Windsor’s Death Trap

2022-11-02T11:57:06-04:00July 5th, 2019|Tags: , |

The Death Trap was a narrow stretch of the lower part of Palisado Avenue that runs underneath the railroad overpass. Today this is a straight road, but in the treacherous travel era of the early 20th century, it was a 90-degree hairpin turn at the bottom of a hill.

Remembering Rainbow Park

2019-02-13T11:17:58-05:00January 23rd, 2019|Tags: , |

The Hartford Courant's Fresh-Air Excursions were one of the many programs, clubs, and organizations that made Rainbow Park an annual destination during the late 1890s. Rainbow businessmen Henry Snow and Samuel Vernon opened the park in 1895, the year the Hartford Street Railway Company completed the trolley line to Rainbow.

Milestones

2019-02-13T11:17:59-05:00January 9th, 2019|Tags: |

They are the red sandstone markers set on the sides of the roads with the letters H or H.C. chiseled into them. The letters indicate the number of miles to the Hartford Court House, today known as the Old State House. In 1787 the Connecticut legislature ordered that “towns shall set up milestones on mail routes, marking distances from the county towns."

A Booming Business: Transportation of Gunpowder on the Windsor Locks Canal

2019-02-13T11:41:05-05:00December 11th, 2018|Tags: , , , , , , , |

Canal transportation was no match for the speed and efficiency of the emerging railroads in the mid-19th century. But while the arrival of the railroad signaled the eventual demise of the Windsor Locks Canal, the decline in shipping on the canal was far more gradual than historians have previously supposed. One product in particular, gunpowder, was shipped through the canal for several decades after the railroad appeared.

19th-Century Eddy Electric Automobile Motors

2019-02-13T11:42:44-05:00October 31st, 2018|Tags: , |

The Eddy Electric Mfg. Co. occupied the three-story brick building to the east of the railroad depot in Windsor center. Here they built electric motors and generators from 1885 through 1902. One particular type of product that the company made formed the backbone of some of the world's earliest electric cars.

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