February 5th, 2012 [Part 2]: To follow up on the Frog Bridge photos, the reason the frogs are on Thread Spools goes back to when Willimantic was known as “Thread City”, and was home to one of the largest manufacturers of thread in the world, the American Thread Company.
The company moved away in 1985, and without them the towns’ economy soon sank. After about 15 years or so, the town finally began renovating the old thread mills into apartments, office spaces, and even a garden on our old “underpass” bridge once the Frog Bridge (also known as Thread City Crossing) was opened in 2000.
While I was on my walk today to take the Frog Bridge photos, I also wandered over to take these shots of the area around some of the renovated old thread mills, which were located on the banks of the Willimantic River, which was originally used to help power the mills.
