Carla Occaso

Savoy Theater, North Branch Café Seek Donations At least two downtown businesses, still reeling from the flood, have recently started new GoFundMe campaigns to help them stay in business. The Savoy Theater, a downtown fixture for 43 years, is still trying to pay for the repairs that were necessary to re-open its downstairs theater space […]

Montpelier’s Country Club Road property, former home of the Elks Club, would be a good place for a disc golf course according to two men who pitched the idea at a recent city council meeting. Recreation Director Arne McMullen and Efficiency Vermont Managing Director Peter Walke presented a proposal to install a disc golf course […]

Free, independent and local newspaper

Despite a second year in a row of major flooding in its downtown, Barre is going forward with a full four-day schedule for the Barre Heritage Festival from July 24 to July 27.  In 2023, the celebration had to be postponed from July to September because of a more destructive flood that occurred on the […]

Homelessness in central Vermont continues to increase, according to Rick DeAngelis, co-director of Good Samaritan Haven. In fact, he told the Montpelier City Council during its July 17 meeting, Vermont has the second highest per capita rate of homelessness in the U.S. As part of a discussion about the increasing homelessness, speaker David Swett indicated […]

Fifteen-year-old Porter Perrin kept a diary in 1874 that describes his daily activities on his family’s farm in Berlin (located at the south end of where Knapp Airport is now). The diary has been transcribed and published by vermonthistoryexplorer.org. Perrin writes of working to set up, gather, boil, can, and clean up a maple sugaring […]

Montpelier Walgreens to Close Nov. 6 The Montpelier Walgreens store and pharmacy will be closing for good on Nov. 6, employees were told on Sept. 27, leaving Kinney Drugs as the only pharmacy operating in the city’s downtown. The closure, which comes seven years after Walgreens purchased 31 Rite Aid stores in Vermont, including the […]

Less than 100 years after the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, descendents of the key accusers helped to settle Middlesex, Vermont. Seth Putnam, great-grandson of Thomas and Ann (Carr) Putnam — parents of famous young accuser Ann Putnam — settled in Middlesex in 1785 after serving as a private in the Revolutionary War. Seth Putnam died […]

History Corner Archives

An Essex man has been reported missing since Wednesday, Dec. 18, and police have been searching the Winooski River in Waterbury without finding him. The man was identified as John Gaye, 45, of Essex, Vermont, and Graham, Kentucky. Vermont State Police were alerted at around 2:45 p.m. by the Essex Police seeking help with a missing persons investigation, according to a press release. Gaye’s car was found behind Parro’s Gun Shop, located at 601 U.S. Route 2 in Waterbury. Police stated that evidence “discovered in the area of the vehicle indicated the male party may have entered the Winooski River.”