Connecticut: A Natural Gentility

As you drive along Route 169 in the eastern part of the state, it soon becomes clear why this section of Connecticut is called the Quiet Corner. This route, located just off I-395, offers 32 miles of pure, uninterrupted tranquillity.

In Lisbon, weathered-clapboard home-steads appear around every bend. Stone walls flank the road to the Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury. (Prudence Crandall was a prescient white woman who educated black girls from 1833 to 1834 before a club-wielding mob brought an end to her school.)

Back on Route 169, giant trees cast long shadows on faded red barns. The apple orchards and hiking and biking trails just off the road beckon.

Continuing on, you soon reach the town of Brooklyn, settled in the 1600s. Pass the Brooklyn Fairgrounds, site of the oldest agricultural fair in the country. For a special treat, visit The Golden Lamb Buttery, part of a 1,000-acre estate just off Route 169. For dinner, try the roast duckling — the house specialty — which is so tender it falls off the bone.

Twenty-six miles from the start of your trip, in Woodstock, stands Roseland Cottage, a resplendent raspberry sherbet-colored Gothic Revival house with maroon trim and dark-green shutters. The cottage was built by Henry Bowen, a local boy who moved to New York and struck it rich. He and his family returned to the cottage every summer, and their original furnishings are still on display here.