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The Cat Hollow Town Park was opened in 2003. The park contains a0.5-mile trail along Cat Hollow Road that is suitable for bicyclesand strollers. The road is closed off to traffic. The trailparallels the Whetstone Brook and a beautiful mill pond andwaterfalls. The site of the original mill is about halfway down thetrail.The history of Cat Hollow and the adjacent mills along theWhetstone BrookThe Whetstone Brook has been a source of waterpower since theearly days of settlements in Killingly. The proprietors of ChestnutHill erected a sawmill at the eastern end of the brook by 1715.Nicholas Cady had apparently constructed both sawmills and gristmills on the western portion of the brook by late 1716. The exactlocation of these mill sites is unknown and it may have been closerto Elmville, which is located just north of the junction of theWhetstone Brook and the Five Mile River.The availability of this wonderful source of waterpower from therapidly descending brook meant that numerous small cotton andwoolen mills were erected along its banks at the beginning of theindustrial age in the early 1800's. The Whetstone Brook drops about70' in the first 200 yards. These mills helped to make Killinglythe greatest cotton manufacturing town in Connecticut in 1836.Sayles and Sabin Mill (Cat Hollow Mill)The land records indicate that both sawmill and grist millexisted in the vicinity of the Cat Hollow Mill by the end of the1700's. In 1798 Brazilla Fisher deeded his son Dexter Fisher 16acres, a dwelling, a sawmill and grist mill for seven years ofwork. The site changed owernship during the early 1800's and ThomasDurfee and his son-in-law Jude May were operating the site by about1828. Lester’s 1833 map shows only a sawmill.By about 1850 this site had been converted to use for textiles,and Sabin and Harris Sayles of Pascoag, Rhode Island were operatinga woolen mill here. That early mill burned in 1858. They also ownedthe Dayville site and continued operations there for many years.About 1875 a mill was ereected on this site and was utilized inconjunction with the Dayville mill. According to Richard Adams inMills along the Whetstone Brook a fire destroyed a portion of themill prior to 1924. After that, the site was utilized tomanufacture nails and later was used as a storage facility for theCliquot Club Soda Company. In recent years, it was the residence ofRobert Lucas. The mill was destroyed by fire December 4, 2001.Killingly Worsted MillThe second mill in the Cat Hollow trail area was the oldKillingly Worsted Mill. The wooden building was built for PhebeSayles and Sarah Potter in the late 1860's and was called theSayles and Potter Woolen Mill. The mill was a three-story woodenbuilding measuring 40' x 150' long. Before the present dam wasbuilt, water had to be drawn from upstream by means of a longcanal. The present dam was probably built in the 1870's to give themill larger quantities of water. By 1889, Timothy E. Hopkinsobtained the mill and used it to produce fancy cashmeres. By 1915,William Litch was operating this site as the Killingly WorstedCompany. The Hale Manufacturing Company occupied the site from the1950's to the 1970's. A number of fires gutted the mill building in1978 and two years later it was torn down. The waterfall stillremains as a reminder of the industrial activity of this site.Elmville Mill (Danielson Manufacturing Company, ColtPlastic)The junction of route 12 and the Whetstone Brook was the site ofthe Dexter Mill built in the early 1800's. It was powered by awater wheel and served as a woolen mill until a fire in 1877. Thecurrent three-story brick mill building was built in its placecovering 50' x 175' long. After changing hands many times, thebuilding became the Danielson Manufacturing Company in 1935 and wasconverted to the production of leather goods. Since the late1960's, the mill building has been used primarily for storage andremains largely unchanged from the day it was built. -source,Killingly Conservation Commision
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