HISTORY OF LAND USE IN REDDING, CT

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Natural Setting and Town Origins

Most of the land now comprising Redding was a densely forested wilderness until early in the eighteenth century, accessible only by rough Indian trails from inland areas to the shore.

Situated in highlands which separate Connecticut's southwestern coastal basins from the Housatonic Valley, Redding is a hill country of high north south ridges, steep sided valleys, and numerous small streams.

Ridges and stream valleys generally have their highest elevations near the Town's northerly border, where several glacially formed hills reach elevations exceeding 800 feet above sea level.

Four principal streams originate in this vicinity and flow southward toward Long Island Sound. These include the Aspetuck River east of Redding Ridge, the Little and the Saugatuck Rivers east and west respectively of Redding Center, and the Norwalk River roughly paralleling the Town's western border.

All of these streams except the Norwalk reach water supply reservoirs and consequently about ninety per cent of the Town's area lies on public water supply watershed. About one mile of the three mile long Saugatuck Reservoir, a major unit in the Bridgeport Hydraulic water supply system, extends into south central Redding.

Redding's glacially deposited major aquifers provide groundwater recharge to both the Aspetuck and the Saugatuck Rivers, at Poverty Hollow and at West Redding. Smaller lakes and ponds occur intermittently throughout the Town's hilly terrain (see glacial deposits map). (See also early research on glaciers and drainage development in Greater Danbury).

Interspersed among the hills and valleys are extensive areas of rough, ledgy terrain with steep slopes and numerous rock out crops, especially characteristic of the Hopewell Woods, Redding Glen, Gallows Hill, Peaceable Street and Topstone Mountain localities. Wetlands occur at numerous locations along most of the streams and depressions, two of the larger being Lyon's Swamp in the southeast section and Huckleberry Swamp in the west central section.

The village of Georgetown, which also lies partly in Weston and Wilton, is situated in a bowl of the Norwalk River Valley at the convergence of several lesser streams. With the added exception of central West Redding, situated at the southern end of a broad limestone valley extending northward to New Milford, most valleys are narrow and deep with small, swift running brooks.

Much of the Town's earliest settlement was attracted to the three broad fertile ridges which dominate the landscape along Redding Ridge to Sunset Hill, Redding Center to Lonetown, and Umpawaug Hill to West Redding.

TOPOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW OF REDDING, CT
The highest elevation in Redding is about 830 feet in the northeast part of
the Town. Then the low point of about 290 feet is on the Saugatuck
Reservoir along the southern border. See the full context for
Redding's terrain on the regional topographic map.

Redding Development:
Beginnings to 1950

Around 1670 the proprietors of the Town of Fairfield purchased from local Indian sachems the northerly six miles of territory which had been granted to them by the General Court of the Connecticut Colony. By or shortly after 1700, enterprising settlers were following Indian trails into the interior to claim the lands they had purchased or inherited. Thus the early roots of Redding's considerable history were planted from the south.

Settlers streamed in during the first several decades of the eighteenth century, attracted by the broad and fertile ridges which dominate the Town's landscape east, center and west. In 1723, residents petitioned the General Court to be set apart from Fairfield as the parish of "Reading", a name chosen in honor of John Read Esq. The parish petition was granted in 1729.

By the 1750's the parish was settled in all sections with farms, mills on several streams and substantial dwellings. The Town played a role in the Revolutionary War, as evidenced today by Putnam Memorial State Park. By the 1780's much of the better land had been thoroughly cleared, stone fences marked property boundaries, and substantial houses and barns had been built in every section.

While at least two "county" roads had been laid out in the second half of the eighteenth century, from Norwalk to Danbury via Umpawaug Hill and from Fairfield to Danbury via Redding Ridge, all of the highways of the period were little better than rocky, rutted paths, poorly suited for wheeled vehicles.

Early in the 1800's, stage coach lines began regular runs over several newly improved roads, stopping at taverns in the Boston District, in Redding Center and on Redding Ridge. In 1809, Congress granted the town its first U.S. post office. Small neighborhood trades, such as button and comb making, expanded to full- time operations. Several private schools were founded. Population reached 1,717 persons in 1810. As the new century advanced, industry and enterprise became much more important in the town's economy and mill sites were developed on every sizeable stream.

The new partnership of Gilbert and Bennett in 1837 succeeded in devising a loom to weave fine steel wire into sieves, wire netting and barbed wire. Not only did every household need a sieve but the country's westward expansion into the treeless prairies required huge quantities of barbed wire for fencing. By mid- century a half dozen buildings were in use for Gilbert and Bennett's expanding wire manufacturing operations and a village of about two dozen dwellings had grown up around the mills.

