IMPORTANT EVENT INFO
THANK YOU TRAVELERS COMPANIES INC.
Sustaining corporate sponsor of Bike Walk Connecticut's Discover Hartford Tours
HARTFORD, CT, 1877-1909
birthplace of the American bicycle industry & movement, and park system urban design. Discover Hartford Parks Tour 2011 invites each and all to embrace these hometown CT capitol city legacies.
THE CITY OF HARTFORD, 2011
is co-presenting the Discover Hartford Parks Tour 2011 with Bike Walk Connecticut. In addition to the numerous vital civil services provided en route and in-park on event day by public works, police, recreation, sanitation, & health personnel, City staff are engaged well in advance confirming routes, sweeping streets, primping and preening parkland, planning for event day deployments, and promoting event participation among peers and in community. Please hug City employees when you see them, or in lieu, the tree, cyclist, or pedestrian s/he cares for!
POLICE, FIRE, & EMT/AMBULANCE PERSONNEL
ENJOY COMPLIMENTARY DAY OF EVENT REGISTRATION
Remembering NYC 10 years later, and recognizing your daily service saving and protecting lives on Connecticut’s roadways. Arrive on Event Day between 6:45 and 8:00 a.m. in work shirt or with work I.D. (your passport). Plz. bring signed registration and waiver forms with you to Check-In.
THE STREETS ARE LIVE: RULES OF THE ROAD IN FORCE AND EFFECT
Event participants, like motorists, are expected to stop at red lights & stop signs; be visible and predictable, and exercise due care, including looking around, signaling, and leaving sufficient space on the road between yourself and your fellow & sister event participants. Only exception to disobey a traffic law or rule is when directed by uniformed police to do so.
YOUR BIKE MUST BE READY TO PEDAL
Seasoned cyclists check the Air, Brakes, Crank, and Quick Releases before every ride. Light bike mechanical support (e.g., air, lube, saddle adjustments) will be provided in Bushnell Park and en route. To professionally service your bike before the Tour…or buy one! – lucky dog, please do business with a Bike Walk CT Business Member Bike Shop.
Benidorm - Canton
Bicycles East - Glastonbury
Biker’s Edge - Bristol
Newington Bicycle - Newington
Storrs Center Cycle - Storrs
REI - West Hartford
Simsbury Bicycle Cellar - Simsbury
Bloomfield Bicycle - Bloomfield
Berlin Bike - Berlin
CYCLISTS MUST BE READY TO ROLL
We wear helmets because we love the people who love us. No exceptions.
NOTICE OF ANY EVENT CANCELLATION ORDER & REFUND REQUEST
Will be posted by 5:30 a.m. at Discover Hartford Tour - Facebook Event, via vmsg at 860-904-2420, or by “friending” Bike Walk Connecticut on Facebook today. 50% refund of registration fee paid upon your request in the event of cancellation.
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SCHEDULE
10/24 (Mon) Volunteer Appreciation Party, Red Rock Tavern, 369 Capitol Avenue, In the heart of Hartford's historical bicycle district, 5:00pm, free appetizers, cash bar.
EVENT DAY - 10/22
THE HUB – BUSHNELL PARK, DOWNTOWN HARTFORD
| 5:00am–6:30am | Volunteer and Vendor Set-Up |
| 6:45am-8:00am | Bike Tour Advance Registrant Check-In & New Registration, includes - Helmet Fit for All and Free Distribution to Youth – courtesy, CT Children's Medical Center / Injury Prevention Program |
| 8:00am-9:00am | Walk Tour New Registration |
| Advance Bike Tour Registrants just Sign-In at Check-In New Bike Tour Registrants please bring completed registration and waiver forms with you |
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| 8:10am | Welcome by proud Hartford residents, Matt Fleury (President & CEO Connecticut Science Center), Irene O'Connor (Morning News Anchor, WFSB Channel 3) and Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra |
| 8:20am | Cyclists spin off, longer distances first, in waves |
| 9:30am | Walkers step out |
| 12:00pm | Walkers Checkback-In |
| 2:00pm | All Cyclists Checkback-In |
| 7:00am-3:00pm | Vendor Expo, Food, Music, & Friends |
| 12:00pm | Real Art Ways Stone Field Walk Enjoy a FREE geo-architectural tour of buildings in Hartford given by Robert Thorson, Professor of Geology at the University of Connecticut, author of Stone by Stone and coordinator of Stone Wall Initiative: Saving New England's historic stone walls. The tour will begin and end at Carl Andre's Stone Field Sculpture. At Main & Gold. |
| 2:00pm-3:00pm | Hooker Day Parade. Bicycle presence a must.
