History
Construction of the Meriden and Waterbury Railroad commenced in 1887 and finished the following year, when the M&W Railroad merged with the Meriden and Cromwell Railroad to form the Meriden, Waterbury, and Connecticut River Railroad. The line never saw high traffic, and by 1924 the section of the railroad from West Main Street in Meriden to East Farms in Waterbury was abandoned.
For decades, the old right-of-way sat unused. Through the Quinnipiac Gorge, no development occurred over the former right-of-way due to its remote nature; throughout the rest of Meriden, most of the railroad remained active until 1966 as an industrial spur to Ragazzino's on West Main Street and the Suzio York Hill Quarry in East Meriden. Since little new development has occurred since then along the right-of-way (with the notable exception of the Mid-State Medical Center), much remains intact with the railroad tracks still in place.
Along the Quinnipiac River Gorge in South Meriden, the former right-of-way began to be used more and more by fishermen looking to access some of the more remote parts of the gorge. Eventually more and more people began to use the trail, including a lot of dirt bike and all terrain vehicle owners.
Looking to preserve the trail from being torn up by these vehicles (as well as from the increasing problem of illegal dumping along the trail), talks commenced in the late 1990s to create a paved rail trail along the old right-of-way of the MW&CRRR through the city, with a side trail connecting southward to connect to the new Quinnipiac River Linear Trail being proposed in Wallingford.
Read more about this topic: Meriden Linear Trail
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)