Belmont Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
Also WORCESTER TURNPIKE CORPORATION
There were clearly no poets among the early Worcester residents. They called it as they saw it – clear and simple in Anglo-Saxon words.
There was a clear water pond up on Chandler Hill. The outline was shaped like a bladder. They called it Bladder Pond.
The name stuck until about 1846, when some Worcester official, shuddering at the name decided the pond’s outline was more like a bell. It was renamed Bell Pond.
The “mont” part come from the street’s height. Added to Bell, you get Belmont.
Before Belmont street it was called Turnpike street.
Our smooth, flowing highways weren’t always that way. In the old days, the state just wasn’t in the road business. Chapter 90, whereby city, county and state divide expenses on highways, was a road-mender’s dream.
Instead, they formed a corporation; sold stock or lottery tickets.
The Worcester Turnpike Corporation began March 7, 1806, with plans to run a road – straight as the crow flies – from Worcester to Roxbury.
It began at Lincoln square, shot up through Belmont stree, where considerable ledge had to be removed, and so to Shrewsbury street and on to Boston.
Even after it was build, heavy sleights and teams couldn’t cope with the roller-coaster effect; chose instead the longer and older route through Lincoln street.
On the new Turnpike toll houses wee set up every ten miles. Building the road to match a crow’s flight – straight, that is – brought the Turnpike across old road intersections. And human nature was the same then.
People used the Turnpike, then ducked out on an old road before reaching a toll gate.
The State Legislature cracked down on this nefarious practice of gypping Turnpike stockholders by passing a special act on March 3, 1809. It set up additional toll gates to block the old roads.
Farmers reluctantly dug down to their elbows in leather purses with snap tops and combed out three cents for each dozen sheep and swine. A man and a horse cost four cents to get through.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
