BELLOWS FALLS — New Englanders have long been known for thrift, but they are also notable for not being afraid to jump on board with new ideas, their economy, energy and creative entrepreneurship the necessary ingredients to making visions come true.
In this spirit, the Bellows Falls Island, current home to the Waypoint interpretive center, and the Intermodal Center run by Destination Bellows Falls, is undergoing yet another revival. The Intermodal Center, a “true transportation hub” idea is an idea whose time has come and is predicated upon nearly 165 years of transportation history.
Bellows Falls has been a hub of transportation from its earliest days as a destination for city slickers from Boston who traveled to Keene, N.H., then north to Bellows Falls where, for a toll, they were encouraged to cross the bridge to Vermont, stopping mid-bridge to feel the roar of the water rushing through the falls just below them, vibrating the wooden slats they stood on.
Enoch Hale's historic timber bridge built in 1784 was the first bridge across the Connecticut River to connect the north-south transportation route, and key in opening up northern routes to Canada through Vermont. Hale's choice to cross at the Great Falls instead of north or south was crucial to subsequent development in Bellows Falls.
The canal built between 1791 and 1802 provided an easy way to get around the falls for freight along the Connecticut River. Previously, it had to be hauled overland, up and around the falls. The canal also served as a source of energy for the mills that began to spring up along the western bank of the river in a town that had been, just a few decades before, nothing more than a collection of rough and tumble log cabins and a few native-built fish weirs by the falls.
But by the 1840s, the slow transport of canal boats was seeing the end of its usefulness, and in 1843 the editor of the Bellows Falls Gazette, Dr. S. M. Blake, decided the town would benefit if had a rail system, eventually connecting Boston and New York to Burlington and Canada.
Blake met with a Massachusetts man who had just returned from Europe bringing enthusiastic reviews of what a railroad could do. Plans from these meetings resulted in lines being built north to Brattleboro in 1850, and then to Bellows Falls in 1851, following the unique construction of a tunnel beneath the streets and buildings of the Village Square, still in use today.
According to the Green Mountain Railroad, construction on the island began in 1847, with service to Burlington beginning in 1849.
However, the first rail actually reached Bellows Falls along the New Hampshire side from Fitchburg, Mass., in 1844, called the Cheshire Railroad. Those traveling to Boston would use the “Mountain Track” behind the station in Walpole, N.H. To get to Bellows Falls, both freight and passengers were transported across Hale's infamous toll bridge.
In 1846, the Sullivan Railroad connected Bellows Falls to Windsor through North Charlestown, N.H. The first trains did not cross the river to Bellows Falls however, until a few years later when the first rail bridge was built.
That event is recorded in the Bellows Falls Gazette of Jan. 4, 1849: “On Monday, January 1, much to the astonishment of some, and gratification of all, the first train of cars ever seen in this vicinity passed over the Cheshire Road and Sullivan to Charlestown, N.H. The day was fine, and a great assembly of people had collected here to witness the grand entree of the Iron Horse. The engine came up in grand style, and, when opposite our village, the monster gave one of its most savage yells, frightening men, women, and children considerably, and bringing forth the most deafening howls from all the dogs in the neighborhood. This day, Thursday, the Sullivan Road is to be opened with the usual ceremonies, to Charlestown, and then the arrival of the cars will be a common every-day business affair.”
When Bellows Falls connected to the Vermont Central Railroad in 1849, it opened a corridor from Burlington, Vt., to Springfield, Mass., and Bellows Falls saw heavy activity in the Island's rail yard and depot for the next 75 years.
According to Charles Parker, executive director of the Vermont Rail System, “At one time, there was more paper made in Bellows Falls than anywhere else in the world. The falls and the canal provided power [beginning in the 1870's] and pulp logs were sourced from huge [and deadly] log drives floated down the Connecticut River, and the coming of railroads made transportation to population centers practical.”
When the Bellows Falls dam was built, Parker said the log drives, which had once run all the way to Massachusetts, were stopped at Bellows Falls and transferred in Walpole, N.H. to railroad cars. A brick building along the Connecticut River is all that remains of the transfer facility. The log drives stopped around World War I.
Paper companies operated in Bellows Falls through the 1970s and Parker said that “the railroads served the industry with round-the-clock switch engines. A large freight station complex occupied the land on the island that now is home to the Waypoint Center and the Island Park parking lot. Railroads lost this business to motor freight truckers in the 1950s and 1960s. In the old days, rail freight was either moved in full cars directly from the factories and businesses or in smaller lots from freight stations.”
Floods in 1927 and 1936 caused massive damage to the Boston and Maine Railroad-owned property and the depot on the Island. According to the Green Mountain Railroad, “The great flood of 1927 almost put the railroads in Vermont out of business. Tracks, buildings, and bridges were washed away. The trestle near the station in Bellows Falls is still standing because the railroad took a gamble and left an engine and tender parked on it. The theory was to weigh it down, and it worked.”
Parker said that by World War I, the railroads in Bellows Falls had been consolidated into the Boston & Maine and the Rutland. The B&M controlled the north-south Connecticut River Line from Springfield to White River Junction, which it jointly operated with the Central Vermont Railway in Vermont, and the Cheshire branch, which ran through Walpole and Keene and ultimately to Boston. The Rutland came over the mountain from its namesake city and connected with the B&M in Bellows Falls.
Multiple passenger trains a day ran on all lines into the 1950s. Then the Rutland discontinued all its passenger service in 1953, and the B&M discontinued passenger service on the Cheshire branch from Boston in 1958.
In 1961, the Rutland Railway petitioned to abandon the entire system due to union strikes and insolvency issues. On Sept. 18, 1962, 332 miles of track were given up in Vermont and New York by the company. The system closure was postponed until May 1963.
However, Parker notes, “The state purchased most of the track within Vermont, and the Rutland-Bellows Falls line began being operated by the Green Mountain Railroad [in 1964].”
The last passenger train - the Washingtonian/Montrealer, which ran between Washington, D.C. and Montreal, stopped in 1966. Parker said that when Amtrak was created in 1971, train advocates were successful in reviving the Montrealer the following year. This overnight train was replaced by the daytime Vermonter in 1995.
Freight service into Bellows Falls saw a sharp decline in the 1960s and 1970s. Parker said the Cheshire branch was abandoned by the B&M in the early 1970s and railroad mergers resulted in the loss and re-routing of most of the B&M's traffic on the Springfield-White River Junction line. The B&M closed its freight yard in Bellows Falls in the mid-1970s.
The Central Vermont Railway was sold, and became the New England Central Railroad in 1995.
The Green Mountain Railroad was merged into the Vermont Railway in 1997 and is now part of what's called the Vermont Rail System - which also includes the Clarendon and Pittsford, New York and Ogdensburg and the Washington County Railroads. These five railroads - which still maintain separate identities despite their common management - constitute most of what used to be the Rutland Railway, and the Vermont Rail System is now one of the top short line railroads in the country.
A museum of steam trains - Steamtown - was built in Bellows Falls in the early 196os by industrialist Nelson Blount, who was also one of the founders of the Green Mountain Railroad. Blount died in a plane crash in 1967, and the museum was moved to Scranton, Pa., in the mid 1980's.
After Steamtown left, the Green Mountain Railroad used the land to build a transfer facility, “Riverside Re-Load", so freight could arrive by rail and continue by truck. Also, the Green Mountain Railroad began operating seasonal, scenic tours out of several depots. Bellows Falls hosts the Green Mountain Flyer scenic train ride to historic Chester Depot with fully restored passenger coaches from the 1930s.