Population remained stable, at about 1,680 persons, for the several decades prior to 1850. It was a time of modest agricultural and industrial prosperity. New and more stylish homes were built by many families to replace simple farmhouses, and farms and roads were improved in every section.

Town population peaked at 1,754 persons in 1850. Two years later the Danbury and Norwalk Railroadline was completed through the west side of the Town with depots at Georgetown, Topstone and West Redding. By the 1850's and 1860's the town's woodlands were badly depleted and some farmland was beginning to lie fallow as an increasing flood of lower priced western produce came to eastern markets. A map of Redding in 1867 is available.

The next half century was the quiet period of the town's history. As the little water powered mills and industries disappeared and less productive farmland was abandoned, population continued a steady decline. Farming, mostly producing dairy and other produce shipped daily to nearby centers, was now the mainstay of the town's economy, and those families with the better farmland managed an adequate livelihood.

Several significant gifts to the public by Redding citizens occurred during this era. In 1878 a large bequest was made to the Town to establish a high school; the Hill Academy opened in Redding Center in 1879, and the building now the Town Hall, was dedicated in 1883. In 1887 and 1893 two property owners donated to the State of Connecticut 35 acres of land which formed the nucleus of one of the Revolutionary War campsites of General Putnam, and in 1900, another gift brought the preserve to 102 acres.

This "Israel Putnam Memorial Campground", as it was then called, was extensively restored and furnished with a lake, a monument, extensive drives and a variety of structures including a colonial museum, all administered by a special State appointed commission; it is Connecticut's oldest state park.

Much farmland had been abandoned by the end of the nineteenth century, as the younger members of local families sought opportunity elsewhere. A forest survey issued in 1915 reported that by that year about 45% of Redding's land had been abandoned as farmland and was recovering forest or "waste land", including second growth forest, old field and swampland; a dramatic change from the nearly totally clear landscape of the 1860's. The town's population in 1900 was down to a little over 1,400 persons.

Late in the 1890's however, Redding was "discovered" by prominent summer visitors from New York City and vicinity who delighted in the isolated Town's scenic hills and tranquil pastoral beauty. By 1906, approximately two dozen old farms, colonial houses and woodland tracts had been purchased by these newcomers, who included distinguished writers, editors, journalists, educators, business and professional people.

Summer homes which they established included business and professional people in remodeled farmhouses, rustic style cabins and spacious dwellings in the best architectural styles, generally landscaped in attractive estate type settings. The transformation of the town would continue for the next several decades and longer as scores more illustrious artists, musicians, literary, professional and business people took up summer and part-time residence in Redding.

Many of the estates and large new homes were attracted to Poverty Hollow (then called "Pleasant Valley"), Redding Ridge, Sunset Hill, Sanfordtown and Redding Glen, Diamond Hill and Umpawaug Hill. At first the affluent newcomers arrived by train at one of the nearer depots, but shortly after 1900, the automobile began to appear regularly on Redding's dusty country roads.

About 1909 one of the literary newcomers, Mark Twain, organized and donated a public library to the Town, which grateful townspeople promptly named for him. A few years later the town had its first telephone exchange (located in a private dwelling on Cross Highway), with a small group of subscribers. Post offices continued to operate from private dwellings and country stores.

In 1916 the Federal Aid Road Act was passed and the State of Connecticut embarked on an ambitious program to construct a network of trunk line highways linking population centers and providing farm-to-market access for the rural towns. Generally following established rights-of-way, these paved two lane state roads provided easy access to large areas of heretofore inaccessible rural countryside.

Route 7, through the Norwalk River Valley from Norwalk to Danbury, was one of the area's earliest roads to be improved. Work started in 1918 on the Bridgeport to Bethel road, now designated Route 58, traversing Redding Ridge to Putnam Park, and this road was completed in 1921.

Other "main roads" were simultaneously constructed in adjoining towns as the State's automobile registration soared past the 100,000 mark in 1920. Within a few years additional miles of state road and "State Aid" road were under construction in Redding, including portions of present Routes 53 and 107.

In common with other towns, Redding began a program of oil-surfacing of local roads, and additional State highway construction soon followed (sections of present day Newtown Turnpike and Meeker Hill Road). Although many of the newly surfaced local roads remained, only one lane wide and many sections of dirt road remained. By the early to mid 1930's, hard surfaced roads reached every section of the Town and Redding's rural isolation had passed into history.

In 1920, the Town's year round population reached its lowest ebb since the first census in 1782, with only 1,315 persons present. A table of census population by decade for Redding in this period is available.

