SWEEDEN SWAMP AND ROUTE 95

By Don Doucette

Before the construction of Route 95 through South Attleboro at the Rhode Island line, Mendon Avenue (northern Bucklin Brook Watershed) in Pawtucket and Mendon Road in South Attleboro were commonly connected as a through street from Benefit Street, Pawtucket to Saint Theresa Church at Route 1 in South Attleboro and westward toward Highland Avenue.

South Attleboro Cardi’s Surrounded by Sweeden Swamp

The “Mendons” actually had a connecting train bridge near the end of Turner Street which I often rode across with my parents as we had family relatives living on Turner Street in South Attleboro.

The Market Basket Plaza (Route 1-A) was a huge deposit of glacial till which was strip mined and hauled away and sorted as valued aggregate before the highway construction occurred – by today’s standards, soils worth a small fortune. Believe me for emphasis, it WAS A LARGE deposit of glacial bulk dropped and rinsed by former flowing glacial melt waters! 

Route 95 construction eventually dead-ended a number of streets in that small area at the state line.

Following the era of development of East Pawtucket and similar developmental  pressures in South Attleboro, Sweden Swamp was saved at the bell and today is one of few surviving natural features in the general area and even now, displays ragged edges and scruffy features in the aftermath.

Our native cousins would not believe the end result.

Don Doucette

“Ten Mile River and Bucklin Brook Rambles”

Friends of the Ten Mile and Bucklin Brook

Citizen of the Narragansett Basin