Search Results

Keyword search: A Look back

By STEVE TAYLOR

Bridges across the Connecticut River have been essential for more than two centuries to creating what former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean once called a “third state” nestled between New Hampshire and his Green Mountain State. Indeed, as the current...

By STEVE TAYLOR

THE TUNBRIDGE FAIR AS IT ONCE WAS — Yes, it was good that a crusading young minister came to town and led the charge to clean up the wild, alcohol-fueled atmosphere of the Tunbridge Fair and get rid of its reputation as “the drunkards’ reunion.” That...

By STEVE TAYLOR

There’s a measure of melancholy that always surrounds a farm auction. Chances are it is bringing down the curtain on a life’s work, an ending compelled by bodies aging out, debts that can’t be covered by cash flow or plain old bad luck. The effects...

By STEVE TAYLOR

John Adams famously said the true founding of the United States of America came on July 2, 1776, not on July 4, because on July 2 the Continental Congress passed by majority vote the Declaration of Independence. On the fourth, the delegates signed the...

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was by far the greatest technological advance of the 20th century for livestock farmers, and it lives on today serving what’s become a niche market of hobby farmers and horse owners. It’s the hay baler, and it’s a machine that can be pulled around...

By STEVE TAYLOR

‘Twas 63 years ago when the Enfield board of selectmen — Charlie Tupper, Isaac Sanborn and Henry Laramie — sat down with representatives of the state highway department to discuss whether the town had any wishes for naming its two exits off the new...

By STEVE TAYLOR

Upper Valley roads are wicked muddy this spring? Ha! Go back a few decades, or maybe a century or two — that’s when just about every road around here was a muddy slog, even in downtowns, for weeks on end. Little wonder folks then actually liked winter...

By STEVE TAYLOR

Time was when the food served on Town Meeting day was nearly as important as things like the school budget, highway maintenance and a new fire truck when they came up for discussion and votes. Many Upper Valley Vermont towns and a few on the New...

By STEVE TAYLOR

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, SUMMER 1957 — It hadn’t changed much in generations and it was still a rugged railroad town, downtown stores hadn’t yet been destroyed by the Vermont sales tax that came a decade later, the slow decay of the 1960s, 1970s and...

By GEOFF HANSEN

Twenty-five years ago, a storm struck parts of the Upper Valley, weighing down trees under a coating of ice and knocking out power for days.Two weather fronts stalled over the Northeast for three to four days in early January 1998, and it fell not as...

By STEVE TAYLOR

He ran for president once, lost three primary bids for New Hampshire governor and was defeated twice in gubernatorial general elections. But, no matter, Orford’s Meldrim Thomson Jr. was elected to be the Granite State’s chief executive three times,...

By ALEX HANSON

The Republican tide that lifted many state and local politicians to victory in the 1994 mid term election ended up sinking a few boats, too.Yes, GOP challenger Charlie Bass defeated incumbent Democrat Dick Swett in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional...

By DAN MACKIE

The Westboro Rail Yard was once a wonder, but in recent decades it was a testament to inertia — “deserted and decrepit,” in the words of a Valley News story in 1987.A haunting wind blew through the large brick roundhouse, and wooden shacks were...

By STEVE TAYLOR

At the time it seemed like it was taking forever to get those new interstate highways built to connect the Upper Valley to what many people considered the rest of the world. Six-plus decades ago travel to Concord, Boston, Hartford, New York City or...

By GEOFF HANSEN

Sometimes it’s about the ones that got away. Finding photos for the monthly “A Look Back” feature involves sleuthing and a bit of luck, especially when I’m looking for photos published 50 years ago, in June 1972.I started with a visit to Kilton Public...

By ALEX HANSON

HANOVER — In his indispensable guide to the architecture of Dartmouth College, Scott Meacham wrote one of the book’s longest entries about the Hopkins Center for the Arts.Dartmouth students, faculty and leaders recognized the need for some kind of...

By GEOFF HANSEN

Muddy roads were a hot topic last month on the pages of the Valley News. And also on Valley News social media, over 90,000 people reacted to the photo of a Thetford Elementary student riding the family mule home from school.Living in an area where the...

By ALEX HANSON

Paul Doton has been moderator in Barnard for 30 years, and his father was moderator before him.When he took up the gavel in the early 1990s, Doton said, Town Meeting was an event.“At that point in time, there were in excess of 100 people who came to...

By JOHN P. GREGG

The late W.S. Merwin, a former U.S. poet laureate who died in 2019 at age 91, had a poem about this time of year, a time of change, in which he wrote, “I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring.”Taking a look back at photos from...

By JOHN P. GREGG

CORNISH — The Cornish Fair opens Friday with a farm horse competition, youth agricultural quiz, and Midway rides, among other attractions.Started in 1950, its focus has been on agriculture, and a new livestock pavilion is expected to be one of the...