Despite this, the presence of talented summer, weekend and affluent retired residents was invigorating and transforming the community. Large new homes were rising in former farm fields along the newly paved roads, and many an old farm became a weekend re- treat or gentleman's estate.

New civic clubs and organizations were founded through the twenties and thirties. Electricity arrived and by the early 1930's, the entire town had electric and telephone service. Befitting its new accessibility and gentility a number of very small wayside businesses opened up along the several state roads; tearooms, restaurants, guest houses, antique shops, gasoline filling stations (from which only three presently survive).

Home building slowed, but did not cease, during the depression years of the 1930's. Aerial photos of the time depict a very rural Redding landscape, about 30% open fields and farms and 70% forest and overgrown old fields. Many roads were still dirt surfaced lanes but newer homes along the paved roads were evident too. Approximately two dozen farms were still in active operation. Another source, the U. Conn Dept. of Agriculture states that in 1935 there were 268 agricultural businesses in Redding occupying 88% of the Town's total area.

Just what did Redding's neighborhoods look like in 1934? Check them out on this highly detailed aerial photograph.

A major land use controversy dominated much of the 1930's decade. For many years the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company, water supplier to the shoreline towns to the south, had been purchasing abandoned farms and other land along local streams. Early in the decade the company announced plans to create a new reservoir, the largest in its system, by flooding an extensive area of the Saugatuck Valley in Redding and Weston.

The picturesque village of Valley Forge, historic homes and river meadows, and a scenic area of Redding Glen were to be inundated. Citizens in several towns fought the company's plans tenaciously, but eventually lost their appeals. Roads, some buildings and a cemetery were relocated, the dam was built and the Saugatuck Reservoir was completed in 1942.

Despite the Depression Redding continued to attract artistic and professional persons, as both weekenders and year round residents. Its population in 1940 stood at 1,758 persons, equaling its previous high total from 90 years previous.

The wartime years which followed brought Town growth to a standstill. Many Redding youths left for military service and other residents left for defense jobs. An aircraft observation post on Umpawaug Hill was actively operated through the war years. When a peacetime economy returned in 1946, the accumulated prosperity from wartime jobs and delayed family formation created an area wide building boom which would soon impact Redding. The Town was now easily accessible from major employment centers in Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport and Danbury.

New house construction, some for the first time by speculative builders, resumed and Town population began to increase at a vigorous rate. School population was on an upward spiral, crowding the Hill School. The Town took immediate action, purchasing a portion of the nearby Burritt farm for a school site. The new 8 classroom Redding Elementary School opened in 1948 and the adjoining Memorial Gymnasium Auditorium a year later.

In only the half decade following World War II, town population had jumped 15% to 2,037 persons by 1950. While a development boom loomed on the horizon, the town was still rural in character. Most dwellings were widely spaced along the original road network, there were more than two dozen Town roads still unimproved, some fifteen farms were still operating, and almost 92% of the land in Redding was still undeveloped.

Fortunately some of Redding's scenic road character from this early era has been formally preserved for the future.

Redding Development:
1950 to 2000

At mid-century, 1950, the citizens of Redding realized that a potential avalanche of new development threatened the still rural town. After a series of contentious meetings and a referendum, a zoning commission was established, and the Town's first zoning regulations became effective in June, 1950. Except for Georgetown, the Route 7 frontage and the small center at West Redding, most of the town was zoned "Farming and Residential" with a requisite minimum lot area of one acre per dwelling.

For an overview of the extent of land development in Redding, CT near 1950, a review of the 1951 USGS Topographic Map for Redding will be of interest (sample above).

The anticipated rush of development soon became a reality. By the early fifties the subdivision of large tracts of land began to take place in widely separated locations. New subdivision roads were built and several long neglected or abandoned Town roads were reopened. Several farms were intensely divided into one acre lots.

Almost immediately, petitions were submitted by alarmed neighborhood groups requesting two-acre minimum lot sizes, which were granted for the Umpawaug and Limekiln Road areas in 1952. Responding to Townwide demand, in 1953 the Zoning Commission enacted two-acre residential zoning for the whole town outside of Georgetown, which section retained enclaves of multiple family, 1/2 acre and 1 acre lot zoning.

Concern about the town's future persisted, and in 1956 a town meeting authorized the establishment of a planning commission. Regulations to control the layout of subdivisions were swiftly prepared, and adopted in February 1957.

An onslaught of a different nature, quite unexpected, occurred in October 1955. After the passage of a tropical storm a devastating flood inundated central Georgetown causing extensive property damage there and the loss of two lives in Redding at the Saugatuck River. The damaged businesses and the Gilbert and Bennett Wire Mill recovered but little new development took place in the Redding portion of Georgetown for many years following. The Town endorsed a proposed Norwalk River flood control project which, however, was never fully implemented.

