Lane Street Boardwalk
Shelton Lakes Recreation Path
Completed December 2006
Click on photos to enlarge.

Volunteers with the Shelton Trails Committee and Shelton Land Conservation Trust recently completed building an impressive boardwalk for the Shelton Lakes Recreation path.  The boardwalk is 110 feet long, six feet wide and rests upon piles that were driven by hand six feet into the muck.  Volunteers donated over 350 hours of their time to build the project.

The boardwalk is located just south of Lane Street near Huntington Center and crosses a swamp and small stream in the Means Brook floodplain.  It replaces a much smaller, floating boardwalk that was frequently impassible.

The timbers were purchased for about $3,000 using part of a $10,000 grant which the Land Trust received from the Iroquois Company.  The original plan was to have professionals build the boardwalk, but estimates came in at $30,000 -- triple the amount of the Iroquois grant. 

Volunteers came up with an ambitious plan:  They would build the boardwalk themselves, although the volunteers had very little related experience and there were no guidebooks or even websites that specified exactly how to do such a thing.  First they had to come up with a construction drawings, based on a prototype built in a volunteer's backyard.  Then they had to obtain wetland permits from the City.  The planning stage seemed to drag on forever.  In the meantime, the existing boardwalk was often flooded.

But finally, on October 21, volunteers got to go out and clear some brush and vegetation from the area, and experiment with driving piles, which turned out to be more difficult than anticipated.  To view a rather humorous video of this work party, click here.  

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to drive 4x4 pilings deep into the muck.  A diagram of a pile-driver was eventually found on the web and given to a local volunteer to fabricate.  The new 73 pound pile-drive required two people to lift and drop repeatedly, with each pile taking about 20 strenuous minutes to drive.  About 50 piles were ultimately driven into the muck. 

Once a pile was driven to a certain depth, volunteers had to switch to hitting the pile with a sledge hammer.  Unfortunately, the hammer would tear apart the end of the pile, so a protective metal cap dubbed the "bell-ringer" was fabricated to fit over the end of the pile.  The sound of the sledge hammer hitting the bell-ringer was deafening, hence the name.  Repeated abuse and icy-cold weather combined to shatter the original bell-ringer, so a new and improved "son-of-a-bell-ringer" was manufactured.

After the pilings were driven to the proper depth, volunteers attached pairs of pilings with joists and then attached stringers lengthwise over the joists.  The top of the pilings were then trimmed to length and decking attached to the stringers. The last bit of work involved the installation of the edging. 

Volunteers decided to pick up all the lumber themselves as-needed rather than have everything delivered for fear that the lumber would be stolen or vandalized.  Needless to say, this created extra work.

Volunteer crews worked almost every weekend for two months, usually starting at 8:00 or 9:00 on Saturday morning and working well into the afternoon.  Sometimes they returned on Sunday.  Yards went unraked, gutters stayed clogged, and Christmas shopping was put off so that the boardwalk could be completed.  They worked in high water and in cold. But on December 16 the boardwalk was substantially completed (some extra trim work and clean-up was completed later). 

The above photo shows volunteers on December 16 after completing the boardwalk (left to right): Joe Welsh, Bob Wilkins, Lynn Reid, Bob Robillard, Richard Skudlark, Terry Gallagher, Ryan Gallagher, Bill Dyer, and Rudy Gajdosik (click to enlarge). 

Other volunteers included (in no particular order): Andy Cable, Rick Swanson (made the pile driver), Pat Gajdosik, Joe Pratt, Hank & Jackie Lauriat, Marybeth Banks, Ed McCreery, Tom Harbinson (supplied bellringers), Burt Jackson, Richard Skudlarek, Don Pendergast, Bruce Nichols, Teresa Gallagher, Sam Stearn (donated haybales), David & Pollyann?, Mark W., Eric Miller and Jim Sobanik.

For more pictures, view a slide show of the boardwalk construction from October 21 to December 24.