Vermont History Explorer

Nineteen-year-old George Schmitt of Rutland became the first Vermonter to make an engine-powered airplane flight.

Charles Willard flew an airplane for six minutes in St. Johsbury. The plane was brought by train from Boston to the Caledonia County Fairgrounds.

Important child labor laws are passed by the U.S. government.  They limit the work week of children to fifty-eight hours.  Photographs taken of children working even longer hours at woolen mills in Winooski and Bennington help convince people that these laws are needed.

 

The Bitter Cry of the Children (PDF)

Four hundred women gather in Montpelier, in the pouring rain, in support of the nineteenth amendment giving women the right to vote.

Edna Beard of Orange became Vermont's first woman legislator.  There has never been a legislative session since without a woman member.

WLAK, Vermont's first radio station, began broadcasting in Bellows Falls.  Charles Doe, the announcer, was on the air six hours a day, with weather, farming tips, and piano and gramophone music.

At his family home at Plymouth, vice-president Calvin Coolidge was awakened in the night and sworn in as the thirtieth president of the United States, after president Warren G. Harding died.  His father, John Coolidge, a notary public, administered the oath of office.

 

From Vermont Farm to the White House (PDF)

Vermont's first radio broadcast was made by WCAX from Burlington, Vermont.

Charles Lindbergh, the first person to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris, visited Vermont's first airfield and flying school in Springfield.

Vermont experienced the worst flood in its history.  Over 9 inches of rain fell in two days causing rivers, fields and roads to flood.

 

Rain, Rain, and Still More Rain (PDF)

The airplane, The Green Mountain Boy, took off from Berlin, Vermont, for Norway and disappeared without a trace.

The first Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) in Vermont started work in Danby.  The C.C.C. put unemployed men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three to work on projects in the nation's forests and rural areas.

 

A Forest Army Goes to Work (PDF)

The temperature in Bloomfield, Vermont, dropped to fifty degrees below zero.  This still stands as the lowest official temperature ever recorded in the state.

 

Above the Surface: Small State, Big Weather (PDF)

The first ski tow in the United States was set up in Woodstock, Vermont.  The tow was powered by a Model T Ford engine which pulled the 900 yards of rope at a speed of thirty miles per hour.  The first ticket for the rope tow was sold on January 28th.

 

 

Small Beginnings: The First Rope Tow in Vermont (PDF)

 

Amelia Earhart, who later became the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, speaks to the legislature on the future of the airplane.

 

Voters on Town Meeting Day vote against building the Green Mountain Parkway, a highway to connect the peaks of the Green Mountains.

 

A terrible hurricane caused the deaths of five Vermonters and cost more than twelve million dollars in damage.