The exodus of corporate administrative and technical jobs to the suburbs in this period created a booming economy in lower Fairfield County. In response to the housing demand, subdivision applications poured into the Town's Planning Commission and the construction rate for new dwellings rose to nearly 40 per year.

Within a few years the combined classroom space of the Hill School and the new Elementary School was again crowded, and in 1957-58, a new wing was added to the latter facility, doubling its capacity. A burgeoning population of Grades 9-12 students created another school space crisis at the same time.

After approval by referenda in the towns of Easton and Redding in 1957, a regional school district was formed and a 35 acre site was purchased from a farm on Black Rock Turnpike about a mile north of the Easton line. The new Joel Barlow High School opened for classes in the fall of 1959.

As the 1950's drew to a close, the Town converted the newly freed space in the wood frame Hill School to a town hall achieving office and meeting space long needed by town boards and officials. A new Town garage followed several years later. One of the most significant civic gains of the decade, however, was philanthropic the gift of over 600 acres of land to the State for a state park. Located on Sunset Hill and in the Hopewell Woods section, about 551 acres of Huntington State Park are in Redding as well as its principal entrance.

In 1960, the Planning Commission adopted the Town's first Town Plan. This "Policy Plan" recommended areas for light industry, a town park, riverine green belts, areas for 4-acre minimum lots, and a Redding Center historic district. Its endorsement of an open space program for the Town was to prove prophetic, but few of its other proposals were implemented. Redding's 1960 population was recorded at 3,359 persons, a 65% gain for the decade.

As the 1960's progressed, the subdivision of large tracts continued and the rate of new dwelling construction increased substantially. A Town survey conducted in 1963 showed a strong desire by Town residents to preserve the "rural" character of the town and a willingness (by 73%) to spend Town tax money to purchase open space land for this purpose.

Early in 1964, a Town Meeting established the Town's Conservation Commission, and within six months the new commission produced a map of priority lands to be saved. The recommended open space lands, endorsed by the Zoning and Planning Commissions, were officially added to the Town Plan in the summer of 1965. During the same year, a group of private citizens met and incorporated the nonprofit Redding Land Trust to encourage private gifts of open space land. Within its first two years the Trust would receive two gifts of land totaling 55 acres, and hundreds more acres in the years to come.

By the mid sixties new residential construction was running at the rate of 60 to 70 units per year and the Town initiated plans for another school. Land was acquired on Route 53 and design proceeded for a new 500 pupil school to serve the upper elementary grades and relieve overcrowded conditions at the Redding Elementary School. The John Read Middle School opened early in 1966.

The year 1967 saw Redding's bicentennial. In January the Town purchased its first open space tract, the 7-acre Lonetown Marsh, to be used as a nature laboratory for the adjacent elementary school. In a historic Town Meeting in October, the Town authorized the expenditure of $1.3 million in Town funds to be supplemented by federal and state open space grants to purchase key tracts on the Town's open space plan. By the end of the decade the Town had purchased six tracts totaling 407 acres, and was actively negotiating for several others.

It had always been intuitive to shape Redding's development to natural features of the underlying landscape. These are "constraints on development" due to soil, slope and flood plain.

But as planning and zoning modernized, consideration of these limiting natural features became more formalized in local land use regulations, this trend due in part to newly available federal and state natural resource maps.

See the four basic categories above
displayed on a townwide map of Redding.
Examine components of the four categories.

HVCEO as the regional planning agency for Redding was formed in 1968, the word "Housatonic" in its title having its source in an old indian name.

Rapid growth of the town continued. In 1970 the census counted 5,590 residents, over 2,200 persons added in a decade. An expansion of the regional high school was under construction to relieve crowding and bring its capacity to 900 students. Completing several years of study, the Town Planning Commission issued and adopted in 1971 a new and more comprehensive Town Plan. The Plan reiterated the goal of the 1965 amendments to preserve the Town's "country atmosphere" and set aside one fourth of the Town's area, 5,000 acres as permanent open space.

Town facilities continued to expand with the growing population. The enlarged Joel Barlow High School was completed in 1971, and the following year the Town purchased the remaining 47 acres of the "Burritt Farm" in order to enlarge, once again, the elementary school. A greatly expanded and remodeled Mark Twain Library reopened in 1972, and the extensive new north wing addition to the elementary school was completed in 1973.

Growing concern about protection of the Town's surface and ground water resources prompted a town meeting that year to empower the Conservation Commission as the Town's inland wetland agency; regulations controlling wetlands, watercourses and wide regulated setback areas were adopted in May 1973.

