By Craig McArt
Washburn’s Road at South Cove showing Visitors Center and former dam, 1971 / ECA Archives
Do you know there are about 108 roads in Eastman? That’s 18 times as many as there were at the time Eastman was founded. Then, only a half-dozen existed, and rather than roads, it would be more accurate to call them eroded, overgrown trails with missing bridges. One was Howe Hill Road, crossing over the hill between Routes 10 and 114. Another was called the Enfield Center Highway; it began in North Grantham and ended in Enfield Center, and skirted Anderson and Butternut Ponds. A corduroy road followed the shoreline between West Cove at the north end of the lake and Pioneer Point at the south end. The oldest road extended from Burpee Hill to Philbrick Hill in Springfield. On the east side of the pond was the Logging Trail, connecting East Cove and Washburn’s Road. Washburn’s Road stretched between Howe Hill Road and Washburn Corner by McDaniel’s Marsh in Springfield.
Traces of these roads remain—all but the one along the West Cove to South Cove shoreline, which was submerged when the Orr Dam was constructed. Portions of the rest have been incorporated into Eastman’s hiking and skiing trail system: Butternut Trail, Bright Slopes Trail, Eastman Forest Trail, and Deer Path. Eastman Road and Road Round the Lake borrowed some of Washburn’s right-of-way.
Washburn’s Road was built in 1851 to connect Washburn Corner at the intersection of Bog Road and George Hill Road in Springfield with the Village of Grantham. A dam at Washburn Corner impounded water in McDaniel’s Marsh for a mill built by Philip Brown on Bog Brook Road in 1835 and later sold to William Washburn. William and his son William Jr. built their road to facilitate commerce for the mill. In doing so, it traversed from their mill through what is now Eastman, terminating at Howe Hill Road near the rotary on present-day Eastman Road.
Map of Washburn Road / Craig McArt
By the mid-1900s, the road had degraded into a rough path passable only with four-wheel drive vehicles and used by locals to picnic, camp, and fish at Eastman Pond. It was also used by hunters from near and far to reach the renowned deer yards in the area. So it was in 1969, when the man selected to plan Eastman, developer Emil Hanslin, set out with his staff to explore the site to become familiar with the land’s topography and resources.
To do their reconnaissance, they used Washburn’s Road for access. They reached it from the highway via Howe Hill Road. Next to it, they observed logging clearings that would later become fairways for a golf course. They followed it to an old mill site and a broken dam at the base of Eastman Pond. From there, it took them past Pioneer Point and South Cove, and eastward to the limits of Eastman land and beyond.
To put that route in present-day context: Washburn’s Road led from the rotary along Eastman Road near Eagle Drive to Road Round the Lake and over the dam to the Wellfield intersection. It then followed Trail #8 (Deer Path) onto Scotty’s Short Cut, through several lot frontages on Deer Run, past Trail #8 again, and down across two lots on either side of Whitetail Ridge. It crossed Eastman Access Road and went on to Washburn Corner at Old Grantham Road. It’s interesting to note that a trail connecting McDaniel’s Marsh was suggested in Hanslin’s early planning, and Washburn’s Road might have been considered as the path for this trail. Except for the lots on Whitetail Ridge, all of it can be hiked today.
Where Washburn’s Road crossed Eastman Brook, Hanslin’s plan called for building a large dam in order to double the size of the pond. In a graceful curve over Eastman Brook, it would provide a stunning view from the crest of the dam over what could then be called Eastman Lake. By the time of the dam’s construction in 1972, the Eastman Office facility, accessed from Washburn’s Road, had already been built on Pioneer Point. Because of the condition of the road, cement trucks had to be dragged in through the mud by bulldozers in order to pour the office foundation. The building was the first structure constructed by the fledgling Eastman organization, serving both as the Eastman Office and the Visitors Center.
Once the dam was built, that portion of Washburn’s Road was transformed into the paved road that would eventually extend completely around the lake and be appropriately named “Road Round the Lake.” The Washburns never could have imagined what would someday become of their road and how many other roads would spring from it.
Craig McArt is an amateur history detective and a member of the Grantham Historical Society.
