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Keyword search: A Look back

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was a half-century ago that Eastman and Quechee Lakes got off the ground, becoming what were the biggest housing developments ever to hit the Upper Valley, a status they still hold in 2025. Each has its own founding story, but in many aspects they share great similarities in how they evolved and where they are today.

By STEVE TAYLOR

Time was when Upper Valley households were likely to get their milk delivered to their door in bottles by a cheery route driver from one of the iconic hometown dairy plants that dotted the region. That was before large supermarkets came along to dominate the area’s grocery trade and a few major New England brands took over the processing and distribution of fluid milk.

By STEVE TAYLOR

Sixty years ago, Hollywood great Katharine Hepburn called the Connecticut River “the world’s most beautifully landscaped cesspool.” She had an estate at the river’s mouth in Old Saybrook, Conn., and in 1965 narrated a documentary film that told of centuries of pollution of the stream and advocated for action to clean it up.

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was going to become “the Ben and Jerry’s of beer” and as the concept took shape it generated a lot of buzz in the Upper Valley some 40 years ago.

By STEVE TAYLOR

The stories are 45 years old right now, but they never cease to be entertaining and, for many, heartwarming. They’re about a Newport couple who set out to live a dream, and about how an extended community of neighbors and friends came together to make it happen.

By STEVE TAYLOR

Doug Carver, principal of Lebanon’s Hanover Street elementary school, heard crackling noises coming from beneath the roof of the adjacent high school gymnasium. He immediately went into overdrive, telling pupils and teachers to grab their outdoor clothing and get out of the complex as fast as they could.

By STEVE TAYLOR

Probably the most frequent knock on the Upper Valley heard these days is about the shortage of nightlife activities for young adults. Nothing much exists in the way of live music for dancing amid convivial beverage consumption and casual connections.

By STEVE TAYLOR

Half a century ago the Upper Valley was ground zero for a battle between state power to compel citizens to display a message they disagreed with and determined dissenters willing to resist, even to the point of going to jail for their beliefs.Over a...

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was almost five o’clock in the morning and the election was coming down to the vote totals from the three wards in the City of Claremont. Ballots were still counted by hand in those days, but out of 299 New Hampshire voting precincts the statewide...

By STEVE TAYLOR

If they lived within two miles, students walked or rode their bikes to school. Mabel Pillsbury was their teacher and she handled all eight grades for many years. And the majority of the pupils came from families who had been in the town for...

By STEVE TAYLOR

Ramble through archived issues of the Valley News from three-quarters of a century ago and you’ll find five, six or more mentions of local labor disputes every week. The 1950s were a time when the Upper Valley still had an extensive assortment of what...

By STEVE TAYLOR

For many hundreds of Upper Valley folks, the soundtrack of their lives in the late 1940s, the 1950s and into the 1960s was the music of Woody and the Ramblers, a band composed of five local Greatest Generation guys who traversed the region for as many...

By STEVE TAYLOR

It once was a skill every man and boy over age 10 in rural Vermont and New Hampshire mastered, an activity absolutely vital to sustaining animal agriculture with antecedents tracing back thousands of years. Watching someone doing it today seems like...

By STEVE TAYLOR

LEBANON — Most folks have a few events in their memory they’ll never lose track of, days like Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, or Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon....

By STEVE TAYLOR

Before franchised fast food and corporate-owned restaurants hit the Upper Valley, there was a time when locally owned diners and a variety of family-run eating establishments flourished and produced many fond memories and much nostalgia. For at least...

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was a great conversation starter half a century ago, and, if you lived it, the subject can bring amusement, even awe, to those hearing about it today. That’s the “hand crank” or magneto telephone system that served Meriden Village for nearly 75...

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was arguably the greatest change in the structure of New Hampshire town government in almost three centuries, seen by advocates as a necessary response to rapid population growth in many communities and by others as an assault on a cherished...

By STEVE TAYLOR

Erling Heistad came to Lebanon from Norway in 1923 and in a matter of a few months he set off a half century’s worth of excitement that would eventually establish a local Golden Age of what had been an obscure Scandinavian sport, ski jumping. For...

By STEVE TAYLOR

It was 36 years ago, back when Lebanon was largely a moderate Republican bastion, and Karen Wadsworth was an up and coming figure in New Hampshire GOP politics. One day she hosted a good-sized gathering of the GOP faithful at her home on Bank...

By STEVE TAYLOR

Talk about all the things that have changed in the Upper Valley since, well, 1950 — the interstates, the rising influence of Dartmouth College and its ever-expanding health care colossus, disappearance of textile mills and hill farms, staggering gains...

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...