This Week in History January 22 - 28

10 years ago:
Whitingham officials were miffed to discover that a state plan for safety improvements to the Sadawga Lake dam included the removal of a historic landmark – the 1886 gatehouse structure that tops the dam structure. Selectboard chair Keith Bronson fired off a letter to the dam safety engineer expressing the board’s dismay. “For many in this area, this building has sentimental value and serves as a landmark,” he wrote. He also noted that the tiny building was part of the Whitingham Village Historical District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Bronson said the state should be held to the same standard as any property owner in the district. The state said the building had to be removed from the spillway under flood hazard mitigation rules. The town and state reached a compromise on the matter, with the state agreeing to move the building to an earthen embankment adjacent to the dam structure.
15 years ago:
Wilmington Selectboard members warned a bond vote for Town Meeting day. The question asked voters to raise $338,034 for a new town garage building. The total cost of the project was estimated to be about $963,484, but the town had recently allocated $300,000 in budget surplus money to the project, and other costs, for labor and site work, were to be paid through the regular town budget.
20 years ago:
Wilmington Town Manager Sonia Alexander announced she would retire from her position in June, after almost three decades in the office. Alexander was hired as town manager in 1976, left briefly in 1986, but came back to serve in the position again in 1988 until her 2006 retirement.
Readsboro resident Bob Dion, a competitive snowshoe racer, was making high quality racing snowshoes in a shed at his home in Readsboro. Dion was the only US manufacturer of snowshoes, and sales of his specialized snowshoes began to take off after he was featured in a Vermont Life article in 2005. What began as a hobby became a part-time company, and he was considering opening a full-time manufacturing facility. Today, Dion snowshoes are made in Bennington.
25 years ago:
The three full-time residents of Somerset were finding it difficult to get around after state road crews stopped maintaining roads in the unincorporated town. After a call to state officials, Rep. Bob Rusten found out that the state had stopped maintaining the roads because Somerset was in arrears on their 1999 tax bill. Somerset’s appointed supervisor, at the time a Brattleboro attorney, hadn’t sent out tax bills. He said he hadn’t sent out the bills because of ongoing negotiations with Somerset’s largest property owner, USGen. Rusten mediated a deal between the state highway department, the appointed supervisor, and residents to get the roads plowed.
30 years ago:
The Wilmington School Budget Committee looked at ways to control the rising cost of benefits. Some committee members suggested cutting out dental benefits altogether, others wanted to ask teachers to contribute to the cost of their benefits.
The Deerfield Valley Stump Jumpers withdrew their request for $3,000 in funding from the town of Wilmington after a local landowner threatened to bar snowmobiles from his property if the club pursued the donation. The property owner’s argument was that he donated land for the club’s use; he didn’t want to donate again through his taxes.=
35 years ago:
Several local residents were asked their opinions after the United States began bombing Baghdad in operation Desert Storm. One valley resident said it was an opportunity to deal with Iranian aggression, and with “the Palestinian question.” Another resident said he was disappointed that economic sanctions and diplomacy hadn’t been given enough chance. Two high school students who had already joined the military said going to war was the right thing for the United States to do. One respondent said America had “reached a new maturity” in the process of making major political decisions where “both sides listen to each other rather than shout at each other.”
Lewis and Laura Sumner told the Halifax Selectboard that the town would no longer be able to rent space for the town clerk’s office in their home because there was a lack of space for the safekeeping of the town’s documents and records. The town voted to build an addition to the school to house the clerk’s office, but a vote to rescind the original vote could have left the town without an office for the clerk.
40 years ago:
Mount Snow inked a deal with Walter and Diana Stugger to purchase their Carinthia Ski Area after eight years of negotiations. Walter Stugger opened Carinthia with an 87-acre tract on Handle Road in 1957. The area didn’t open for business until 1960, with a T-bar, a rope tow, and a 600-foot vertical rise. Over the years, Stugger acquired another 155 acres of private land and added 75 acres of Green Mountain National Forest land, with which he was able to claim a 1,100-foot vertical rise.
Police were called when several male guests at a local inn were reported to be running up and down the halls wearing nothing but masks and underwear, brandishing butter knives. Police said the men were just having fun that “got out of hand.”
45 years ago:
The US Labor Department was scheduled to hold a hearing in Burlington to determine whether regulations should be changed to permit Vermonters to knit products for sale in their homes. Testimony from several home knitters was expected, as well as testimony from “several prominent Vermonters who wanted to preserve cottage industry” in the state.
55 years ago:
Wilmington Town Manager Charles Trebbe announced he was resigning his $9,200 job “no later than June.” Trebbe told The Mount Snow Valley News that he wanted to take a trip during the summer “and this job is getting to where you can’t take off for long periods of time.”
Model, author, former Miss Sweden, and star of Noxzema shaving cream television commercials Gunilla Knutson was scheduled to be a judge in Mount Snow’s “Miss Winterfest” contest. Knutson was said to be an “active skier” with a ski lodge in Vermont.