Old Connecticut Path

In lean years of the early 1630s, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony ran short of grain, Nipmuck farmers in the Connecticut River Valley loaded some of their abundant surplus maize into birch-bark backpacks and trod a familiar route to the settlements at the mouth of the Charles River, where they traded food for European goods made of copper and iron and woollen cloth.

Long native usage had emphasized the easiest route,[2] skirting the water meadows of the river bottoms and crossing streams at the most dependable fords.

The Path led west along the north bank of the Charles River from New Town (Cambridge) to newly settled Watertown and passed through what are now Waltham and Weston, curving southward where it entered the southeasterly section of the new town of Sudbury, now set apart as Wayland, where a section of the route still bears the name "Old Connecticut Path".

[6] The trail crossed the Sudbury River at "Danforth's Farm", since 1700 incorporated as Framingham, where another section (Route 126) retains the name "Old Connecticut Path", threading past the northern shore of Lake Cochituate.

[8][9] Continuing westward, the trail crosses Tolland, Vernon, and a small corner of Manchester, before ending at the Connecticut River.