The Summit (of What?)

When I moved to Worcester, a number of my neighbors told me I could do my dry cleaning, get a pizza and gear up for my next outdoor adventure at New England Backpacker at a place called "The Summit."  With street names such as East and West Mountain St., I really built up this image of a mountaintop village in my mind. Boy was I disappointed on my first trip down to The Summit (my Burncoat area residence is at elevation 705 ft., while "The Summit" tops at about 635 ft. or so).

For a long while I could not figure out how this name came about. As I traveled around the area in my car, the name made absolutely no sense. It was only when I was looking at some older maps of the city, and noticed a station labeled "Summit," that the idea that perhaps the railroads had something to do with the name crossed my mind.

According to this history of Worcester by Dr. Coombs, the "Worcester & Nashua Railroad began operations in 1848." Perhaps "The Summit" was the highest point on this new railroad?

Elevation Profile of the Worcester & Nashua Railroad from Union Station to West Boylston

Now that's a summit! I was still curious, though, as to why we had a road named Mountain St. too? Perhaps the "Summit" designation goes back to the days of the stagecoach?

According to Your Worcester St. by Ivan Sandrof, Mountain St. was part of the Sixth Massachusetts Turnpike connecting Boston to Amherst overall and Shrewsbury and Holden locally and "it was so hilly as to be famous in the days of the stage coach." So the Mountain St. names derives from the stagecoach days (the east and west designations apparently due to the fact that The Summit is approximately half way between Shrewsbury and Holden), but what about the idea of this being the "Summit" of the journey between Shrewsbury and Holden?

Elevation Profile of East and West Mountain Sts. from Holden Center to Shrewsbury Center

It tuns out that the Doyle Rd. segment in Holden is higher in elevation than the so called "Summit" by a good 165 ft! So it seems that the Mountain St. designation derives from the days of the stagecoach (the elevation profile does support the hilly nature of the road in Worcester; however, my experience and the above profile seem to support the idea that the hill near St. John's in Shrewsbury is the steepest) and The Summit designation from the days of the railroad.

The turnpike was abandoned long ago, and no passenger trains travel along the railroad today (the railroad line remains active as part of the Pan Am Railways freight network in New England). Some of us even arrive at The Summit by traveling downhill. Perhaps we should update the name to Summit Valley?