The OTHER Race Track at Lime Rock
Anyone who has had any meaningful contact with the sport of
automobile racing during the past half century has heard of our good neighbor,
Lime Rock Park. In fact, the recent PBS documentary, "The Hidden
Valley of American Racing" (in which Trinity Lime Rock was mentioned)
told many people with little or no direct contact with motor sports about
Lime Rock Park.
Lime Rock Park is at our front door.
But what is outside our BACK door has an historic racing tradition as well. Trinity parishioner Faith Campbell, writing in 'The Lure of the Litchfield Hills" in the 1970s, in an article entitled "Old Time Race Tracks in Northwest Connecticut", tells about a previous occupant of the field where our Sunday Schoolers play: the "Golden Rod Cycle Track". We quote from Mrs. Campbell's article: The other early Lime Rock race track was set up during the great velocipede rage in the late 1880s or early 1890s. A topographical and historical map published by I. W. Sanford in 1899 shows it just north of Trinity Episcopal Church, on Dugway Road. It was named the Golden Rod Cycle Track, and after 10 to 15 years of summertime daily use and nightly races, it lapsed back into a hay field, leaving no trace at all. The advent of the motor car had killed it. That hay field passed to Trinity Church from the estate of the late Hezekiah Goodwin Sr., in whose family both the farm on the far side of Trinity Field and the field itself had been for generations. Indeed, a plaque inside Trinity remembers one Hezekiah Goodwin, an ancestor, who was the long-time Senior Warden of Trinity. His descendents are parishioners to this day. (Click on the small picture to see the plaque, one of only two in the church proper, larger sized).
As well as providing parking for Sunday services for the church, we are happy to accommodate overflow parking from Lime Rock Park, the race track of today, on our race track of olden times -- given the history of the field, it seems particularly appropriate that we do so, in fact! We host horse shows for our neighbors in Falls Village. We had our own Medieval Faire there in 1990. Our ECW makes use of the edge of the field for our famous tag sales:
Our Sunday School had a small flower garden there...until we moved it closer to the new addition.
...and the Sunday School has a tendency to take advantage of opportunities the weather offers to make use of the field in many seasons, for activities informal as well as formal:
(click on the photos for larger versions) Needless to say, the field is the home of our expanding Summer Soccer program for young people, which was begun in 2005. It's absolutely perfect for that: flat and extremely well-drained -- qualities that made it ideal for a bicycle race trace over a century ago. Finally, Trinity Field has provided the church with room for expansion of our building. We are always seeking opportunities to use our field to help the Lime Rock community, as well as the community of the larger Northwest Corner.
And that's the story of the OTHER race track at Lime Rock!
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