Witch Path or Lover’s Lane, as it was called for many years, has always been a street of mystery.
No record has been found to indicate when Witch Path was built. If “Witch Path Dingle” is natural rather than “man-made” the path in the dingle would date back thousands of years and would have been used as a route up “the Great Hill” by the Indians.
The 1795 map of West Springfield, the earliest street map in existence, shows a highway in the dingle where Witch Path is located. 100 years later, in 1896, Witch Path was accepted as an official town street. The fact that it was accepted in 1896 does not, however, mean that it was built that year since many streets are built long before they are officially accepted as town streets and, in fact, many streets in use in 2003 have never been officially accepted as town streets.
To add to the Witch Path mystery, the 1912 Atlas 0f Hampden County has the road labeled as both “Witch Path” and “Newton Avenue” and other 20th century maps use Newton Avenue and Witch Path interchangeably. The problem is that there are no town records for the creation or existence of a highway called Newton Avenue.
It has always been assumed that Witch Path became popularly known as Newton Avenue in honor of James Newton Bagg, the early town historian and editor of the 1874 West Springfield Centennial Book, who lived on the hill at the east end of Witch Path.
In the 1970’s, for safety reasons, the eastern end of “Old Witch Path in the Dingle” was closed off to vehicle traffic and has, since then, became overgrown with brush and trees.