Windsor Locks was incorporated on May 30, 1854, after formerly being the Pine Meadow district of Windsor. Dutch trader Captain Adriaen Block traveled up the Connecticut River in the spring of 1614 as far as Enfield Rapids. The first three settlers were Henry Denslow in 1663, Nathaniel Gaylord in 1678, and Abraham Dibble in 1708. Seth Dexter founded the Dexter Company in 1767, and David Birge made the first one-horse-drawn wagon in the area in 1815. The Windsor Locks Canal was completed in 1829, and Charles Dexter was appointed first postmaster in 1833. Early town officials included selectmen Lucius Chapman, Talcott Mather, and Oliver Hayden, and town clerk Charles Spencer, and the first town meeting was held on July 3, 1854. Rail transportation began in 1844, trolley service in 1904, and public buses on June 24, 1924. Bradley Field opened as a military airbase in 1941, and commercial airlines have served the area there since 1947, when it became Bradley International Airport. In November 1974, Ella T. Grasso of Windsor Locks was elected the first woman governor of Connecticut. George Washington's diary entry for October 1789 described Old Country Road between Windsor and Suffield as passing through a level, barren, uncultivated plain for miles, a reference to Windsor Locks.