About Oakham

Living in Oakham has been a real education for this pair of lifelong Californians. We are still discovering how wrong some of our misconceptions are.

I believe that I've blogged before about the heavy woods that are everywhere and that, in spite of that, there are old stone walls everywhere that you look in those woods. Obviously, farming was pretty extensive at one time and the woods have filled back in. We recently learned that, by the mid 17th century (1850 or so), Massachusetts was almost completely clear cut to make way for farms. Everything that we have now has grown back since then.

That gibes with something that we read at the library. Prospect Hill, just above us, is the highest point in Oakham. We read that, in the mid 1800's, a large number of church steeples (eight? ten?) were visible from the top of the hill. I'm sure that there are fewer steeples than there used to be but, these days, trees are all that you can see from the top of Prospect Hill.

Prospect Hill

The woods these days have extensive undergrowth. Much of that is wild roses (multiflora) and poison ivy. We've speculated about how difficult it must have been for the original settlers to get around and come to the conclusion that the original old-growth forest probably didn't have a lot of undergrowth.

I was discussing this with one of the neighbors and mentioned how difficult it must have been to move armies through during the revolution. He laughed and said that they used the roads. They apparently already had an extensive network of roads by that time.

Oakham is located in an area that the TV weather reporters refer to as the Worchester (pronounced Wooster) Hills. Many of the local towns are referred to as "hill towns", meaning that the town centers are perched on top of a hill. The highways, railways (current and former) rivers and ponds wend their ways through the plains between the hills.

The towns that aren't hill towns look like they used to be industrial towns. They were able to take advantage of the river power and railroad transportation.

Some towns in the area have both characteristics. The town of Hardwick includes a beautiful hilltop village also called Hardwick. It also includes a very industrial village called Gilbertville and two other villages called Wheelwright and Old Furnace.

Oakham at one time include the villages of Oakham and Coldbrook Springs. Coldbrook Springs no longer exists but, from its location, it might have been an industrial area. Coldbrook Springs had two railroads and two railroad stations. We've read that Calvin Coolidge, when he was governor, lived nearby and used to ride the train from Coldbrook Springs to Boston a couple of times a week.

So what happened to Coldbrook Springs? When the Quabbin Reservoir was built in the early 1900's, Coldbrook Springs was removed to make way for the aqueduct system that eventually moves the Quabbin waters to Boston. Extensive tracts of land that used to be in Coldbrook Springs are now state forest.

Many of the structures that used to be in Coldbrook Springs were moved to other locations in Oakham. It's interesting to explore the state forest lands and see the old basements and railroad stations.

A little demographic data: Oakham was first settled 1749 and then incorporated 1775. It's current population is about 1900 living in about 600 households. Oakham's land area is about 21.1 sq. miles so there's a lot of land to go around. Current zoning requires that residential properties be at least 6 acres (we have 2.6 acres so we are either grandfathered or the requirements are different in town center).

-JC-