As runners pass the first mile mark, they begin to leave the town of Litchfield behind and enter the bucolic landscapes of ponds and forests that are characteristic of the race. It is easy to be lulled into thinking that the landscape always appeared this way. This mindset, however, will cause the runner to miss a significant piece of the town’s history.

The entrance to the Litchfield Greenway on South Lake Street, once the route of the Shepaug Valley Railroad.

Reaching the bottom of Gallows Hill, the runner briefly turns on to South Lake Street. Here, the Shepaug Valley Railroad (later the Shepaug, Litchfield and Northern Railroad) crossed the road as it neared the end of its line at the Litchfield Station on Russell Street. A little over a mile of the railway’s path is preserved as the Litchfield greenway.

A receipt for stock in the Shepaug Valley Railroad purchased in 1870 by Captain George Colvocoresses of Litchfield. Courtesy of Litchfield Historical Society.

The construction of the railroad was both celebrated and feared by the residents of Litchfield. When Edwin McNeil surveyed the line in the 1860s, he was met with threats by armed farmers. Construction began in 1870, with one crew beginning work in Litchfield and another in the Hawleyville section of Newtown. By January 1872, regular rail service was running to Litchfield. What passengers most noted about the journey was how winding it was; in one stretch, 32 miles of track with between 150 and 200 curves were needed to cover what the crow could travel in 17 miles.

On this map of Connecticut railroads, the Shepaug Valley is depicted as a thin line between Hawleyville and Litchfield, indicating its relative traffic compared to the Housatonic to the west of the Central New England to the North.

Still, the railroad did provide greater access to the outside world for Litchfield residents. A passenger train that left Litchfield at 6:25 a.m. reached Hawleyville at 8:00 a.m., where a connecting train reached New York City’s Grand Central Station at 10:33 a.m. The line also transported iron, granite, manufactured goods, and ice from the county’s ice houses. The line went bankrupt twice in its first fifteen years, merged with the New York, New Haven and Hartford in 1898 (all the state’s railroads were eventually part of this line, known as “the Consolidated”), and ceased operations in 1948.

The Litchfield train station, on Russell Street. 

Runners will again encounter the remnants of the Shepaug Valley Railroad when they exit the Plumb Hill fields and turn right on to Whites Woods Road. Here the railroad crossed from one side of the road to the other. And when runners turn from Bissell Road on to Whitehall Road and enter the White Memorial Foundation, they will be very near the point where the SVR turned from running parallel to Route 202 and headed toward its termination at Russell Street.

For more information on the history of the Litchfield Road Race, see Lou Pellegrino’s forthcoming book A History of the Litchfield Hills Road Race: In Smallness there is Beauty. (Available May 2016)

Richard Wallace of Litchfield died in 1794 at age 38. There are few extant records of his life in town; he participated in land tansactions, married, and had a family. In death, however, he was remembered with a striking gravestone in the East Cemetery.

The text makes it clear how those close to him thought he should be remembered:

In him, the State lost a useful and respectable citizen, his acquaintance a man worthy of their friendship; his domestic connections, an affectionate husband and tender parent, in testimony of esteem, his surviving relatives have created this memorial.

Equally interesting is the symbolism employed on the stone. A relatively generic rendering of Wallace, with closed eyes, is surrounded by grapes and vines. The grapes are representative of the Eucharistic wine. The vine is indicative of God’s relationship with man. As is written in the Gospel of John, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing.”

An early Litchfield baseball team. (Courtesy of the Litchfield Historical Society)

After Litchfield’s seemingly endless winter, the arrival of warm temperatures and of baseball’s opening day finally let us think spring has arrived. Fittingly, markers denote sites pertinent to the lives of two local baseball legends.

Eddie Collins was born Millerton, NY, (just over the border from Litchfield County) in 1887, and graduated from Columbia University at a time when very few major leaguers were college graduates. (Lou Gehrig also attended Columbia). Two years before graduating, Collins had signed with Philadelphia Athletics so he played professionally as Eddie Sullivan to protect his amateur status at Columbia.  Collins went on to play 25 seasons in the Major Leagues, retiring at the age of 43. Over his career he won four World Series titles (3 with A’s, 1 with White Sox),  with a .333 average and 3314 hits. While a member of the infamous 1919 White Sox team that became known as the “Black Sox” for throwing the World Series, Collins was not suspected of being in on the fix, as he was believed to play have played honestly. Bill James, the noted baseball statistical analyst, ranks Collins as the greatest second baseman of all time.

The 1939 National Baseball Hall of Fame induction. Eddie Collins is seated at the left of the front row, next to Babe Ruth.

Collins was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 and took part in the first ever induction ceremony. (The first Hall of Fame class was 1936, but there were  no inductions until 1939.) As a participant in that ceremony, Collins stood on the steps of the Baseball Hall of Fame with such luminaries as Grover Cleveland Alexander, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Nap Lajoie, Connie Mack, Babe Ruth, George Sisler, Tris Speaker, Honus Wagner and Cy Young.

Steve Blass was born Canaan in 1942, and pitched at Housatonic Valley Regional High School (where according to legend he buried his baseball socks in the mound after his last game in 1960). In a ten-year Major League career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Blass went 103-76 with a 3.63 ERA. In 1968, the famous “Year of the Pitcher”, Blass led the National League in winning percentage, going 18-6.  He won 19 games in 1972. The highlight of Blass’s career came with the 1971 World Series, when he won two games – including the decisive 7th game – allowing only 2 runs in 18 innings. Since 1983, Blass has been a TV and radio announcer for Pirates’ games. Canaan’s Steve Blass Field is named in his honor.

Steve Blass Field, North Canaan, CT