Great Road Day

On Saturday, September 24th, Lincoln’s Great Road becomes a destination for history lovers and the curious to step inside many of the town’s oldest buildings with the annual Great Road Day event.

This Open House provides free admission to give residents and others from throughout RI and the region a chance to discover some of our state’s finest historic treasures that are located along the Great Road, one of the country’s oldest highways.

 The stories of farm, industry, home, and school all connect through the authentic sites open during Great Road Day, which include:  Hearthside House (c.1810), Historic New England’s Arnold House (c.1693), Hannaway Blacksmith Shop (c.1880), Pullen’s Corner Schoolhouse (c.1850), Moffett Mill (c.1812), Chase Farm Park (c.1867), Saylesville Friends Meetinghouse (c.1703), Mt. Moriah Masonic Lodge (c.1804), Northgate, home of the Blackstone Valley Historical Society (c.1807) and the Arnold Bakery (c.1874).

 A rare journey back to the 18th century is featured at Historic New England’s Arnold House at 487 Great Road, a unique stone-ender house with a massive chimney end wall, features the story of the town’s earliest settlers, the Arnolds.  A visit to the Saylesville Friends Meetinghouse, one of the oldest continuously-used Quaker meetinghouse in New England, has been meticulously preserved and appears much as it did when families gathered here on Sundays some 300 years ago.  Headstones of those early settlers are located on the grounds.   It is located at 374 Great Road.

 The Great Road Heritage Campus at Chase Farm Park includes several historic buildings, and docents in period attire help to bring history to life.  The Hannaway Blacksmith Shop, at the entrance to the Park, will fascinate visitors as they watch the magic of metal be hand forged into useful implements.  At the Pullen’s Corner Schoolhouse  on the grounds of the Park, visitors will learn why Lincoln’s last one-room school got the name “Hot Potato School and sit at antique desks where children learned their lessons 150 years ago.  Pick up the shuttle van at the parking lot at Chase Farm to take a tour of the wooden shop, the Moffett Mill.  This rare survivor of the early Industrial era closed around 1900, and is frozen in time, with all its original tools and the belt system used to operate the equipment still in place.  It produced machine parts, carriages, and shoelaces during the Civil War.  Because of its location along the busy curve of the roadway below Chase Farm, the only access to the Mill will be by the shuttle van.  Restrooms are located at the Visitors Center at Chase Farm Park, 671 Great Road.

 The 85 acres of the picturesque historic former Chase Farm beyond the historic buildings offers the public a chance to enjoy the beauty and tranquility in this unspoiled landscape.  The rolling meadows and open fields are ideal to enjoy the unspoiled rural landscape.  For the more adventuresome who like to hike and have the extra time, there is a mile-long trail from Chase Farm Park to the Arnold House.

The striking stone mansion near the base of Breakneck Hill Road with its curved roofline and full-height front

 columns, Hearthside, welcomes visitors to the fully-furnished and restored house.  It is now an award-winning museum. Volunteers outfitted in a range of eras add to the experience of traveling back in time. This architecturally unique house inspired the design for the RI State Building at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.  Hearthside was home to 11 different owners over a 200-year history, until the town of Lincoln purchased it in 1996.  Special guest Steve Emma is featured on Great Road Day, as he sets up outdoors to demonstrate his skill of chair caning, a traditional craft that is most often used to repair antique chairs with caned seats.  Hearthside is located at 677 Great Road. 

 Further up Great Road into Lime Rock is one of the earliest Masonic lodges in the state, the Mt. Moriah Lodge, where the most notable early town residents were members, provides public viewing just one day a year, which is on Great Road Day.  The first structure on this site was a one-room schoolhouse, but in 1804 local Masons established a new Lodge here.  The Lodge continues to meet here regularly. It is located at 1093 Great Road.

 The two-story Northgate, home of the Blackstone Valley Historical Society was  originally built as a tollgate and residence for the toll collector for the Louisquisset Turnpike. The Pike, faster and straighter than Great Road, to some extent superseded it. The Pike was built to expedite the shipment of lime to Providence. Over the years, it also served as the Grange, a social gathering place for local farm families.  The Historical Society has on exhibit “Paintings of Vincent Bernasconi (1885-1962).” He was a staff artist and cartoonist who worked for the Providence Journal.  He also lived on Wilbur Road, near Northgate and the Conklin Lime Quarry. Exhibit courtesy of Joyce Bethel and the Conklin Lime Quarry.

Adjacent to Northgate is the Arnold Bakery. This one-story, one-room bakery was relocated to its current spot. The bakery, a Lincoln business which lasted nearly 100 years, was begun in this tiny workshop by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Jenks Arnold in Lonsdale, but within a few years they were so successful that a large bakery was built in Saylesville.  Northgate and the Arnold Bakery are located at 1873 Louisquisset Pike. 

Visitors are invited to tour the sites at their own pace and may visit all of them, or just a select few.  The event kicks off at 11 a.m. with all sites closing at 4 p.m. Parking is limited at the sites.  Arnold House and the Friends Meetinghouse parking is available at Gateway Park.  Hearthside parking is across from it, or at Chase Farm Park.  There is no parking at the Moffett Mill and is only accessible by the shuttle van picked up at the parking lot at Chase Farm or Hearthside. 

 Great Road was built in 1683 as the major thoroughfare on the west side of the Blackstone River. It got its name because it was so much more substantial than other routes through the valley.  With historic houses, farms and mills, the nationally-designated Great Road Historic District in Lincoln retains much of the Blackstone Valley’s early 19th century rural character. 

Great Road Day is a collaboration among the several participating historic sites, the majority of which are volunteer-run organizations.