Cyclists Celebrate Canal’s 200th Birthday

David Schadlich knew exactly how he wanted to celebrate his 35th birthday: By taking the train to New Haven, and then biking 85 miles along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail with his brother.

What he didn’t know was that, along the way, he’d also be helping celebrate the 200th birthday of the ​“crown jewel” of Connecticut’s bike-pedestrian transportation system.

Schadlich and his brother Charles joined two of dozens of cyclists and biking advocates gathered on Friday morning to a stretch of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail near Lock Street on the border of downtown and Dixwell.

The group gathered celebrate National Bike to Work Day, the ongoing festivities of Bike Month, and the 200th anniversary of the chartering of the Farmington Canal back in May 1822. 

All of that was news to the Schadlichs, who stumbled upon the egg-sandwich-and-coffee-fueled gathering toward the beginning of what promised to be a full day of biking up through Connecticut and into Massachusetts.

A systems engineer who lives in Trumbull, David convinced his brother to help him celebrate his birthday Friday by waking up early, driving to Bridgeport, taking the train to New Haven, and then biking up the canal trail to Southwick, Mass. before heading over to Canton to visit their grandfather.

Schadlich said his enthusiasm for biking kicked in during the ongoing pandemic. One of his favorite places to ride is the Farmington Canal Trail.

“It’s nice and protected. Quiet. Scenic,” Schadlich said about the canal trail. It’s filled with Connecticut history — one of his favorite landmarks being the tobacco sheds in Simsbury.

And you’re always meeting new people equally enthusiastic about biking and walking. 

Just like on Friday.

Other attendees at the bike-to-work breakfast and canal celebration pointed to those very same attributes when talking about why they so love cycling or walking up and down the canal trail.

“I’m an avid walker,” said Hamden resident Elizabeth Hayes. ​“It’s safe and it’s beautiful. It gives you enlightenment. It puts you at one with nature so you can be inspired.”

Local climate activist Chis Schweitzer agreed. ​“It’s my carbon-free” route for getting around town, he said, whether that means going shopping at the Salvation Army in Hamden or biking to a Quinnipiac University hockey game.

“It’s comfortable for all ages and abilities,” added city engineering department staffer Adam Weber, who was en route down to check out the latest with the construction of a new bike path on Water Street.

“The canal’s a great connection,” said New Haven adult ed staffer and cycling enthusiast Michael Twitty, who said he takes particular pride in coming to this stretch of the canal and seeing the statue of William ​“King” Lanson, a Black New Havener who helped build the canal’s retaining walls in the 1820s and was a leading entrepreneur and civic leader of his day.

“It’s so nice not to deal with traffic” when biking along the canal trail, said Melinda Tuhus, one of the organizer’s of Friday’s event who also helped put together Elm City Cycling’s former bike-to-work breakfasts in Pitkin Plaza. She said she uses the canal trail both for commuting and for recreation, including biking all the way up to Northampton, Mass. three times.

During a brief set of remarks alongside Mayor Justin Elicker, Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter, and other city officials, Aaron Goode of the New Haven Friends of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail said that Friday’s event honored not just the ​“entrepreneurship, the vision, the dream” of those New Haven investors who helped set up the canal 200 years ago.

It also celebrates ​“200 years of amazingly rich transportation history along this corridor,” from when it was an active canal to a railway to a bike and pedestrian trail, which was established 175 years after the canal’s founding.

This trail ​“has become the crown jewel of bicycle-pedestrian infrastructure” not just in New Haven, but in all of Connecticut, he said. And it’s still growing — with Phase IV downtown still under construction and slated to be finished by January 2023, and funding set aside for new raised crossings in Newhallville and Hamden, and city-operated lights finally scheduled to be turned on this summer in the Learning Corridor.

He thanked everyone for showing up to Friday’s event — and for continuing to ride and walk and use the trail.

“You are helping to carry on the legacy of the canal as a transportation corridor two centuries after it began.”

Click on the video below to watch some of Friday’s event. And click here and here to learn more about other upcoming events celebrating the canal’s bicentennial.