Grange meetings are held the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays at 7 pm or as noted.
Wednesday, July 19: Business meeting
Wednesday, August 2: Band Concert and Pie Sale to benefit the Shelburne Grange Fair
Wednesday, August 16: Business meeting and short program
Saturday, August 26: It's the Shelburne Grange Fair!
PAST PROGRAMS
SPECIAL PROGRAM - COME AND JOIN US!
Fellowship Hall, 17 Little Mohawk Road, Shelburne, MA
Friday, March 18, 2016
6:30 pm Pot Luck Supper
7 pm Barry Deitz's presentation: "When the Road Came Through--How Construction of I-91 Changed Western Massachusetts"
Fellowship Hall, 17 Little Mohawk Road, Shelburne, MA
Friday, March 18, 2016
6:30 pm Pot Luck Supper
7 pm Barry Deitz's presentation: "When the Road Came Through--How Construction of I-91 Changed Western Massachusetts"
When the Road Came Through
Excerpts from Barry Deitz’s Presentation
We are a restless people. We have been called the most mobile nation in the world. Whether it’s vacationing in a remote National Park or moving the whole family across the country for the possibility of a better life, the story of America is in many ways a story about hitting the road and heading toward the horizon, the dream of something better over the next hill.
About 40,000 miles of roads were built between 1956 and 1978 as a result of the Interstate Highway plan and those freeways changed the face of America. In good ways, and bad. Part of that 40,000 miles of new road included the 291 miles of Interstate 91 which ran from New Haven, Connecticut up to the Canadian border.
The commercial opportunities were obvious. Easier access to distant markets for produce, timber and small manufactures, specifically in providing a faster way down to Springfield and up to Brattleboro. But what many of the residents of the Pioneer Valley recall of those days when the road came through was how devastating it was for many local businesses. For generations the regular traffic along Route 5 had supported gas stations, restaurants, garages, fruit stands, small manufacturing concerns and many home businesses. The new Interstate made it possible without a second look to bypass all these places dependent on drive-by commerce.
A new highway cutting its way across a county’s farms and towns can leave a wide range of often contradictory emotions in the people affected by those changes. The very landscape itself is altered. Town residents find the geography of their home has been remade. Landmarks disappear. Fields are erased. Woodlands cut down and leveled.
Big changes are easy to spot. But in some respects it’s the small things that stay with us. Remembering a mill pond that was once in the center of town, a copse of trees or a sugar house swept away by tractors and trucks, a favorite fishing hole gone forever.
Progress inevitably has its victors and victims, its winners and losers, but it changes everyone in some way, even if it is just to make possible a quicker route to work. For those in the Pioneer Valley who remember, their history can be traced in the stories of life before and after the road came through.
Excerpts from Barry Deitz’s Presentation
We are a restless people. We have been called the most mobile nation in the world. Whether it’s vacationing in a remote National Park or moving the whole family across the country for the possibility of a better life, the story of America is in many ways a story about hitting the road and heading toward the horizon, the dream of something better over the next hill.
About 40,000 miles of roads were built between 1956 and 1978 as a result of the Interstate Highway plan and those freeways changed the face of America. In good ways, and bad. Part of that 40,000 miles of new road included the 291 miles of Interstate 91 which ran from New Haven, Connecticut up to the Canadian border.
The commercial opportunities were obvious. Easier access to distant markets for produce, timber and small manufactures, specifically in providing a faster way down to Springfield and up to Brattleboro. But what many of the residents of the Pioneer Valley recall of those days when the road came through was how devastating it was for many local businesses. For generations the regular traffic along Route 5 had supported gas stations, restaurants, garages, fruit stands, small manufacturing concerns and many home businesses. The new Interstate made it possible without a second look to bypass all these places dependent on drive-by commerce.
A new highway cutting its way across a county’s farms and towns can leave a wide range of often contradictory emotions in the people affected by those changes. The very landscape itself is altered. Town residents find the geography of their home has been remade. Landmarks disappear. Fields are erased. Woodlands cut down and leveled.
Big changes are easy to spot. But in some respects it’s the small things that stay with us. Remembering a mill pond that was once in the center of town, a copse of trees or a sugar house swept away by tractors and trucks, a favorite fishing hole gone forever.
Progress inevitably has its victors and victims, its winners and losers, but it changes everyone in some way, even if it is just to make possible a quicker route to work. For those in the Pioneer Valley who remember, their history can be traced in the stories of life before and after the road came through.
