A vintage photo of the Chester Railway Station, a National Historic Landmark.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
CHESTER — The Chester Railway Station Museum will participate in the Connecticut River Watershed Partnership’s second annual Watershed Week Sept. 19-27.
During that week, the museum will offer a program called “Rivers and Railroads: an Enduring Partnership.”
David Pierce, president of the Chester Foundation, said the Chester Railway Station Museum is proud to have been included in the planned CT River Watershed Week festivities. “Though the National Historic Landmark museum in Chester is primarily railroad-themed, in the narrative of the Western Railroad we feature the first railroad over a mountain and the first through wilderness, all heavily dependent on area rivers,” he said.
Pierce said the Connecticut River in Springfield hosted the world’s longest bridge built by the Western Railroad, which opened on July 4, 1841. The Westfield River guided the engineers over the Berkshires and became home to the first cluster of stone arch railroad bridges in America. He said that at Muddy Pond, the headwaters of the Housatonic River on the summit in Hinsdale, the railroad was swallowed three times in the extrmely unstable organic mud below the surface. More information is found at chesterrailwaystation.net.
During the Connecticut River Watershed Week festivities, the Chester Railway Station will run a loop of a helicopter ride along the Westfield River filmed in 2008. Visitors can also hike out to see the Keystone Arches, the magnificent cathedral-like bridges built for the railroad in the 1830s.
The whole series of events during the Connecticut River Watershed Partnership’s second annual Watershed Week, including the Source to Sea cleanup on Sept. 19, is listed at ctriverwatershed.org/watershed-week.
For more information, contact Kathy Baugh at friendsofconte@gmail.com. Watershed Week is funded in part by the Westfield River Wild and Scenic Committee.
