50 mile linear trail passing through eleven towns in eastern Connecticut
Hours: The park is open from 8 am to sunset
PETS: Pets on a maximum seven foot leash are permitted.
The trail takes its name from the imaginary line drawn from New York to Boston, through the “air†so to speak, to illustrate the shortest possible route between these two major east coast cities. Building a completely new rail line however proved economically infeasible so, for practical reasons, the “Air Line†as it came to be called, used existing rails from New York to New Haven and began its journey to the northeast from there. On its way to Boston, the Air Line overcame tremendous obstacles in Connecticut’s eastern highlands including ridges, valleys and of course, politics.
Construction began in the late 1860s and by 1870 the first construction milestone, track from New Haven to Middletown, was celebrated. Three years later, in 1873, the line was completed as far as Windham. This was an especially challenging run because of the landscape which demanded a winding or serpentine rail bed. Despite being limited to the technology of the day, tremendous cuts through the hillsides were accomplished in combination with equally massive “fills†in the valleys to keep the rail bed at grade. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the expansive bridges, or viaducts, over Flat Brook and Dickenson Creek in East Hampton and Colchester respectively. Only 1.2 miles from each other, these stream valleys were first crossed by lengthy bridges. The Rapallo viaduct needed 800 feet of length to cross Flat Brook, and the Lyman Viaduct, just to the east, needed 1,000 feet to span Dickenson Creek.
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