CALAIS – Visitors and town residents now have access to a guided audio tour of Calais history created by the Calais History Preservation Commission. The Calais Town History Tour is presented in twenty-one episodes, each four to five minutes long that can be downloaded to a smartphone. Each segment can then be heard as listeners drive, bike or walk from location to location around Calais stopping at each tour location.
courtesy drawing
The tour’s stories take the listener through Calais’s history, from the period when the Abenaki were the only people in the forests of what is now Vermont, to the arrival of the first white settlers in the 1780s, to the growth of young Calais and the foundation of industries and factories.
The struggles of Calais residents in the Civil War and Depression and the forces and factors that led Calais to become the town it is today are highlighted. The tour shows that the history of Calais can be read not just in books, but in its buildings.
Access the tour at kentscorner.org/audio-tour.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
