In our ongoing effort to digitize historical, fragile films, we discovered this unlabeled and undated film clip depicting a flood in East Middlebury:
Though we were confident that we got the location right because some of the buildings are still standing in East Middlebury, we weren’t sure about the date. Based in part on the vintage of the cars, we assumed the flood of 1927. To test out our theory, Joseph Watson shared the link on the Growing up in Addison County Facebook group and its 2,000+ members. As a result, we revised our initial date. Based on what evidence? First, about 52 seconds into the film clip, the camera captures a Green Mountain National Forest tool box. The Forest wasn’t established until 1932. And second, the trees in the film clip are full of leaves. The ’27 flood was in November (no leaves!) while the ’38 flood was in September. Eureka! The Facebook thread (as of December 1) is below:
