It was an early fall morning in October. Throughout the Naugatuck Valley, tree leaves were shedding their summer green, their leaf ends tinged in autumnal shades of russet, red, and gold. My father and I were standing on the narrow bridge on East Albert Street in the town of Torrington, Connecticut, situated in northwestern Connecticut. Along with the tour guide and a handful of bus passengers, we were peering over the bridge’s northern edge.

Rising before us at the fork of the East and West River Branches, the Naugatuck River was beginning its thirty-nine mile southward journey toward Derby, Connecticut. My father, who measures waterway distances and depths by kayak strokes and turns, observed that although the fork is shallow, a kayak could pass through. I observed that a traveler could cross the placid, rippling confluence of water and yellow rocks in just a few quick paces, in contrast to the fork at the river’s end in Derby, where it crashes in a broad, roiling confluence with the Housatonic. The Naugatuck River is the only river to begin and end in the state.

My parents and I were participating in the “History of the Naugatuck River Valley” motor coach trip, sponsored by the HVA and the Healthy Valley Committee of the Valley Health and Human Services. The organization is seeking designation as a National Heritage Area for the Naugatuck River Valley. We had come to see the river and to explore the towns through which it flows. After all, it was this river that had once lured the inventors, tinkerers, and craftsmen who had built the brass cities, woolen mills, and rubber towns that dotted the riverbank up and down the valley, and had shaped its industrial life.

Centuries ago, English settlers had sensed business potential to be mined from the river’s natural resources. They began arriving in 1632 and did not stop coming. Over time they built fourteen clapboard-covered towns in sequence – like subway stops up and down the valley – tapping the river’s potential for water power. The Valley became divided into three sections: Upper, Central, and Lower.

Our tour started in Derby in the Lower Valley, where the river flows to its end. We traveled north, stopping briefly in Beacon Falls in the tiny hamlet that had once been home to the Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company founded by cousins of Charles Goodyear. A retiree along for the tour with us recalled the story of her mother-in-law, who had arrived as a seventeen year old immigrant, crossing a covered bridge that ushered passengers from the train stop to the mills. In those days, a vibrant movie house had entertained factory workers there.

The tour bus passed by Cotton Hollow, site of one of the earliest cotton textile mills in the Valley, which was an early but failed experiment to imitate the Lowell Mills of Massachusetts. The tour rolled through Naugatuck, where Charles Goodyear had come of age and where his brother-in-law made the crucial investment in Goodyear’s invention of vulcanized rubber that had launched Naugatuck’s life as the first rubber town in the nation. The bus tour paused in Waterbury, the former Brass Capital of the nation, where we learned that the Knights of Columbus had been founded to provide financial support to the widows and children of workers killed or maimed in the valley’s industrial mills.

The exit of manufacturers to overseas factories and the loss of corporate patrons that had once sponsored a way of life in these hamlets, towns, and cities were evident in the decaying facades of grand buildings, open apartment windows where laundry hung to dry along a main road, and the presence of pawn shops. The bus tour then rolled through bucolic hills in Harwinton and the tidy town center of Litchfield, illustrating the contrast in the economic fate of towns throughout the Naugatuck Valley.

Standing on the East Albert Street Bridge in Torrington that day at the fork where the Naugatuck River rises, it occurred to me there is a lyrical irony in the river’s physical features. The river begins and ends at a fork. A fork portends options, a choice to turn right or left, to make a decision. In the Central and Lower Valleys, where the river basin is narrow and sandy, the soils are starving for nutrients required to make farming productive. An agricultural economy had never been an option here. The industrial fate of the Central and Lower Valleys had been pre-determined by the river long ago.

Centuries before smokestacks dominated the skyline, before railroads and roadways bordered the riverbanks, Charles Goodyear came of age in this town.  Life was simple, sparse, physically exerting for the boy who toiled long hours in the family’s workshop and farm on spindly legs. But it was here in this town, where Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, formed the crucial relationship with William DeForest, the business leader on whom he would lean for financial support throughout his endless quest to unlock rubber’s mysteries. Together, they would transform the destiny and identity of the town and its surrounding valley, shaping the community, careers, and lives within. A company town would be born along with the rising tides of the American industrial era.

The river had created this valley where they lived, carving a pie-shaped swath of slanting cliffs along its journey. Because of its natural resources and promise for hydropower, the first surge of English colonists had begun arriving in 1632, more than one hundred and fifty years before Goodyear was born. They did not stop coming and over time built twelve clapboard towns in sequence like subway stops along the river’s banks, transforming the region.  Each town was powered by the river’s potential for energy.  Only one of the twelve towns in the valley was named for the river. In the many years ahead, that town would give the world Almond Joys and Mounds candy bars, Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Keds sneakers. It is the town of Naugatuck, Connecticut.

