The Calais Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) is delighted to announce it is launching a new audio driving tour of the town, describing its history and historical architecture!  Please join them at their launch celebration!

On Thursday, May 22nd, at 7:00pm, the HPC will host a launch party at the Calais Town Hall, where they will play a few snippets from the tour and highlight some of the other organizations in the town which celebrate our history.  We’d love for you to stop by to check out the tour and also to hear from some of the other organizations in town which support the preservation of Calais's history, who we're asking to come say a few words about their missions. 

The Calais Town History Tour includes a downloadable set of 21 very brief (generally three or four minute) snippets that lead Calaisians through the town, both geographically and chronologically.  As listeners drive from spot to spot, the tour will take them 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, to the drama of the Civil War, all the way up to the hard-won electrification of the town in the 20th century.  We promise that there will be stories you haven’t heard that you’ll learn along the way!  Along with the audio tour, we’re offering an architectural cheat sheet, written by Susannah Blachly and Ryan Edwards, illustrated by John McCullough, which introduces architectural terms of art and gives you some tell-tale signs you can look for to guess when a house was built. We hope the tour will get people excited about the town – and give them some stories to tell visitors and children.

So if you're free, please drop by the Town Hall on Thursday, May 22nd and celebrate the launch of the tour’s website with us!  We’ll have refreshments from Mrs. Appleyard’s Calaisian cookbooks and a sneak peek at the website.  The event is free and open to the public.