What’s Old Connecticut Path Doing in Framingham?

Old Connecticut Path is older than Framingham and the state of Connecticut!

It was the trail blazed by Native Americans to get to the Connecticut River Valley from the sea, long before Europeans arrived.  Connecticut is the English pronunciation of a Native American word meaning “beside the long river."

The Nipmuck People who lived in the area that would become Framingham used the path as a trade route. It was along this path that Native Americans brought corn to Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers in the lean winter of 1630. By the seventeenth century a combination of war with Abenaki Tribes and disease introduced by Europeans forced the Nipmucks westward along the path making way for European settlements.

The path began on the western edge of Watertown and the first significant landmark is a chain of lakes the Indians called Wachittuate. The permanent name would become Cochituate after the old Indian Village that once overlooked the lake. From this point the path ran south between the lakes and a river. We call it the Sudbury River and the waterway that once flowed from the lake to the river was dammed up in the nineteenth century when the City of Boston gained the rights to tap Lake Cochituate for drinking water. It was along that roaring Cochituate Brook that Michael Knight, one of Saxonville’s textile moguls, had built his carpet making empire.

Heading further south on the path, travelers encounter a low lying stream through a swampy area called Guinea Meadow from the Algonquin word “guinneh” meaning long. Beavers once plentiful in the area had constructed a dam that served as a bridge. It was dubbed The Great Beaver Dam which became an important landmark for travelers. Beaver Dam Brook still passes under Beaver Street on the South Side of Framingham.

In 1636, one hundred families led by Reverend Thomas Hooker, unhappy with the Puritanism in Boston, left eastern Massachusetts to strike out on their own. Down Old Connecticut Path they drove their cattle to the trail’s end where settlements had been established around Hartford and Windsor. They established a new colony and named it Connecticut.

In the years that followed rising hostilities between European immigrants and Native Tribes made the journey dangerous and travelers increasingly detoured west through Worcester and Springfield.

The Old Connecticut Path fell into disuse past Framingham, but 300 years later there is still a stretch of road through Wayland and Framingham called Old Connecticut Path.