Childhood Memories Tell Of Summer Idylls In Newtown

By Kendra Bobowick

It’s not visible from the road, but spring’s daffodils and a few struggling pink azaleas led the way for a curious visitor through the trees toward a cottage hidden by overgrown brush along Great Quarter Road. Without realizing how closely her memories of that little spot in the woods match the town’s history books, Diane Rhodes knew — once upon a time — where at least one of the many simple wooden cabins and moss-covered bungalows along Newtown’s lakeside acres got its start. With Lake Zoar bordering properties on one side of Great Quarter Road, Ms Rhodes’s grandparents were the first in her family to take advantage of the shady, pine-scented woods offering a lake breeze during warmer months.

Before building a summer cabin, her grandparents simply enjoyed the country setting. “They vacationed there and slept in tents,” Ms Rhodes explained.

She spoke fondly about what was once a far less populated area only yards from the Monroe town line, just past the Stevenson Dam. Great Quarter Road offered the first opportunity in Newtown for travelers to stare out the car window and enjoy the lake.

Abutting the Stevenson section of Monroe — an enclave of its own Great Quarter was nested in an area “known for its camping” said Town Historian Daniel Cruson. Thinking back to roughly 1919 when the Stevenson Dam went in and pooled the Housatonic River to form Lake Zoar, Mr Cruson mused, “I know people would put up tents and live in them for the height of the summer months.”

Diane Rhodes’ family’s history in that area begins before the road became a well-traveled residential dead-end street. Originally staying on their property in tents, her grandfather later built a cottage, which the family sold sometime after 1978. The structure — once just a basic design with exposed rafters and a screened-in front porch — has since been adapted for year-round living.

Again, her story walks directly in the footsteps of Mr Cruson’s descriptions of emerging lakeside communities that today tout primarily permanent residences. “Gradually people would come in the fall or early spring and realized they needed more. They were looking for something more substantial.” Camps emerged. These cabins or cottages were a basic framework with asphalt roofs. “There were just the outside boards between you and the weather,” Mr Cruson said, describing structures initially without electricity or plumbing. Heat was another problem. Outhouses and pot-bellied stoves were quick additions to the camps.

Ms Rhodes remembers, “There was a potbellied stove; that was fun…” That same stove is now in her basement in Ansonia. Her family’s cottage also had an outhouse that was eventually used to store pool supplies once a bathroom was added to the property.

She and her family went “up to the lake” until her grandmother sold the property sometime after 1978 when she was 9 years old. Endless woods, toads, boats, strawberries, ominous rocks in the forest, and star-filled nights have stayed with her, however. Is a large painted rock still in the backyard? Do the woods go on for as far as a little girl could walk? Was it quiet? Was the forest filled with the excitement of a summer vacation?

She and her mother took a drive recently and found they were trying to see through mature trees crowding the cottage, looking for something familiar, a hint of the summer vacations Ms Rhodes remembers.

Gazing uphill at a gap in the trees toward the top of an uneven concrete staircase, she said, “I was little and it was fun; it was a home away from home.” Even the steep slope up to the house had been fun. “I remember the shoulder rides up to the cottage,” she said.

She remembers the trip from Ansonia when she was young. Likely traveling along Route 34, crossing the Stevenson Dam and entering Newtown, Great Quarter Road appears quickly as the lake is obscured in parts by a thick line of trees. “I remember seeing the boats on the water, the dam, that was a big thing for us as little kids — and with six kids that was vacation.”

Recalling how much larger and taller things appeared from her little girl’s perspective, she said, “We walked in the woods. They were deep and you could walk and keep walking — it was really quiet and no houses were on top of you. It was nice, really nice.” Although the ceaseless forestland still backs Great Quarter Road, the street has changed. The neighborhood — a road roughly one mile long — takes drivers from Route 34 to a cul-de-sac where hiking trails lead into the Paugussett State Forest. Many mailboxes now line a street where few houses once stood. “It’s not the same,” she said. “There are a lot more houses there now.”

Newtown’s history books are filled with the development of lake communities. Naming several was C.H. Booth Library reference librarian Andrea Zimmerman who has researched and written about the town’s lake communities specifically. Shady Rest, Lakeview Terrace, Cedarhurst, and Riverside are the most well known. Other names that have come and gone include Woodside, T.B. White, Beardsley Heights, and Ivy Brook, or Ivy Colony as Mr Cruson noted — the filed development for the Great Quarter Road community. Unlike some of the planned developments Ms Zimmerman named, Ivy Brook sold just a few lots.

Mr Cruson referred to old survey maps, saying, “In the 1930s they were trying to develop the Ivy Colony, but that never quite materialized.” Several access roads slip into the forest where several houses flank the short stretch of paved, and in several cases dirt drives, but end abruptly. “It’s mostly forest now.” Unlike other planned lakeside developments, the Great Quarter Road residences “evolved into small, year-round houses — this was on an individual bases,” Mr Cruson explained. The communities took advantage of the newly formed Lake Zoar following the Stevenson dam’s construction. Ms Zimmerman also notes that the Ivy Brook development failed. Connecticut Light and Power is listed as the developer, she said.

Property by property, however, individuals either built bungalows or camped in tents. No plumbing, electricity, or heat accompanied the camps at first. During her research into Newtown’s river communities, she said, “It sounded like hard work, but everyone I interviewed loved it.”