Old Saybrook - Old Lyme


Old state-name shield on Essex Road in Old Saybrook. Just to the east, the old alignment of US 1 will cross over I-95 (instead of merging as current US 1 does), and come into Essex Road from a parking lot:



The Old Post Road continued straight ahead (now all Essex), and where traffic is forced right by a barrier, the old alignment continues... as a driveway...


...with a tree in the middle... and a house on top of it... sitting on the former bridge abutment.... Sorry, I can't decide whether to be upset at ruining a good old alignment, or jealous of who lives on it.


Staring across the Connecticut River at the Old Lyme abutment, with no house on it (but plenty of trees).


Staring back westward at the Old Saybrook side, with house - if you recognize that backyard, please tell the owner I like his driveway.


There is a little corkscrew to get from the US 1/CT 156 junction onto old US 1 to the west, probably to prevent unwary motorists from driving straight onto the old road.


Continuing westward as far as one can drive along old US 1 - at least half a mile, maybe a mile or more.


But the old alignment continues, fully graded, right up to the water. Despite plenty of signs warning of trespassing, if you pretend to only be literate in Gaelic or Uzbek, you come to the following:


Now, somebody explain to me why a site off-limits to casual visitors would proudly proclaim it's the site of the old bridge? I think that if you're dedicated enough to find this place, you know what it is. Unlike the New London-Groton bridge I showed on the main US 1 page, this bridge would not have survived to today, and I-95 is conveniently close enough that there would have been no reason to replace it.


Walking back to the drivable road. There were more trails just to the north, between old US 1 and current US 1 (and I-95), so those might have been public trails. But, again, why the warnings about trespassing if everything on either side of the fence is public? (Well, okay, most of old US 1 is considered private property/driveway... man, it's hard to read things that aren't written in Hebrew, or I'd have known that and stayed away...)


Eastbound back down old US 1 toward CT 156 and current US 1.

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New London-Groton


Staring down an old alignment of US 1, in the New London rail yard. The only way to get there is by turning off of CT 32 and following some yard roads; most of the alignment is undrivable (returned/ing to nature), but a little bit remains to the east. This is looking westward, where US 1 came up a small rise from the Thames River bridge to cross railroad tracks; the alignment disappears west of the tracks, and the only way out is via the new road just to the north, that passes over all of the tracks.


From the fence that blocks the way on the western part of old US 1, I took this photo of the eastern abutment - the western side of the bridge is basically destroyed.


The eastern stub, off of old CT 184 (which has old photos from this area), disappears directly into trees, but reappears as a graded grassy area:


The second photo looks west from the same point at which the first photo looks east. As you can see, the pavement reappears after the patch of grass.


Looking eastward at that pavement, and then...


...eastward at a picnic area! Looking at the other bridge above, you see that Connecticut does strange things with the ends of its old bridges - at least on US 1.


The southern and northern abutments, with metal bridge plates still sticking to the northern one.

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US 1 north of New Haven
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