Historically the upriver towns evolved from a single community flanking both sides of the river. Besides the unusual river course that has given them geological cohesion, other remnants of their ancestral ties are still evident. The Glastonbury-Rocky Hill Ferry is the nation’s oldest continuously running ferry service. The Silas Deane Highway named after a local patriot, is a major commercial artery that ties together Wethersfield and Rocky Hill. Route 3 branches off the Silas Deane and spans the Connecticut River at the Putnam Bridge linking Glastonbury with Wethersfield and Rocky Hill. Hartford has always been their commercial center, but since the 70s Glastonbury, with a huge land area and with a population over 33,000, has become a dominant center of this part of the river.

Glastonbury’s expansive land area (51 square miles), its strategic location relative to the state’s capital city and interstate highways, along with the remarkable beauty of its varied topography, have made it the cream of the “east of the river” communities.

That status isn’t a recent phenomenon. During the American Revolution, Yale University held classes here. Noah Webster once taught in a one-room schoolhouse here. Lincoln’s secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, was born here. And Aqua Velva and ‘Lectric Shave were created here. Glastonbury also hatched Arbor Acres, one of the world’s largest poultry producers; gave birth to the delicious Hale peach and once grew some the world’s finest cigar tobacco.

Historically, Glastonbury encompassed three principal villages —Glastonbury Center, South Glastonbury and East Glastonbury — with each community centered on agriculture and industry. The Connecticut River’s local tributaries, the Salmon, Hubbard and Roaring Brooks, provided waterpower for early manufacturing and the fertile river bottomland and the highlands were conducive to farming. The river itself was a vital artery to the rest of the region, state, nation and the world.

Originally part of Wethersfield, Glastonbury incorporated in 1693. The town has seen a consistent average annual growth of about 15 percent since the 1970s, and anticipates that trend continuing with a burgeoning housing market in the east and south on former woodlands, farms and orchards.

Enter Glastonbury from Wethersfield on Route 3, and The Shops at Somerset Square on Glastonbury Boulevard serve as a sophisticated contemporary gateway. One of America’s first “lifestyle centers,” built in1980s, its layout essentially creates a traditional-style town square for a town that never had one. Tenants include contemporary designer boutiques. But the big attraction here has always been Max Amore restaurant, which was recently joined by Max Fish, both high on the list of this town’s power restaurants.

Glastonbury Center—anchored by the stately Welles-Turner Library and a tree-shaded park and fountain—thrives with dozens of businesses, snazzy and everyday restaurants and Whole Foods, most located along Main Street, Hebron Avenue and Welles Street.

Main Street, south of the Center, is the beginning of the Historic District, with handsome 18th and 19th century homes built by some of the town’s most prominent early families. On the corner of Hubbard Street, the Glastonbury Historical Society (in what was the original Town Hall) features exhibits that celebrate the town’s Native American, agricultural and industrial heritage. Behind it, the original Town Green is the site of the Art Guild’s annual art shows and the town’s Concerts on the Green, while the adjacent Green Cemetery has headstones dating back to the 1600s.
Two miles south, Main Street merges with Route 17 on its way to South Glastonbury village. Less than a mile down the road is Berruti’s Harvest House, one of several popular farm markets along Route 17 in South Glastonbury.

South Glastonbury has been described as the perfect pedestrian village—a mix of historic and contemporary buildings with sidewalks that make any of its attractions easily accessible. Above the village, Cotton Hollow Preserve is a hiker’s delight, with paths winding along boisterous Roaring Brook to the impressive ruins of what was once a vibrant 18th and 19th century industrial community.

From Main Street, a right on Water Street leads west on a scenic road toward the Glastonbury Hill-Rocky Hill Ferry landing. Heading east out of the village, Hopewell Road passes the delightful 2hopewell Bistro on the corner of Main Street, then up through the hills to Chestnut Hill Road and on into East Glastonbury. Several spots offer a breathtaking view of the entire length of the Connecticut River’s oxbow to the west.
Glastonbury’s popularity today stems from its ability to blend an abundant supply of country chic with an obvious infusion of city-wise swagger. But the town is ever mindful of balancing the evolving needs of its growing community with the preservation of its natural assets.

With its historical status as Connecticut’s most ancient town and the patriarch of The River Valley towns, Wethersfield is one of the state’s most beautifully preserved historical villages; comfortably surrounded by a vibrant, contemporary community that has grown up around it.

Although today Wethersfield is classified as an inner-ring suburb of Hartford, prior to the mid-19th century, it was the commercial and cultural hub of the upper Connecticut River Valley. Easy access to the river and the fertile agricultural land along its edge made it attractive real estate until the introduction of industry and the railroad grew Hartford’s economic and population base.

Today’s Wethersfield stretches out from Hartford’s south end, encompassing 13 square miles on the west bank of the river, with a population of approximately 27,000. Interstate 91 passes through the length of the town along the river, while Route 15 slices across the northern fringe and traverses Wethersfield’s western edge. The William Putnam Memorial Bridge, which opened in 1959, spans the river to Glastonbury.

In between lies Main Street, a significant cultural, residential and business route. It also passes through Old Wethersfield, Connecticut’s largest historic district with over 200 houses from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, fifty of them built before the American Revolution.

West of Main Street, Route 99 is better known as the Silas Deane Highway. The thoroughfare, named for a native son who became famous as a foreign diplomat during the Revolution, runs a straight line from Hartford to Rocky Hill and serves as Wethersfield’s principal commercial and business corridor.

Although Rocky Hill shares a significant part of its early history with Wethersfield, it has a fascinating legacy of its own that predates the Wethersfield era—by some 200 million years.

Jurassic fossil tracks were discovered on a state building construction site in 1966. That discovery gave rise to the 63-acre Dinosaur State Park, one of a very few places in North America where dinosaur tracks have been found. More than 250 trees and plants, many of them representative of the Mesozoic Era, thrive in The Dinosaur State Park Arboretum. Other archaeological digs in the river meadows have unearthed relics from the Archaic and Woodland Indians of thousands of years ago, as well as those of the 17th Century Wongunks.

In the town center, the 18th century Congregational Church presides over an historic district of Early American homes, reflecting the pre-Colonial era. The district stretches down the hill to Ferry Park, once the site of a prosperous shipyard. Today the park is home to the Glastonbury-Rocky Hill Ferry, America’s oldest continuously running ferry dating back to 1655.

First settled in 1650 as part of South Wethersfield and renamed Stepney Parish in 1722, Rocky Hill became a separate town in 1843. Unlike its sibling settlements, Wethersfield and Glastonbury, the town does not take its name from a beloved ancestral British village. Instead, the name derives from the long, craggy ridge that juts abruptly from the meadows flanking the end of the river’s oxbow—remnants of an ice age glacier dam.

Today, with a population of approximately 19,000 across 13.5 square miles, Rocky Hill prides itself on a small town atmosphere in a suburban setting that has many of the conveniences of a city.

Al Ferreira Photo