Jigsaw for August 21, 2026: https://puzzles.curioustorian.com/boat-outing-1889
The Hanover Boat Association went out on the river on a summer afternoon in 1889, and somebody stood on the bank above them and took this.
That is the Ledyard Free Bridge on the right, thirty years old when the shutter opened, and the fourth bridge to stand there after the ferry. By 1913 it carried more traffic than any other of the twenty-nine bridges on the Connecticut River north of Massachusetts. A steel bridge replaced it in 1934, and that one gave way to today’s bridge in 1999. It is worth taking in the details: women in long dresses with hats and parasols, men in a mix of three-piece suits and more relaxed outfits, many in straw boaters, and a crowd of spectators gathered along the far bank. In color you can see it was an occasion, and that the boats were painted red.
Six miles downstream the Wilder Dam went into operation on the first of December, 1950, and raised this whole reach some thirty feet into the still, wide water we now call Wilder Lake. The low shoreline here, the little landing, the steps cut down to the water where those boats were put in, all of it is under the river now.
And it rewards enlarging. Thirty-eight people in the boats, one hidden behind a parasol, and another dozen watching from the bank. The uprights are not masts but thin staffs with a crosspiece near the top to carry the bunting, so nobody was sailing that afternoon. There is a small white disc on a birch partway up the bank that I took for a marker or a sign until I looked properly, and it turns out to be a speck of dust that was on the glass when the print was made. If you row, or know old boats, several of these hulls carry a fitting at the stern that I cannot identify, and I would be glad of your eye on it.
One note: you may or may not have seen this before
This began as a listserv email, and for a long stretch that was the whole publication. A photograph, a few paragraphs, sent out to the towns, and then gone. There was no website to go back to.
I did not invent it. Sarah Rooker, the Norwich Historical Society’s director, established the format and asked whether I would like to take it on. I have kept her structure more or less intact ever since: one photograph, what is known about it, and a puzzle to slow you down while you look.
When I started curioustorian.com, the impetus was to create an archive of the historical jigsaw emails to the listservs. I moved those old ones across quietly, a few at a time, with no announcement at all. They have been sitting in the archive ever since. Plenty of you read this photograph when it landed in your inbox in June of last year, and almost nobody has seen it since, because I never gave any of them a proper introduction.
They deserve wider eyes. So I am going to bring some of them back up front, one at a time, with whatever I have learned about them since. This is the first, and there are a number of good ones waiting.
If you would like these to keep arriving the way they always have, you can subscribe below. It is free. And if you spot something in the full-size versions that I have missed, message me.
More from the Ledyard bridge and the river
Play the jigsaw again: https://puzzles.curioustorian.com/boat-outing-1889
Full-resolution images:
In color (the puzzle image): https://puzzles.curioustorian.com/lost-posts-hires/hanover-boat-association-outing-1889-color.jpg
The original black and white: https://puzzles.curioustorian.com/lost-posts-hires/hanover-boat-association-outing-1889-original.jpg
Thanks for your support, as always,
Cameron Cross
Sources
Hanover Boat Association outing, 1889, original photograph from the Rauner Library. Wilder Dam operating date from the Hanover Conservancy and the Norwich Conservation Commission; the dam began operation December 1, 1950. Colorization by DDColor, applied without redrawing or altering the original photograph.