Paul Trail (a.k.a. Great Harbor Hike)
Dr. John Paul was a ‘world renowned virologist’ who lived in the Old Quarry area of Guilford. Upon his death in the early 70’s, GLCT was given a memorial fund, and in response dedicated the “Dr. John Paul Memorial Trail” in his honor in 1975. At the time, the trail extended north from the water tower and connected (along the road) to the Sam Hill Parking area. This is how the trail was depicted in the 10th revision of the WWTC map, published in 1990. It was extended into the island in the salt marsh in the late 80’s, and that’s shown on this map. The 11th edition, which was a huge effort by Fred Richards, and published in 1998, omitted this connection, and the trial was shown in the isolation we see today.
Here’s a bit of Dr Paul’s background:
John Rodman Paul was born on April 18, 1893, in Philadelphia. His early education occurred in the Mid-Atlantic area, receiving an undergraduate degree from Princeton and then an M.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1920. Dr. Paul began his long association with Connecticut when he joined the Yale School of Medicine in 1928. At Yale he began a polio study group in the 1930’s. He and his associates began to receive yearly study grants from the March of Dimes immediately after FDR founded that group in 1938.
Dr. Paul used the grant money to study the spread of polio in the neighborhoods of both Middletown and New Haven, CT. His group found that infected patients excreted the disease into sewage systems. An historian of the disease, Paul noted that for many centuries children received antibodies from their mother’s milk at an early age and that early age exposure had conferred immunity upon children; however, as civilization progressed with better sanitation, cleaner water, better hygiene, etc., children were no longer exposed to the virus at an early age and therefore lacked immunity to it. Dr. John R. Paul retired from Yale after 33 years there in 1961. A longtime resident of Guilford, he died on May 6, 1971.
Here’s a link to his wikipedia page:
