Cruising Down The River; Reliving Milford’s History

By Marilyn May
Milford History

Ladies enjoy the afternoon on a small island just below the waterfall behind today’s City Hall. This was a tranquil spot where falling water was the only sound heard. A glimpse of the Davidson Mill is visible at the far left. Photo courtesy of Marilyn May.

The first two bridges in Milford, Meeting House Bridge and Memorial Bridge, were discussed in the previous edition of the Milford-Orange Times, so going forward bridges will be listed from north to south.

The first bridge over the Wepawaug this side of the Milford/Orange line is the Flax Mill Lane Bridge (or Woodruff Street Bridge). There must have been earlier bridges there, but it is not known when the first span was built. An old-fashioned fieldstone bridge was there in 1935 but was replaced in 2020 by a longer and wider span. The old bridge was still safe, but swift waters were beginning to erode the soil and exposing the footings on one side. Fortunately, when rebuilding, the builders did not want this new bridge to lose its New England charm, so they added a stone veneer to look like the former bridge.

Continuing south, the Wepawaug meanders through the 200-acre Eisenhower Park where there is a footbridge that leads to hiking trails. Birds and other wildlife find food and sanctuary along these quiet riverbanks. Its official address is 780 North St.

On Walnut Street (once called Fenn Road), there is a bridge so nondescript that you hardly know you are crossing the river. A bridge was built there in 1819 and another in 1878. It crosses the Wepawaug where it is narrow and shallow unless there is a freshet happening. A freshet is caused by snowmelt or heavy rainwater entering the river farther north that builds up and causes a sudden rise in a freshwater stream that flows into the salt water. The late Ruth Platt (1885-2001) recalled a time when a bridge there was destroyed by a freshet that washed all the planks down the river. The last bridge was constructed there in 1911.

A little farther south, there is a small bridge that is part of a driveway where truckers cross to reach a warehouse.

The next bridge is on the highly traveled Boston Post Road, just west of the twin lights intersection at North Street and the Post Road. The first bridge there was constructed in 1931, about the time the Rt. 1A cutoff was built to reroute Rt. 1 from going through Milford Center. That bridge was rebuilt in 2015.

For a short distance, the river is out of sight as it flows behind residential private property, and then it reaches the North Street Pond and park area. In 1768, at the very north end, there was a footbridge about where the North Street bridge is today. In 1800 it was called the Nehemiah Bristol Foot Bridge. He had his home and nearby general store on North Street. Over the years, there were at least four footbridges there as late as 1833, and the store was run by four generations of the Bristol family.

The bridge we see today at the north end of the pond was designed by Col. Camille Mazeau (1873-1957), a Milford resident and civil engineer in the US Army Reserves Corps who was commissioned a colonel by President Theodore Roosevelt. Although now commonly called the North Street Bridge (that crosses by way of Bridge Street), the real name is the Col. Mazeau Bridge. It was opened to the public on Aug. 28, 1909 to great fanfare with a band concert and fireworks in commemoration of the town’s 270th anniversary.

Mazeau also designed the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Bridge that crosses the Housatonic River, linking Milford and Stratford. He died at age 84 and is buried in the Old Milford Cemetery.

What’s the story about Kissing Bridge? Well, there are at least two versions, and the first version gets the most votes. Kissing Bridge was either the North Street Pond Bridge (Col. Mazeau Bridge) or the Walnut Street Bridge.

Most historians say it was the North Street Pond Bridge. The land along the sides of the pond was once lined with mills and factories. The story goes that in the mornings, wives would walk their husbands to work, kiss them goodbye at the foot of that bridge and return home. Women would never walk as far as the factories.

The other version comes from the late Ruth Platt. Having lived to 106 and having been a charter member of the Milford Historical Society in 1930, she was familiar with Milford history. According to her, the nickname Kissing Bridge was attached to the Walnut Street Bridge, which is 0.03 miles north of the Col. Mazeau Bridge and in a wooded and quiet area. At any rate, it seems there was a lot of kissing going on.

Now we move on to the bridge at the southernmost part of the North Street Pond. In 1711 it was ordered that a “cart bridge” be built at the southern end of the pond. It was called King’s Bridge, but today is known as the Maple Street Bridge. How many bridges were built there we do not know, but one spring one of them was swept down the river by an ice floe. People watched as the bridge was destroyed and then raced down to the Meeting House Bridge to see what would happen there. No problem: the bridge there was not damaged.

Meanwhile, back at the Kings Bridge site, in 1952 Mazeau designed the handsome stone bridge we have today near the waterfall. It connects travelers between Maple Street and West River Street to North Street and Governors Avenue.

On old maps, Maple Street was called Peacock Lane, after John Peacock, who came to Milford from Wethersfield and owned a lot of land in the area. Peacock’s home was on the corner of Maple and West River streets where the late Mary Hepburn Smith’s Italianate style, early Victorian mansion was later built. Construction dates range from 1854 to 1870.

In 1868, the original King’s Bridge name was officially changed to Maple Street Bridge. (Curiously, Queen Anne, not a king, was on the English throne from 1702 to 1714.)

When you add up all bridge problems, it makes you think, with apologies to Robert Frost, “Something there is that doesn’t love a bridge.” One time, that “something” was a truck. In 1950 a Frouge Construction Company truck carrying a load of dirt away from the new Milford High School construction site heavily damaged the Maple Street Bridge and caused a partial collapse, rendering it impassable (except for children who found it a great place to play). The 10-ton maximum load bridge was not strong enough to carry the 16-ton combined weight of the truck and its contents. The driver did get the load across, and he was neither hurt nor arrested. Someone had removed the sign warning that the 50-foot span had a 10-ton capacity. That iron-framed and wood-decked bridge had been built in 1881.

There is, however, more to say about the history of the North Street Pond area. There were decrepit mills and factories along its banks, and burnt-out structures that were never taken down. The area had become unsightly. However, if you look at Lambert’s 1855 map, it shows an island by King’s Bridge (later Maple Street Bridge).

In 1908 townspeople formed the Village Improvement Association, and the members had lots of plans. About 1914, local philanthropist Mary Hepburn Smith purchased all the land along the banks of the North Street Pond and the Duck Pond, and the VIA demolished all the rundown structures along both shores of both ponds. Afterward, Smith donated the land back to the town, and today we have park-like areas along the river.

Then in 1986, the Park River Historic District (which extends from the back of City Hall north to the Boston Post Road) submitted a report on that area seeking a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

The original nomination document states, “Substandard houses on the island in the river, where many of Milford’s 16 Black families lived in the nineteenth century, were also torn down” during the VIA project.

Town records tell more of the story. The “land on a river” was called common land. Sometime after the French and Indian War (1754-1763) Henry Gabrielle, a Frenchman from Canada, settled in Milford. His son lived on the island and had a sabba-day house, also called a noon-day house. Another resident, a blacksmith named Ezekiel Bradley, put up a one-and-a-half-story building about 1800. He had a shop on the east side of the island near the King’s Bridge. As late as 1900, the land was referred to as Bradley’s Island, where Black families lived. The VIA had everything demolished, and the island later became part of the east bank of the river.

Marilyn May is a lifelong resident of Milford and a member of the Board of the Milford Historical Society.