HISTORY
In 1902, Dracut had just
celebrated its 200th Anniversary, and in the eastern section of town, Kalil
Brox and his wife and children had settled on some land located amongst dozens
of other farms. The family started out as most families did in those days, with
a few dairy cows, and chickens, and grew enough vegetables and other crops to
meet their family’s immediate needs. (Kalil and his wife eventually had
nine children). In the 1940’s, as the Brox family continued to grow and
prosper they began to produce fruits and vegetables for commercial markets.
They specialized in apples, peaches, corn, tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, blue hubbard
and other squashes. In the beginning, most of the produce was shipped to markets
in Lowell and Lawrence. But as the population of Dracut grew during the 60’s,
70’s and 80’s, the Brox family began more of its produce at the stand located
on Route 113.
When Kalil Brox and his wife moved from Lawrence to Dracut in the early 1900’s
(after working hard in Lawrence’s mills for years and carefully saving
their money to buy several acres of land), what we now know as Route 113, was
little more than a dirt road that wound its way from Lawrence to Lowell. In
the early 1900’s, traffic on what was then known as Black North Road in
Dracut, consisted of horses with riders, or horses pulling wagons, carts, or
the occasional buggy. In the spring especially, travel could be tedious and
treacherous because of washouts and mudholes, and assorted other weather related
road hazards.
By the early 1920’s though, some twenty years after Kalil and his wife had moved to Dracut, the state of Massachusetts decided the road was important enough to the commerce between the growing cities of Lawrence and Lowell, that the state should take on the responsibility of maintaining the road. They financed the spreading of crushed stone (much of it produced at a gravel pit just west of where the current stand is now located) which was then saturated with tar and topped with a fine layer of finely crushed stone to produce what was known as “macadam”—the forerunner of our current asphalt.
By this time, the Brox’s ninth child, Raymond, had been born, and the family had a thriving small dairy business. They hand-milked 30 to 40 cows twice a day for the next 20 years or so. Large metal cans of the fresh warm milk were lowered into the spring water well near the barn until it was time to bottle the milk and make house to house, horse-drawn cart deliveries in the ethnic neighborhoods of Lawrence.