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Small Pox Trail? Jingle Valley? Biscuit City Road?
We finally had to ask: What kind of road name is that? Actually, the names along Route 138 speak for themselves:
“Small Pox Trail” dates to a farmhouse in the Richmond hinterlands, where a family that survived the pestilence cared for others, says Richmond Historical Society archivist Patricia Millar.
“Jingle Valley Road” sprang from the nightly chorales of abundant spring peepers populating a nearby bog, recalls Shirley Covell Duncan, eighty, who grew up here and still lives down the road.
“Biscuit City Road” arose from an early 1800s cluster of houses and a textile mill near URI’s Kingston campus. Legend has it that a peddler, selling no wares because the housewives were too busy baking biscuits for supper, bemoaned his luck in a local tavern. One of the villagers instantly dubbed it “Biscuit City.”
—STEVEN SLOSBERG
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