Goofy, wacky, silly, & letitloose fun, this parade is for the people who work & play hard every day at celebrating and sharing the greatness of Connecticut's capitol city and its people. Valet your bike. Two hands needed to wave and hydrate simultaneously.
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| 7:00am-4:00pm | Phone Audio Tour debut!
Experience the hidden history behind your favorite downtown destination, Bushnell Park, with a prototype cell phone audio tour collaboration between Bike-Walk CT and SocialHartford.com. This tour features detailed overviews of the design of Bushnell Park, the lost Pak River, the Sailors & Soldiers Arch, Corning Fountain, even the CT State Capitol itself.
A list of extensions and destinations are available at http://socialhartford.com/tours or by phone at Dial-in: 860-838-3555 Extensions: 101 Hartford Founding 102 Hartford T Hooker 110 Capitol Building 121 Bushnell Charter Oak 122 Bushnell Design 123 Bushnell Olmsted 124 Bushnell Carousel 125 Bushnell HoraceWells 126 Bushnell PumpHouseRiver 127 Bushnell Corning Fount 128 Bushnell Victory 129 Bushnell Harmony 130 Bushnell Arch Info 131 Bushnell Arch Overview 132 Bushnell Arch South 133 Bushnell Trinity Bridge 134 Bushnell Arch Steps |
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REFRESHMENTS & REST STOPS Water and sanitation available in Bushnell Park and large parks, including Charter Oak Landing, Goodwin, Pope, Elizabeth, Batterson, Keney/Woodland, and Riverside. FREE. Sports drink, fruit, & other energy snacks available in satellite park rest stop locations only. These parks include: Goodwin; Elizabeth; Batterson; and Keney/Woodland. FREE. |
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FOOD FOR SALE
Morning breakfast in Bushnell Park at the Pump House offered by LaPaloma Sabanera Coffee House, www.lapalomacoffeehouse.com/
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MECHANICAL SUPPORT Bushnell Park - Newington Bike and REI Elizabeth Park - REI En route to Batterson Park, Central Wheel (62 Farmington Avenue, Farmington) (after 9:30am) |
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ADDITIONAL ATTRACTIONS
The Bushnell park carousel will be open from 11-5. For more information
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BIKE TOURS
The Routes
Follow the Route Using GPS - 11.6 16.8 25.9 41.3
Discover Hartford Parks Tour 2011 follows the 11.6, 16.8, 25.9, and 41.3 mile Hartford Parks Bike Tour routes blazed in 1995 by sponsors’ Hartford Neighborhood Housing Coalition and the Hartford Police Athletic League to celebrate the 100 year anniversaries of the Hartford Parks system and Pope/Columbia bicycle manufacture.
Each of the 11.6, 16.8, 25.9, and 41.3 mile tours departs & returns to Bushnell Park in downtown Hartford. Cyclists spin off in waves, longer distances departing first. Each route is predominantly flat and generally only the 40-mile Batterson Route poses any significant hill challenge. The Discover Hartford Parks Tour event is a tour-not a race, and suitable for the occasional as well as daily cyclist.
Please REMAIN AWARE that the STREETS ARE NOT CLOSED TO MOTOR VEHICLES. We proceed without stopping through a red light or stop sign ONLY when directed to do so by the POLICE. Police typically do so ONLY at the very beginning of the Tour – Bushnell to Colt Park, and at a few certain intersections.
PLEASE read more about bike touring safety generally (e.g., avoid bunching up) and as specifically concerns this year’s Tour (e.g., road construction) on the IMPORTANT EVENT INFO page.
Parks we pass through or alongside:
Bushnell
South Green
Colt Park
Charter Oak Landing
Goodwin Park
Hyland Park
Rocky Ridge Park
Pope Park
George Day Playground
Elizabeth Park
Sigourney Square Park
Keney Park
Riverside Park
Batterson Park
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WALKING TOURS
GUIDED Walk TOURS
Presented by Hartford Preservation Alliance.
Event Day Registration Only in Bushnell Park beginning at 8:30 a.m.
Departing at 9:30 a.m. Choose:
Downtown Moderns: Explore the iconic and nationally recognized modern architecture of Hartford’s downtown from our first skyscraper to the “radical” Boat Building.
or
Lewis Street & Ancient Burying Grounds: Come explore the quaint Lewis Street Historic District bordering Bushnell Park. Stops include Hartford’s last surviving group of mid-19th-century residential structures, iconic Center Church with its Tiffany windows, and the Ancient Burying Ground, final resting place of Hartford’s founding families.
Departing at 11:00 a.m. Choose:
Parkside Monuments: Learn about the many monuments in Bushnell Park and on the Capitol grounds especially those memorializing Hartford’s Civil War veterans. Includes a guided tour of the Soldiers & Sailors Arch.
or
SoDo & Buckingham Square: Explore SoDo and the Buckingham Square Historic District with its inviting Downtown residential charm. Brownstone row houses, apartment blocks, and two of only four remaining 18th-century homes left in the Capital City, provide visitors a glimpse into Colonial/Victorian Hartford.
Fee: payable to the Hartford Preservation Alliance, $15 per tour OR $20 for two tours
Contact mary@hartfordpreservation.org 860-570-0331; or check out www.hartfordpreservation.org
SELF-GUIDED Walk TOURS
The Bushnell Park "Tree Walk"
Bushnell Park is an arboretum of rare and native trees. From the beginning, the Reverend Horace Bushnell and Bushnell Park designer Jacob Weidenmann shaped a graceful landscape that included over 150 varieties of trees. Though many of the originals were lost over the years to both age and neglect, the Bushnell Park Foundation led a renovation in the 1980's and 1990's that included the planting of 400 additional trees.
“Tree Walk” brochures will be available at the Hartford Preservation Alliance’s table.
Can’t wait? Pick up a "Tree walk" brochure free of charge at the League of Women Voters desk at the entrance to the Legislative Office Building on Capitol Avenue and at the Hartford Welcome Center at 45 Pratt Street, Hartford.
The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, Bushnell Park
The Arch will be open from 9:00 a.m. to Noon for self-guided Tours on Event Day.
For a guided Tour, register for the Parkside Monuments Tour at the Hartford Preservation Alliance table. The Tour departs at 11:00 a.m.
Keney Park Nature Trail
Start the tour at the Keney Park Pond House (Keney/Woodland) and check out 31 points of natural and historic significance along a one-quarter mile trail. Brochures available at the Pond House on Event Day.
Cedar Hill Cemetery 453 Fairfield Ave, Hartford (on the Wethersfield line at Maple Ave)
http://cedarhillfoundation.org/visit-cedar-hill/self-guided-tours/
This eternal resting place is populated by numerous Hartford dignitaries including several bicycling and parks benefactors and friends, including but not limited to:
James G. Batterson
Samuel & Elizabeth Colt
George H. Day
Rev. Francis Goodwin
Henry Keney
Mayor Michael Peters
Albert Linder Pope
Frances Pope Walker
Jacob Wiedenmann
Allan Williams
Cedar Hill Cemetery invites the public to enjoy free self-guided tours including a Tour of notable residents; a Tour of Notable Trees; and a Guide by Cell Phone. Self-guide tour brochures are available in the information box located inside Cedar Hill Cemetery’s entryway gates and in the Main Office located in the Northam Memorial Chapel, which is open Monday through Friday from 8:00 am until 4:00 pm.
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REGISTER
ONLINE ADVANCE TOUR REGISTRATION
- Save $$ and time on event day by Registering in Advance.
- One registration form per participant.
- Online Registration through October 19
- Household members must register separately
ADVANCE BIKE TOUR MAIL-IN REGISTRATION
- MAIL post by October 15
- HAND DELIVER to HQ by appointment 860-904-2420
- Please print and complete also for event day registration
ORDER COMMEMORATIVE T-SHIRT & JERSEY
VOLUNTEER
New this year! On Sunday, October 16, all volunteers are invited to enjoy a
Volunteer’s Preview Ride of the Discover Hartford Parks Tour 2011. FREE, mais oui! Depart Bushnell Park at Clinton St. at 8:00 a.m. Self-supported. FREE Brunch 10:30-Noon.
VOLUNTEER POSITIONS
Pre-Event Day
- Make Signs (, road stencils, in park instructions and displays)
- Deliver/Distribute Posters and Handbills
- “Recon” Rides, on your own, follow routes, & report any issues (road conditions, turns, construction, etc., October 1-16)
- Canvass key route segments to alert and “recruit” businesses and residents to the event
- Truck Drivers and loaders (mileage reimbursed at 0.51/mile)
Event Day
Citywide
- Truck Drivers and unloaders
- Erect signage
- Spray chalk street stencils/directionals
- Take Down signage
Stationary Marshals
- Mobile (cycling) Marshals
- Sag Wagons (transport cyclists and walkers back only; no mechanical)
Bushnell Park
- Site Set-up (tents, tables, chairs, signage)
- Registrations: Advance Check-In, New, and Checkback-In
- Clean-up
- Post-event Site Break-Down
Satellite Parks
- Staff the refreshment tables in Goodwin, Pope, Elizabeth, Batterson, or Keney
- Clean-up
Reply to gyaindl1@bikewalkct.org
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HARTFORD BICYCLING & PARKS LEGACIES
Frederick Law Olmstead, the renowned father of landscape architecture and the American parks movement, was born in Hartford in 1822. Believing public parks essential to the functioning of a democratic society, Olmstead exhorted public officials across the nation to “place parks in your cities, and unloose their gates as wide as the gates of morning to the whole people.”
