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07/22/2020 09:45 AMWith excavation of the roadway on Main Street in Chester happening now due to the current phase of construction for the Main Street project, several residents are reminded of the trolley tracks that were uncovered about five years ago.
“I was surprised to see it,” said Bruce Watrous, a lifelong Chester resident, speaking on his discovery five years ago. “I was walking from the center of town to the post office and it was part of the road construction. I looked down in the hole and there it was.”
A crew from the Connecticut Water Company had dug up the road to replace a water line when the tracks were uncovered. The crew had dug out around the tracks and they protruded from the dirt.
“They cut it off, which they were going to do anyway, and pulled it out,” said Watrous.
The Chester Public Works Department took the piece of track to the town garage to restore it with a thorough cleaning and oiling over several weeks, “so that it looked very presentable,” said Watrous.
The tracks were given to the Chester Historical Society and later installed as a permanent exhibit.
The discovery of trolley tracks was timely, as the society had just finished a two-year exhibit, Over the River and Through the Woods. This exhibit discussed the different modes of transportation in Chester, with the trolley being one of them.
The trolley, owned and operated by the Shore Line Electric Railway, opened in 1910 with service along the southern coastline of Connecticut. The sections in Ivoryton and Deep River opened in 1912, with Chester soon thereafter, in 1914.
“I’ve heard that one of the popular uses of it was on Sundays, for baseball between the towns around here,” said Skip Hubbard, a former, longtime president of the Chester Historical Society. “People would hop on the trolley as a group and go down to Clinton, Branford, Madison…It became an event and that was very popular.”
Lifelong Chester resident Pete Zanardi said “the town of Ivoryton had an incredible baseball team sponsored by Comstock Cheney and one of the reasons that team was so successful was that people from Chester [and] Deep River could take the trolley there. The [Comstock Park] ball field is still there.”
Another use was for getting to and from manufacturing jobs, of which there were many in Chester due to the waterpower sourced from the many streams feeding into the cove. In fact, Chester Village reached its height as an economic center because of its location at the “head of the cove,” according to the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development.
Although the trolley had its uses, the proliferation of automobiles, the need for iron during World War I and a head-on collision of two trollies in North Branford in 1917 would lead to its demise. The trolley in Chester ended operations in 1919.
“They had a lot of things going against them, so it didn’t last too long before it was gone,” said Keith Dauer, trustee at the Chester Historical Society.
Dauer, along with his wife, Sandy Senior-Dauer, were chairs of the 2013 and 2014 transportation exhibit at the Chester Museum at the Mill.
The exhibit included various photographs and maps of the trolley route.
“It pulled right in front of Leif Nilsson” Spring Street Studio and Gallery, said Dauer.
The Chester stone wall, across from the studio and gallery, was the trolley system’s terminus. It is one of the last visible and prominent signs of the trolley in town.
As a nod to the trolley’s legacy in that spot, the Main Street Project Committee is making plans “to set a sample of trolley tracks right in front of the wall as a kind of historical marker,” said First Selectman Lauren Gister by telephone on July 8.
Although the stairs will be widened as part of the Main Street project, there are no other major changes planned for the site.
“We’re going to really look at that [the wall] and get it in as good repair as possible,” said Gister. “There is going to be a nice perennial garden that is mostly native species…the wall is going to stay the wall. It’s going to say ‘Chester’ and we will make it look clean and in good repair.”
At press time, there have not been any reports of finding additional trolley tracks during this phase of the Main Street project, though Dauer said, “I think there is a possibility. There is a potential anytime you dig up down there. I don’t think anybody has ever found out if everything has been dug up for the steel, or by accident.”