Connecticut State Route 169 Scenic Byway 169
Connecticut State Route 169 Scenic Byway is a National Scenic Byway in Connecticut. Within Connecticut it covers roughly 35 miles. The map below shows its route. Use “Plan a drive” to open it in the Road Sorties route planner — already routing along Connecticut State Route 169 Scenic Byway with scenic roads turned on, ready to add your own stops.
Connecticut's Route 169 is a 32-mile National Scenic Byway through the state's rural Quiet Corner, from Lisbon north to the Massachusetts line. Designated in 1996 as one of the first national byways, it rolls past stone walls, colonial farmsteads, white-steepled meetinghouses and town greens in Canterbury, Brooklyn, Pomfret and Woodstock. In Canterbury, the Prudence Crandall Museum preserves the house where Crandall opened a school for Black girls in 1833, an act that led to her arrest and later made her Connecticut's official state heroine. Pomfret Street through Pomfret Center is a historic district of 18th- and 19th-century homes and private-school campuses, and in Woodstock the board-and-batten Roseland Cottage, a bright pink Gothic Revival summer home from 1846, hosted four presidents. The whole drive sits inside the Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor, a stretch of farmland and forest that stays strikingly dark at night between Boston and New York, and its maple-lined miles draw leaf-peepers every October.
- 32 miles
- Quiet Corner
- Roseland Cottage
- Prudence Crandall Museum
- Pomfret Street Historic District
- The Last Green Valley
- fall foliage
Designated for its scenic qualities
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Places to stop along Connecticut State Route 169 Scenic Byway
Prudence Crandall Museum
The Canterbury house where Prudence Crandall ran her 1833-34 school for Black girls, now a museum honoring the state heroine.
Putnam Elms
An 18th-century farm estate in Brooklyn, home of Colonel Daniel Putnam, son of the Revolutionary general Israel Putnam.
WebsiteAicher Preserve
A land trust preserve whose hilltop looks out over hayfields where bobolinks nest in early summer.
Roseland Cottage
A bright pink 1846 Gothic Revival summer house in Woodstock with original furnishings and a boxwood garden.
Website
Where to Stay along Connecticut State Route 169 Scenic Byway
5 campgrounds and RV parks sit within about 5 miles of Connecticut State Route 169 Scenic Byway.
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Photos of Connecticut State Route 169 Scenic Byway
What is a National Scenic Byway?
National Scenic Byways are roads recognized at the federal level for at least one outstanding quality — scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological or recreational — that gives travelers a reason to seek them out rather than just pass through.