After students read Where I Live: Connecticut chapter 1 and chapter 7, pages 57 - 59, begin with an in-class discussion about how early towns and villages were connected by roads and turnpikes, and why inland towns that were not on the navigable waterways benefited by roads and turnpikes. 
 
Here are some questions to help guide the discussion.
 
Q. Where would be a good place to settle a town?  
A. Most towns grow up around some type of major transportation such as sailing ships, steamboats, stagecoaches, railroads, or interstate highways.
 
Q. How did Connecticut’s first settlers travel inland across Connecticut? How would you go to another town to visit your family, or send packages to friends or customers?   
A. The first settlers of inland towns like Litchfield traveled by horseback over established roads and “trodden paths” made by Native Americans. These paths skirted swamps, the steepest hills, large boulders, trees, and other obstacles, taking advantage of gaps through hills, and fording rivers and streams at low points.
 
Q. How could you improve these paths so you could get your horse and wagon through? 
A. The dirt roads and paths were widened by chopping down the trees of the dense forest so that teams of horses and wagons could travel the road. Settlers also had to be able to drive livestock (cattle, pigs, and horses) to their new settlements. English settlers founded 100 separate towns during the colonial period and built a crude but passable network of dirt roads to connect these towns.
 
Q. What is a turnpike? 
A. Beginning in the 1780s, the state government authorized private companies, called turnpike corporations, to build roads and collect tolls from travelers. Connecticut chartered 120 turnpike companies and constructed 1,600 miles of turnpike toll roads across the state. Ask students if they have ever taken a trip where you had to pay a toll to use a highway in your car—like the Mass Pike. Turnpikes had toll keepers who collected tolls that went to the private company. Today they are operated by the state. Connecticut is considering tolls again.
 
Q. What is a stagecoach?
A. A large, covered horse-drawn carriage used to carry passengers, packages, and mail along a regular route between two places. 
 
Q. What is a stagecoach route?
A. Ask students if they have ever taken a bus, train, or plane where they had to buy a ticket, go to the station and be there at a scheduled time to get their ride. The stagecoach route included those things: paid passage, specific departure places, and a schedule. Stagecoach routes operated on turnpikes. In 1783, it took six days to travel from New York to Boston. By 1827, it was down to 36 hours. Today it would take about 3 ½ hours.
 
Q. What kind of buildings would you find in towns along a stagecoach route?   
A. Taverns, inns, post offices, general stores, stables, and barns.
 
Q. How would it help your town grow if it was on a stagecoach route?  
A. More people would pass through it and spend money in the local shops and taverns; shopkeepers, tavern owners and other small businesses would open for business; farmers and small factory owners would come to town to ship produce and goods to other places.
 
Q. What do think might happen when the railroad was invented if it didn’t go near the towns on the stagecoach route?