Avon ( ) is a town in the Farmington Valley region of Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town had a population of 18,932. History At the end of the last Ice Age, 12,400 years BP of the Younger Dryas, nomadic peoples built a campsite adjacent to the river that would become known as the Farmington River. They were apparently the first people to populate the region that would become known as southern New England, including the region that would become Avon. Over the Paleoindian period the site was revisted multiple times by other nomadic peoples until it gradually became buried by sediment from the river's occasional flooding. In the winter of 2019, the campsite remains were excavated in Avon, along with stone tools and artifacts constructed from materials in neighboring regions. Avon was settled in 1645 and was originally a part of neighboring Farmington. In 1750, the parish of Northington was established in the northern part of Farmington, to support a Congregational church more accessible to the local population. Its first pastor was Ebenezer Booge, a graduate of Yale Divinity School who arrived in 1751. The Farmington Canal's opening in 1828 brought new business to the village, which sat where the canal intersected the Talcott Mountain Turnpike linking Hartford to Albany, New York. Hopes of industrial and commercial growth spurred Avon to incorporate. In 1830, the Connecticut General Assembly incorporated Northington as the town of Avon, after County Avon in England. Such expansion never came and, in the 1900s, the rural town became a suburban enclave. In the 1960s Avon rejected the proposal for Interstate 291 coming through the southern edge of the town and successfully denied the expressway going through the town. Avon Mountain traffic accidents The section of Talcott Mountain, known as Avon Mountain, between Avon and West Hartford, is known for the climb of U.S. Route 44, and the most direct path to Hartford from much of the Farmington Valley and Litchfield County. One of the worst traffic accidents in Connecticut history occurred at the intersection of Route 44 and Route 10 at the foot of Avon Mountain. On July 29, 2005, the driver of a dump truck lost control of his brakes and swerved to avoid traffic waiting in his lane at the stoplight. On the eastbound side of the road, the truck then collided with rush hour traffic waiting