Frog Bridge (Thread City Crossing)

Willimantic's bridge is guarded by four huge green frogs, each sitting on a spool of thread, and the reason takes in a midnight scare and a mill town. The Thread City Crossing, better known as the Frog Bridge, crosses the Willimantic River in what is now part of the town of Windham. It opened in 2000 and replaced an 1857 arched stone bridge, which Connecticut History says is now a garden walkway in Windham Mills State Heritage Park. The spools nod to the town's textile and thread-making history, and the bronze frogs, 11 feet tall according to Connecticut History, are the work of sculptor Leo Jensen. The library in Willimantic names them Manny, Willy, Windy and Swifty. PBS NewsHour reported in 2023 that the bridge was built by the state of Connecticut, with locals insisting that it pay tribute to their heritage.

The frogs commemorate the Windham frog fight of June 1754. In the Willimantic library's account, residents woke soon after midnight to a shrieking roar, took it for an attack or for the trumpets of Judgment Day, and fired muskets into the dark. By dawn they found hundreds of dead bullfrogs around a pond left almost dry by drought. Connecticut History describes this as a rational explanation that has not ended the storytelling. PBS added that the tale inspired comic poems, bank notes bearing a frog, and a 1905 operetta, and that frog imagery still turns up on local businesses.