After the arrival of Connecticut's1973 wetlands protection law, development potential in Redding was significantly reduced as the approximately 13% of municipal land area defined as wetland was largely excluded from development.

By mid decade, 1975, as federal and state open space funding was evaporating, the Town of Redding had purchased thirteen tracts of permanent open space aggregating 1,256 acres. In addition to the Town owned open space, the Land Trust held 205 acres and State parkland comprised another 737 acres, for a net gain of more than 2,000 acres of parkland and open space over the quarter century since 1950. Without change from the 1930's, a little over 2,800 acres of land remained held by Bridgeport Hydraulic Company as watershed protection.

In the face of a rapidly mounting secondary school population, site space was increasingly cramped at the Barlow regional high school. In 1975, following a favorable referendum, the regional school district purchased a 78 acre vacant tract south of the school. Construction of an extensive complex of athletic fields and recreation facilities on the new tract followed in 1980 and 1981, and school classroom facilities were once again enlarged three years later.

By the later seventies only very small portions of the long-planned Route 7 Expressway had been completed northward from I-84 to central Brookfield and southward from I-84 beyond Danbury Airport. The final verdict on this massive roadway proposal was that it would never come up from Norwalk and cross northerly thru Ridgefield, Redding and Danbury (see map of proposed route).

By 1980, the rate of new home construction had slowed in response to a nationwide recession, but Town population was nonetheless nearly 7,300 persons, another 30% gain. It was a time of growing environmental awareness, and a comprehensive overhaul of Town land use regulations was initiated to protect the town's low density and watershed character.

New subdivision regulations were adopted in 1980, and new zoning regulations in 1986, both of which incorporated mandatory site planning related to land and water conservation criteria. During the 1980's, town planning was assisted with comprehensive mapping of land use, slopes, aquifers, soils, bedrock fracturing and other data. In 1984 the Town Plan was updated, and supplemented with a comprehensive Open Space Plan.

Historic and scenic preservation also attracted strong citizen support in the eighties. In 1986, the Town Meeting adopted a Scenic Roads Ordinance; about a dozen local roads have since been designated for special protection. A year later, following a special historic and architectural survey, central Georgetown was designated a National Register historic district.

The year 1987 also saw the cessation of operations at the historic Gilbert and Bennett factory in Georgetown, now rendered archaic by modern technology. The Town responded by conducting a special study of the Georgetown area, and the resultant Georgetown Supplement to the Town Plan was adopted in 1989.

In accordance with the plan new zoning was created for Georgetown in 1990, to encourage redevelopment of the old factory site with townhouses, mixed residential and commercial in preserved historic buildings, and new site amenities. As recommended, the Gilbert Hill area, still open land, was changed from an "Office and Research" Zone to a "Special Development District" for a planned "life care" residential community. After nearly two hundred years of industrial presence, Redding was now an almost completely residential community with a population nearing 8,000 persons.

Georgetown's longstanding wastewater disposal issues and anticipated growth brought about the appointment in 1991 of a Water Pollution Control Commission, and installation several years later of sanitary sewers and a sewage treatment plant serving the village.

In 1992, the Town Planning Commission adopted a recommended plan for Redding Center in recognition of its unique place in the community's life and history. The following year, 1993, the "historic district" of Redding Center was added to the National Register of Historic Places. After considerable debate, the Town accepted the plan's recommendations to restore and enlarge the present Town Hall and Town Hall annex to provide a new senior center, and to preserve the two historic public greens.

Redding in the 1990's was a vastly changed community from its earlier days. Remnants of two farms, one a nonprofit educational foundation and both protected by Land Trust easements survived.

The almost totally clear pastoral landscape of a century and a quarter ago was now almost totally forest and trees. Not as readily apparent, nearly half of the land was developed in intensive or "constructed" uses, a new landscape of large exurban homes among the dense woodland and landscaping. 

See Redding's zoning patterns on full regional map

Only a handful of unpaved roads, but many narrow and winding lanes, remained and most of these were resolutely guarded by residents. Over 2,500 acres of land had been permanently protected as open space, and the 2,800 acres of public water supply watershed land remained intact. 

By 2000 the population of Redding had reached 8,270, a ten year rate of increase of 4.3%. Looking ahead, this attractive community has many reasons to be optimistic about its future.

To better understand land use features in Redding today, of value are inventories of  the Town's  retail centers and local places of worship. To look into Redding's future, view the web site for exciting private redevelopment in Georgetown.

Also of interest, local transportation improvement needs are defined in the Redding section of the Transportation Planning Resource Center. For a logical path for Redding's future land use to follow, the HVCEO Regional Development Plan presents sound advice.