I pass Tanton Hill Road every day. Who or what was Tanton?
Tanton Hill Road, both ends of which connect to Danbury Road, is the earliest example of commemorating a first selectman with a road name.
The road, developed in the 1950s, was originally called River Road, a not-too-colorful moniker that somewhat exaggerated the status of the brook that flows off the west side of the road. The stream is technically the upper reaches of the Norwalk River, but it’s rather small here and, in this area, has also been called the Ridgefield Brook.
In 1956, the neighborhood petitioned the Board of Selectmen to change the road’s name. On Jan. 5, 1957, the question came before the board, one of whose members was Harvey D. Tanton, then a soon-to-retire selectman. Selectman Paul J. Morganti moved that the road’s name be changed to Tanton Hill Road. Mr. Tanton himself seconded the motion, and so the name was changed.
Despite the seeming vanity of his vote, the name is a suitable one, for Mr. Tanton had lived on the road for many years and had operated a nursery there.
A native of Prince Edward Island off Nova Scotia, Mr. Tanton was born in 1901 and grew up in his homeland before going off to study landscaping in Cleveland, Ohio. He came to Ridgefield in 1935 to be a foreman for the huge Outpost Nurseries, the firm that had most of the land along Danbury Road from the village north to the Danbury line, and which owned and developed what is now the Tanton Hill Road neighborhood. Mr. Tanton later became superintendent of Outpost, but in 1944 left to start his own general landscaping business.
A Republican, Mr. Tanton was elected first selectman in 1951, beating his neighbor, Harry E. Hull, one of the rare Democratic first selectmen, who had been in office since 1947. However, Mr. Hull had the last laugh, coming back in 1953 and 1955 to defeat Mr. Tanton, earning his third and fourth terms as first selectman. Mr. Tanton gained enough votes to retain a seat on the Board of Selectmen, retiring in 1957.
Mr. Tanton wasn’t the only manager of Outpost to become a first selectman here; J. Mortimer Woodcock, who held the office from 1967 to 1971, had run the nurseries and later bought out what was left of Outpost, forming Woodcock Nurseries. Mr. Woodcock and Mr. Hull, incidentally, are the only other modern-day first selectmen to have roads named after them.
Mr. Tanton was also a member of the Parks Commission, predecessor of the Parks and Recreation Commission, and of the Masons, Rotary Club, and Horticultural Society. He died in 1960, aged 59, after a long illness.
Tanton Hill Road, sometimes erroneously spelled Taunton Hill Road, was subdivided by Outpost, lot by lot, starting around 1955. —J.S.