In 1853, the public parks movement took root in the establishment of Hartford’s Bushnell Park and NYC’s Central Park, the first planned urban parks in the country. It was Olmstead who came up with the idea of creating a unified citywide parks system, and along with the Rev. Francis Goodwin, persuaded Hartford’s enlightened business and civic leaders to deed or purchase land to do so. During a fifteen- month period commencing in the autumn of 1894, Hartford’s Keney, Elizabeth, Pope, Riverside, Goodwin, and Sigourney Square Parks were established, comprising 1,200 acres and forming a ring of perimeter parks around the 40 acre Bushnell Park downtown.
The Hartford parks system became a model urban plan that was replicated by other emerging cities of the day. Today, nearly every Hartford resident lives within a half-mile of one of 25 public parks comprising nearly 2,200 acres, half of which lies outside city limits in the Towns of Windsor, Wethersfield, West Hartford, and Farmington.
In 1878, Boston’s Colonel Albert A. Pope manufactured America’s first bicycle at the Weed Sewing Machine Co. on Capitol Ave. By 1900, 3,000 Hartford Pope Manufacturing Company employees, one-tenth the local workforce, were producing 50,000 bicycles annually for a global market. Pope’s Columbia Bicycles were considered top of the line.
In 1880, Pope founded the League of American Wheelmen (now League of American Bicyclists) to organize cyclists to lobby the US Congress and state legislatures to commence the paving of America’s roads, and also to ante up some of their own funds to do so. Pope also maintained a bail fund to spring cyclists arrested for acts of civil disobedience challenging restrictive local cycling ordinances.
On November 26, 1894, Colonel Pope deeded to the City of Hartford 93 acres of land immediately adjacent to the Pope Manufacturing complex, while conveying additional acres of enlightened entrepreneurship as well:
“I believe that a large part of the success of any manufacturing business depends upon the health, happiness, and orderly life of its employees, and in a like manner a city thrives best by caring and providing for the well-being of its citizens. Your city is in need of open breathing-places and pleasure grounds, which should be scattered in different regions, and so laid out and arranged as to afford the means of recreation and pleasure to all classes of law-abiding citizens. They should be something more than public gardens where even trespassing on the grass is properly forbidden.”
By 1897, Pope Manufacturing also was producing both electric and gas powered cars, and in 1899, Pope’s Hartford employees built 2,092 of them, nearly half the nation’s total. Hartford was regarded both as the nation’s Bicycle Capitol and Automotive Capitol at this time. Convinced that people “do not want to sit over an explosion,” Pope stuck with electric vehicle production when competitors instead stuck with the internal combustion engine after the discovery of oil in Texas in 1901.
By 1904, Pope Manufacturing had moved bicycle manufacture to Pope factories in Westfield, MA, and Pope’s automobile manufacture in Hartford continued until 1914. Colonel Pope died in 1909.
Sources
- The Connecticut Historical Society, “A Connecticut History Program,” as appearing in
The Hartford Courant, (March 24, 2004) at p. A8
- Stephen B. Goddard, Colonel Albert Pope and His American Dream Machines,
McFarland & Company (2000)
- John Alexopoulos, The Nineteenth Century Parks of Hartford, A Legacy to the Nation,
Hartford Architecture Conservancy (1983)
- Pope Manufacturing Company, An Industrial Achievement, 1877-1907 (1908)
- The Hartford Collection archives, Hartford Public Library
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2010 PHOTOS
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CONTACT
Georgette Yaindl
Executive Director
Bike Walk Connecticut
56 Arbor St., Suite 310 A
Hartford, CT 06106
mail to: POB 270149
West Hartford, CT 06127
860-471-4133
gyaindl@bikewalkct.org
www.bikewalkct.org
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DIRECTIONS & MOTOR VEHICLE PARKING
Free parking will be available at nearby state lots
- 165 Capitol Ave
- Surface lot on the corner of Capitol Ave and Oak St
- Surface lot on the corner of Capitol Ave and Broad St
- Wadsworth Street Parking Lot
Valet Bike Parking: 5:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. in Bushnell Park - FREE
If you need more information or have any questions before the event please feel free to email
gyaindl@bikewalkct.org or call 860-904-2420