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New London COUNTY · Coastal communities

Wilcox Road: Fishing Families, Shore Houses, and the Railroad

Eight photographs from April 1997 explore a coastal district shaped by menhaden fishing, family houses, an old cemetery, and the shoreline railroad.

Historical focus · 1858–1997

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View from Wilcox Road, looking southwest over railroad tracks towards Latimer Point — Wilcox Road Historic District, Wilcox Road, Stonington, New London County, CT
View from Wilcox Road, looking southwest over railroad tracks towards Latimer Point · April 1997

THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTOGRAPHS

People, places, and change.

A neighborhood between water and rail

The Wilcox Road district lies between Mystic and Stonington around the low-lying shore of Quiambaug Neck. Coves and open water shape its setting, while the railroad crosses the southern part of the district. The line’s extension from Stonington toward Groton in 1858 brought a new transportation corridor through the marsh landscape. The historical survey records a group of houses and other buildings, many dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also includes the older Miner Cemetery, a reminder that the neighborhood’s layers extend beyond the industrial period emphasized here. [2]

Menhaden and the Wilcox family

Members of the Wilcox family worked as fishermen and coastal mariners before developing enterprises based on menhaden. The fish supplied oil used in products such as lubricants and paint, while the remaining material could be sold as fertilizer. Elnathan Wilcox operated a factory near Quiambaug before a fire in 1865. A new enterprise with Elias Wilcox followed at Latimer Point in 1866. The district’s domestic history was therefore connected with industrial work on nearby waterfront sites, even where the factories themselves were no longer standing when the federal survey was prepared. [2]

Houses and changing livelihoods

The report connects particular houses with members of the family, including Elias Wilcox’s 1874 house and later dwellings built as other family households formed. Different roof forms, porches, and additions preserve evidence of successive generations rather than a single planned development. The fertilizer business closed in 1935 as competing products changed its market. In 1937 George Wilcox converted a barn and garage into a boat showroom. That small change in use illustrates a broader theme in coastal history: families adapted existing land and buildings as the sources of their livelihood shifted. [2]

A landscape recorded before new wires

Robert Brewster of Warren Jagger Photography made the selected photographs in April 1997. Federal documentation addressed the effects of the Northeast Corridor electrification project, including the introduction of overhead electrical infrastructure along the railroad. The images therefore emphasize relationships between houses, roads, marshes, shoreline, cemetery, and tracks. Their wider views are especially valuable because a historic neighborhood is more than a list of individual buildings. These photographs preserve the spaces and sightlines between its components at a particular moment, showing how domestic, industrial, transportation, and burial landscapes occupied the same small coastal area. [3] [2]

Sources & further reading (3)
  1. Wilcox Road Historic District — Library of Congress survey record
  2. Wilcox Road Historic District — historical and descriptive report
  3. Wilcox Road Historic District — photograph index and photographer credits

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