s, “Why do you own a Model T but you don’t own a bathtub?” she replied with a surprised look, “You can’t go to town in a bathtub.”³⁵

      As automobility became increasingly common, many other states formed highway departments and initiated statewide road improvement programs. As their number increased, they gathered at annual “road conventions,” like the one hosted by Commissioner MacDonald in Hartford in 1904, to share their knowledge and experiences. Some seven hundred highwaymen from twenty-eight states attended the Hartford convention, along with a federal representative from the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Road Inquiry.³⁶ Such gatherings established a social bond among highwaymen and a national consensus on certain policy issues, in particular the need for federal funding of good roads. By 1914, as Congress studied the possibility of a national highway program, state highwaymen created a nationwide organization of their own called the American Association of State Highway Officials