These days, Willimantic’s most talked about landmark might be the footbridge or the Frog Bridge but the largest, most prominent one is Hosmer Mountain. Generations of students at the old Windham High on Prospect Street must have looked at it from the third floor windows of the Earth Science room. Very few, if any, might know anything of the Hosmer family from whom it received its name. Yet, the Hosmers were very influential in city affairs and have left several legacies. We’ll start with the mountain.  An 1808 ad announced that a tract of land containing about 253 acres was for sale on what was then known as Blake Mountain. Around that time, according to Tom Beardsley, “Stephen Hosmer purchased land in Willimantic containing the "mountain"… and farmed it”.  He and his family came to Willimantic from Columbia. “He was a go-ahead, energetic man, furnishing a large amount of employment of labor on his farm. His family consisted of five sons and three daughters” His son, James D. Hosmer, also became a well known resident and farmer. According to historian General Lloyd Baldwin, Stephen Hosmer built the first house on Pleasant Street. James built another house on the Hosmer farm. Stephen Hosmer also owned land more than a mile long on both sides of today’s Pleasant Street stretching into Columbia. In the early 1800s, this road was known as the Columbia Turnpike, one of the many private toll roads in Connecticut at the time. Hosmer was one of the owners of the turnpike which began at its intersection with the Windham Turnpike near Hebard’s Tavern and then traveled though Willimantic and Columbia into Hebron. Hosmer, who was said to have employed many people for the upkeep of the road, had two tollhouses, one in Columbia and one at today’s junction of Bridge and Pleasant Streets. At that time, there was no Bridge Street bridge since Willimantic was still considered an unimportant village and the Columbia Turnpike’s real destination was Windham and beyond. Willimantic, however, continued to grow. But the Deacon Lee mill and the Smithville Mills were just across the river from Hosmer’s toll house and Hosmer began a push to build a bridge there. Since the only rive crossing was at the Ironworks Bridge (Jillson Hill), people from the Columbia area had to proceed down the turnpike, cross at Jillson Hill and then travel back up Main Street if the wished to go to the Smithville Mills.  As General Baldwin tells it, “We now come to Bridge Street, running from Pleasant Street northerly to Main Street. It was the first new street opened and worked in Willimantic in the early part of this century, and was due in a great measure to the energy and perseverance of Stephen Hosmer, Esq. The Superior Court of Windham County appointed commissioners who laid out the road between the points named, in 1827, with a bridge across the Willimantic River. The road and bridge were built and opened for travel in 1828.” A hand drawn map from that time shows the location of the proposed bridge as well as distances to some of the “factories” in town. The bridge was for a time known as “The Hosmer Bridge”. It was replaced in 1866 by the stone bridge that is there today. By the mid-1840s, the Columbia Turnpike ceased to be a toll road. Until 1833 when it was chartered as a city, Willimantic was a borough. By then, Hosmer was a representative in the State Legislature and, according to Baldwin, “was authorized to call the first meeting of the voters for the election of the necessary officers. This meeting was held July 1, 1833, when Lorin Carpenter was elected warden, Newton Fitch clerk and treasurer, [and] Wrightman Williams, Asa Jillson, Samuel Barrows, Jr., Wm. C. Boon, Wm. Witter, M. D., and Royal Jennings were elected burgesses. “ John B.Hosmer was another son of Stephen Hosmer. He established Hosmer and Company in partnership with John Jillson and then Postmaster George Hebard and his place of business was opposite the old Linen Company Spool Shop. He later moved the grocery store to Pleasant Street and eventually leased it to James N. Bailey and Horace Gallup. In July, 1842, another Hosmer son, James D. Hosmer, along with several other prominent Willimantic businessmen, became an incorporator of the newly established Willimantic Savings Institute.  (The term “Hosmer Mountain began to be used around 1880.)  

                                         

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