The Destruction of Dalton’s Country Road

Recently I traveled from East Street in Pittsfield to South Street in Dalton (which never made any sense, when you think about it) and I noticed trees were tagged and marked for future removal. As I started to get sick, I quietly wished the “gangs of Housatonic” (hello Scorsese, here’s your next picture!) had come up to Dalton to tag these grand old citizens with their gang symbol.

Of course, that’s not the case at all. The way the town tells the tale is that South Street has become inefficient and needs to be improved. What?!!?!?!?!? This country road, like many country roads throughout New England is just that: a country road! I concede the intersection at Hubbard, Dalton Division, East and South Streets still manages to confuse lifelong residents of Dalton and Pittsfield, but to destroy property and nature- not to mention claiming homes through eminent domain- is a bit much, don’t you think? Kenneth Walto says it’s a safety issue, and while it is, to some extent, how is the remainder of South Street a safety issue to the current traffic state?

The current state of traffic is just fine. Hubbard Avenue lies right in a flood plain- that is why it has been known to flood over the years- but South Street in Dalton isn’t.

Crane & Company, the town’s biggest employer, made plans a couple of years ago, albeit quietly, to construct (yet another) industrial park on land they currently own. This will be good for Dalton they say. It’s no surprise that since the deaths of all the old major Crane players, the children and relatives couldn’t figure out how to run a company, which essentially runs itself. Mansions and land were sold off for neighborhood residential development, nursing homes and other “cash generators” for a company who claimed financial distress. The kids couldn’t run a lawn mower properly; let alone a company who relies so heavily on government contracts. One of the greatest Crane errors was when they opened a chain of high-end paper retail outlets within the past decade only to close them because consumers were sending more e-mail instead of writing letters. Consumers had no need or understanding of fine paper products; Crane missed that gravy train by bout 40 years.

The industrial park plan is kind of foggy, as the exact location is rather vague, but take one drive along South Street and it all comes together. People are losing land and more importantly driveways (some already frighteningly close into road as it is), glorious maple trees are going to be destroyed and the Berkshire County charm that has existed on South Street for decades will be gone sooner than you can think. Construction rigs are already littered throughout South Street under the auspice of “making the street safer.” Safer for whom? Idiots who can’t maneuver a very well marked intersection with more traffic lights than a Christmas tree? No, not even close.

The intersection and the entire stretch are being made “safer” for the heavy tractor-trailer traffic Crane and the town expects to have once the industrial park is a reality. The low hanging train trestle, for years jokingly referred to as the “Callahan Memorial,” will be rebuilt to allow for tractor trailers to safely pass underneath instead of getting their tops sheared off, which was always cool to see. The flood plain of Hubbard Avenue is just that, a flood plain, and there must have been some reason as to why that trestle couldn’t have been expanded to accommodate the new amounts of traffic. Maybe it would’ve required the creation of a new road through barren land that might’ve caused a furor within the private landowners? Isn’t the Wal-Mart Bridge sturdy enough to handle all the additional traffic? South Street isn’t even a state route, yet somehow this has become state priority. At least Mitt Romey halted the funds for the project, but everyone’s favorite devil approved it, which is of little surprise.

It is going to be a sad day when the grand re-opening of South Street in Dalton occurs. I think people are going to miss what they had once it’s gone. The song “Big Yellow Taxi” is so very typical of the Berkshires. Listen to it and think of the grand structures we once had in Pittsfield, or the field, which is littered with the Berkshire Mall, or the country road, which was once South Street in Dalton. Unfortunately, this isn’t the beginning, nor is it the end, of ruining something that is irreplaceable in the beautiful Berkshires.