Walking back through history

They call it the first interstate highway. The Crown Point Road stretched from New Hampshire across Vermont to New York state. It was 77 miles long and was built not for tractor trailer rigs, but ox cart.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140914/NEWS02/709149951

Officials of the Crown Point Road Association disembark from a canoe on the Springfield side of the Connecticut River on Saturday as they travel along the original Crown Point Road to mark its 255th year. The two-week hike crosses three states and five counties. Photo: Photo by Len Emery Published September 14, 2014 in the Times Argus Walking back through history By SUSAN SMALLHEER Staff Writer SPRINGFIELD — They like to call it the first interstate highway. The Crown Point Road stretched from New Hampshire across Vermont to New York state. It was 77 miles long and was built not for tractor trailer rigs, but ox cart. Saturday morning a dedicated band of historians started what will be a two-week, end-to-end trek along the former military road. On the first leg of the walk, they started on Main Street in Charlestown, N.H., crossed the placid Connecticut River in modern canoe, and walked on the path, under Interstate 91 and up to Ferguson’s farm in Spencer Hollow in Springfield. The walk is expected to end Friday, Sept. 26 at Crown Point, N.Y., at the historic Crown Point Fort, a distance of 110 miles, across three states and five counties. The group, some in historical “kit,” or costume, others in 21st-century dress, will retrace the original 1759 route as best they can, sometimes opting for modern roads over dense woods. The road was built by hundreds of British and Colonial soldiers to get supplies and soldiers from the eastern colonial outposts to the English forts along Lake Champlain. Built during the French and Indian War, the military road was designed to supply the troops of Gen. Jeffrey Amherst for the invasion of Canada and to protect the British colonies from French invasion from the north. And during the American Revolution, the colonists turned the tables on the British, using the road to their own advantage. It was built 12 feet wide, according to John-Eric Nelson, a Milford, Conn., historian and re-enactor who has studied the road and walked it shore to shore. The road was cut through the Vermont wilderness in the summer and fall of 1759 to allow soldiers to get from Crown Point, N.Y., to the Fort at No. 4 in Charlestown, then the most northern outpost of English settlements. The road closely followed Otter Creek and the Black River, and followed well-known Indian paths. A New Hampshire regiment, 800 strong, returned in the spring of 1760, and improved the road. Along the length of the road, much of which has again been swallowed up by the woods, the soldiers built cattle pens for the animals that were being herded from one end of the road to the other, Nelson said. “Otherwise,” said Nelson, standing on the banks of the Connecticut River at noontime Saturday, the cattle would wander off and be killed by the Indians. Nelson was dressed in the “kit” of Rogers’ Rangers, or Stark’s Rangers, clad in earth-colored woolens with the exception of his mud-caked hiking shoes, Saturday’s weather was cloudy and quite cool, with a promise of afternoon rain. Some of the trekkers would be camping out along the way, said organizer Becky Tucker, of Springfield. Tucker said people will walk about 10 miles a day. Tucker , at age 76, says she is hiking the entire length of the road for probably the last time. Saturday, she was dressed in colonial garb, including a muslin cap and long dress, kerchief, apron, and separate, large embroidered pockets. Tucker said in 2009, on the 250th anniversary of the road, three people started out on the trek, and only one person completed it. On Saturday, close to a dozen were on the trail, but most said they were just there for a day or so. Don Gray, of Springfield, had learned about the walk from Tucker at the Springfield Senior Center. He borrowed an 18th century shirt from Tucker and was learning history as he went. Homeowner Patricia Smith greeted the Crown Point hiking crew as they landed their canoes on her lawn, ate lunch and went in search of the original road. Smith, who recently purchased the 1772 Butterfield House, the oldest timber-framed house in Springfield, was eager to exchange historical information. Smith and others asked, “Where was the Blockhouse, which guarded the ferry crossing, north of the confluence of the Black and Connecticut rivers?” Nelson and Wendy Baker, executive director of the Fort at No. 4 Living History Museum in Charlestown, both said the river was quite different 255 years ago, before the hydro-electric dam was built at Bellows Falls, creating a large pond behind it and effectively changing the river. Baker said that the blockhouse was probably made of squared timber logs, not the round logs used in Appalachian cabins. “The history is just fascinating,” said Cindy Miller of Wallingford. For more information about the End-to-End hike and its schedule through Windsor, Rutland and Addison county towns, consult www.crown-point-road.org.