Trains once traveled here – Part I of II

#Middlebury #HopBrook

This stone “horseshoe” arch was one of two traversing Hop Brook and Straits Turnpike near the Hop Brook Dam. The arches served as anchors for a wooden railroad trestle traveled by New York and New England Railroad cars on their way to New York in the mid-1880s. (Robert Rafford photo)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

When David Carusello looks back on his boyhood growing up in Waterbury’s Town Plot, some of his fondest memories center on his days exploring Hop Brook, Shattuck (or Shadduck) Brook, Welton Brook and Wooster Brook at their convergence, an area which today is Hop Brook Lake. He and his pals would hike, climb and fish in the valley where these brooks endlessly rolled on their journey to merge with the Naugatuck River.

Dave’s late father, also named David, a World War II veteran who had a 50-year career with the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and Metro North, also played there as a boy (along with skinny-dipping in Hop Brook). Hop Brook Dam, built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was completed in 1968, and forever changed the landscape.

Fortunately for the Middlebury Historical Society, Dave’s knowledge and curiosity about the area prompted him to contact us and we were soon off exploring and researching the area ourselves, with Dave as our guide. A dominant part of the history of the area surrounding Hop Brook Dam is the railroad that, from about 1881 to the late 1930s, ran from Waterbury westward through Naugatuck, Middlebury, Oxford, Southbury, Newtown and on to New York state. Dave’s knowledge of the railroad lines informed and inspired our research, including an introduction to the website, TylerCityStation.info, a splendid source of information on railroads, especially local ones.

Passengers would catch the train in Waterbury on the “Highland Division” line westward. The first stop was the Union City station, also known as the Hop Brook Station, which was in Waterbury on the rise east of the present dam. It was discontinued in 1899 by legislative act. Another “Union City” Station served on the Naugatuck Railroad, which began operations in 1849.

This black and white stereopticon image belonging to the Middlebury Historical Society shows the 300-foot-long railroad trestle that once rose 90 feet above a pair of stone arches at what is now Hop Brook Park. One of the stone arches is pictured above. (Robert Rafford scan)

Coming out of Union City (or Hop Brook) Station, the train would immediately traverse a trestle built over the “canyon” wherein the four brooks converged. A stone “horseshoe” arch, still stands and traverses Hop Brook near the dam. According to TylerCityStation, this amazing remnant of the railroad through Middlebury is a “beautiful stone culvert … approximately 250 feet long, 20 feet tall and almost as wide.”

This arch is a significant reminder of the railroad, completed from Waterbury to Danbury on July 1, 1881 (Anderson’s “The Town and City of Waterbury”), which had to traverse the deep ravine the dam now dominates. The trestle was a “Georgia pine wooden latticework” spanning the entire valley, “stretching 300 feet across the ravine and 90 feet in the air …”

Construction of the New York and New England Railroad line from Waterbury to Danbury and the state line began about 1868, just after the Civil War, and the arch over Hop Brook may have been completed shortly thereafter, more than 10 years before the first railroad cars passed over it.

Construction of the railroad all the way to Fishkill, New York, was completed in 1882. By July of that year an excursion from Hartford to the Hudson River was joined by over 1,000 patrons. It left at 7 a.m. reaching the Hudson at noon, where people boarded the company’s steamer for an excursion on the river, and returned to Hartford by 10 p.m. (The Hartford Courant newspaper).

You can trace the railroad’s path through Middlebury because the 10.4-mile-long Larkin Bridle Path travels where the railroad tracks were laid. The trail was a gift to the state by the late Dr. Charles L. Larkin in 1943. The train passed though Naugatuck, Middlebury, Oxford, Southbury and Newtown, but did it ever have a stop in our beautiful town?

Bob Rafford is the Middlebury Historical Society president and Middlebury’s municipal historian. To join or contact the society, visit MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or call Bob at 203-206-4717.