The Calais Town History Tour

Presented by the

Calais Historic Preservation Commission

Listen to our history as you see the sights in Calais, Vermont!

On this audio tour, you’ll drive from spot to spot in town, hearing stories that will take you 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. You’ll hear about the struggles of Calaisians in the Civil War and Depression and the forces and factors that led Calais to become the town it is today. You’ll hear some surprising tales about some prominent townspeople, some of them tragic, some heroic. On this tour, we’ll show that our town’s history can be read not just in books, but in the buildings around us.

The tour is presented in nineteen episodes, each one four to five minutes long. You’ll download the tour to your phone and then drive, bike, or walk from location to location around Calais, listening to each segment as you reach a new stop on the tour.

A Journey Through Time

How it works

Important: read these instructions before going to Calais.

Cell service is spotty in the village, so you’ll need to read all this information and do a tiny bit of prep work before heading out.

Too late? If you can make your way to one of the public wifi hot spots in Calais, you can still save your skin. Those locations:

  • Calais Town Office parking lot

  • Calais Town Hall parking lot

  • Maple Corner Community Center parking lot

  • East Calais General Store parking lot

iPhone download instructions

  1. Click the giant DOWNLOAD button below.

  2. The episodes will download to a playlist within your iPhone’s music directory.

  3. When you’re ready to listen, open your Music app. Select the Playlists option, and navigate to the playlist title Calais Audio Tour.

Android download instructions

  1. Click the giant DOWNLOAD button below.

  2. The episodes will download to a playlist within your device’s music library.

  3. Open the Music app and select My Library. You should see the playlist called Calais Audio Tour

The Architectural Cheat Sheet

There is an architectural cheat sheet / scavenger hunt which shows various details you’ll find on the older houses around town, with descriptions of how they relate to different periods and styles. These will allow you to take a guess at when different houses – perhaps even your own – was built. To download this cheat sheet to your phone or computer, use the Download PDF button below. To save the file for offline use:

  1. On an iPhone or Apple Device, with the pdf open, select the “forward” icon at the bottom of your screen (the square with an arrow pointing upward), and select “Save to Files.” Navigate to a folder if you wish, and tap “Save.”

  2. On an Android, with the pdf open, select the “File” menu, then “Print.” From the drop-down list, select “Save as pdf,” then tap “Save.” You will be prompted for a location on your device to save the file.

The scavenger hunt sheet has been prepared by Calais Historic Preservation Commission members Ryan Edwards and Susannah Blachly, with illustrations by local architect John McCullough.

Take the sheet with you as you follow the tour around town, either as an image or printed out!

Things to Remember

Here are a few things to remember when on the tour:

Cell service is very spotty in Calais. Download all the episodes before you leave a wireless hotspot!

If you’re not from town, you might want to make sure your favorite map app has the town’s geography downloaded before you set out, for the same reason. Most of the spots you’ll be heading to – the Kent Museum, the Old West Church, the East Calais Post Office, the Adamant Coop, and so on, are visible on map apps, so if you get disoriented, your GPS can guide you to the next location.

Please respect private property as you’re taking the tour. Stay on marked paths and public roads at all times.

If you’re interested in learning more about individual buildings on the tour (or about your own house, if you’re from one of the designated village centers), you can find this information in the series of National Register of Historic Places documents historians have prepared for the Calais Historic Preservation Commission over the years. They are available free for download from the Calais town website here.

The tour will take approximately three hours, depending on the time spent at each site and driving between them. The audio portion of the tour alone takes about an hour and a half.

Have fun!

We hope that the stories told in this tour are things you’ll want to tell friends and family when they come to visit Calais.

This tour was written by Susannah Blachly and Tobin Anderson, with the assistance of the Calais Historic Preservation Commission and a generous grant from the Certified Local Government program of the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. The tour was based closely on descriptions of Calais’s current historic districts submitted to the National Register of Historic Places. These are public documents and are available for free download at the Calais town website here.

 

All assets associated with this tour © the Calais Historic Preservation Commission, 2024.