When Charles Goodyear became an adult with a family to feed, his unwavering obsession to tame rubber’s sticky properties propelled him into far flung and financially-devastating experiments. But money and moral support always came from Naugatuck. William DeForest became the town’s titan textile manufacturer and Goodyear’s angel-investor. In 1843, he gambled an extraordinary financial sum on vulcanized rubber after Goodyear persuaded him of its product potential. By 1845, The Goodyear’s Metallic Rubber Shoe Company was churning out rubber footwear on Maple Street: it was the only rubber company in the world founded with a personal connection to the inventor himself.

It was thus that Naugatuck became the nation’s first rubber town. The river’s potential for hydropower determined the town’s course, but DeForest gave the town an identity and charted its destiny.  Goodyear’s Metallic Rubber Shoe Company became the United States Rubber Company, later changing its name to Uniroyal, Inc.  The firm’s founding was a watershed moment in the rise of the American industrial era: it would become part of the nation’s first holding company, the first big business in the country’s history born from merger and acquisition. From its storied beginning, Uniroyal sponsored life in Naugatuck for more than one hundred and forty years. The relationship would rush toward a turbulent end, as the American industrial era receded and the nation faced a new fork in the waters in the relationship between business, employees, and the communities they sustain.

Within the vast hall of the old Naugatuck Train Station, a small group huddled around a solid oak table laden with audio recording equipment and a box of Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins. Mary Doback, untiring contributor to the Naugatuck Historical Society, had gathered them. I had come to hear their stories. They had been rand-makers; industrial engineers; supervisors. They produced Gaiters; Keds; gumshoes. They were retirees who once worked in Uniroyal’s factories. Some started as early as 1939. Most were there through 1977, when the factories began to close their doors for all-time. They had toiled together; bowled together; they spoke warmly as they remembered working with one another’s parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts.

“Talk about being the best place to work,” Rita Ruggiero chimed in, high cheekbones and energetic smile belying eighty-nine years of age. “They had the best and kindest people…We felt so secure in Naugatuck with Uniroyal here – we never imagined it would go out of existence.” New York native George Passabet relocated to Naugatuck in 1947. “My wife and I came to Naugatuck with all our belongings on the train,” he remembered. George was drawn into Naugatuck’s factories by career opportunity and Uniroyal’s loyalty as an employer. “At that time, Naugatuck Footwear had a reputation for not shutting down during the Depression. They provided work for everybody, staggering people’s schedules.” Joan Rossi, whose family once owned the respected Rossi’s Shoe Store on Church Street, worked for the company for seventeen years. “My grandfather worked so many hours at the ‘Old Shop’ he had his own vegetable garden there,” she grinned. “People used to call him ‘Rosie’ because he also grew beautiful roses. They’d say to him, ‘Give me a rose for my wife for tonight’.”

Naugatuck was the world’s first rubber town, and Uniroyal was to Naugatuck what U.S. Steel was to Pittsburgh: a vital organ pumping jobs and support to the community. “It didn’t matter if people lived in Naugatuck,” Barbara Stauffer Anderson relayed, “those salary dollars were spent right here in Naugatuck.”

Big business brings an “economic multiplier” to local economies. The loss of American manufacturing to lower-cost companies overseas has meant a loss of jobs and company patrons that once sustained towns like Naugatuck.

Should we care about the loss of the mutually beneficial relationship between businesses, communities and employees? This question started a journey. At first, I went digging into Uniroyal’s history for lessons in work satisfaction and career development, two areas of expertise on which I focus in my professional life. But the further I delved, the more the narrative began to change.

The story of Uniroyal and its relationship with Naugatuck is the story of the American industrial era. Beginning with Uniroyal’s founding as Goodyear’s Metallic Rubber Company in 1845 and throughout its history, business leaders shaped the identity and destiny of the town; managers shaped careers and lives within and outside the company. The once committed relationship between the company and employees brought benefits to Naugatuck and Uniroyal both. To capture the story, I have been interviewing retirees and researching library archives as far flung as Naugatuck, New York and Arkansas. I even tracked down a 1946 Uniroyal scholarship recipient who has become one of the world’s most important oncology chemists.

Thank you to Barbara Stauffer Anderson, Sandra Clark, Robert Cox, Kay Cuccuru, Jack Gorman, Bridget Mariano, George Passabet, Rita Ruggiero, Joan Rossi, and Robert Stauffer for sharing their stories with me at the Naugatuck Historical Society.

If you or someone you know has a Uniroyal story from the footwear or chemical operations to share, please contact the Naugatuck Historical Society and  lisa@priorconsulting.com.