When did Ridgefield get “modern utilities”?
Ridgefield’s first utility service was the telephone: By the 1880s, Ridgefielders were using Alexander Graham Bell’s invention.
The Feb. 20, 1888, Ridgefield Press reported that a crew of 16 men from the American Telegraph and Telephone Co. were in town, adding three more wires on the telephone poles to increase service. There were then 31 wires on the poles in the center area of town. Each of these could serve several homes or businesses with “party line” connections.
In 1891 long-distance service was established by a new telephone company that had set up in town. “It certainly works well,” The Press reported. “There is no trouble talking with New York and Albany.”
That company, with only 27 subscribers, ran into financial troubles and closed in 1894. But a year later, the Southern New England Telephone Co. arrived, and signed up 57 customers.
But Ridgefield still had no electricity, water or sewer lines. The Great Fire of 1895 was the catalyst for the creation of at least two of those utilities. The fire, which wiped out much of the central business district, could not be stopped because there was neither a fire department nor water for firefighters to use. The Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department was founded shortly after the blaze, and soon, largely with the aid of wealthy summer residents, the Ridgefield Water Supply Co. was established. Water from Round Pond on West Mountain supplied the village starting June 13, 1900.
With increased water use came an increased need for sewers. Again, with the backing of the summer people, a sewer system was running by 1902.
Electricity was the last of the Big Four utilities to arrive in town — mostly for illumination, since there were not electrical appliances back then. In September 1904, an expert on electrical lighting told town officials that Ridgefield should allow a generating plant to be built on Prospect Street near the train station.
“The wires will be carried through the side streets and supported on neatly painted poles, which will harmonize with the surrounding trees,” The Press said. “Service will be started in the early evening and run until daylight, thus providing light during all the hours of darkness.”
That plan was not approved. However, in 1906, H.B. Anderson and around 40 of those summer people created the Ridgefield Electric Co., which generated power with two coal-burning steam engines in a building on Ivy Hill Road near where the train tracks (now the rail trail) crossed. At first, the company served mostly the summer folk. But it also powered new streetlights in the village and a modern pumping station at Round Pond reservoir. In 1924, Connecticut Light and Power took over, supplying electricity from out of town and shutting down the inefficient local plant.
Incidentally, while a coal-burning power plant in the center of town would go over today like a lead balloon, most homes back then were heated with coal or wood. There was a lot of smoke already in the air.—J.S.