The Our Town Civic Organization, Inc. is a grass roots organization that has worked for the last three years to improve our community for ourselves and our children. Some of the projects we have undertaken have been: a new theater group called The Front Porch Theater Company who have presented several plays over the last two years (will be presenting Bilthe Spirit in the Spring), a Writer’s Group who composed an original drama called, "Front Porch Tales" for our performance last summer, unique performances on local front porches free of charge to the community, a theater restoration committee to restore the Bellows Falls Opera House, relighting of the Post Office Bridge lights, restoration of the petroglyphs, an increase of community pride by flower planting and architectural slide shows of local buildings, bus tours during foliage season of the paper mill mansions of our community, several celebrations including the premiere book signing of Archer Mayor’s Bellows Falls .
We initiated the H.O.P.E (Help Our Public Education) committees to encourage local input in the school budget process. Our members coordinated the compilation of a tourist guidebook available to many local merchants, we have held two Front Porch Receptions for local business people and also for the new owner of the Green Mountain Railroad and made this forum of greeting business people to our community available to our development director.We have worked together with the Greater Falls Chamber of Commerce on our summer celebration of "Old Home Days" which was in danger of being discontinued this year, and members helped bring Transpo 98 to the community. We did Victorian house tours during this summer festival. We assisted the Rotary with the town tree lighting and Christmas party. We have encouraged people to restore the many grand ‘Painted Ladies’ of our community and entire streets have changed their looks this past year. We are presently in the process of creating an Our Town Youth Center for the young people of our community, developing tourism packets for Bellows Falls/Rockingham, and creating a web site to promote our community, We are working with Adult Basic Education to develop a program for underemployed, unemployed and youths-at-risk. Other groups are working on creating access to the Petroglyphs, restoring a turn of the century fountain, and placing buckets of flowers around the Square. This group also repaired and renovated the Well’s Street Playground. We recently hosted a Rural Development visit, only the second community in the state to do this. We are hoping that the results of this can be used in our Downtown Development program.
We work closely with RAMP (Rockingham Area Museum Project) to bring the arts to our community in a new and exciting way, and to create packages to make Bellows Falls a true tourist destination. We have joined with the Bellows Falls Historical Society in an attempt to improve our local museum, the Adam’s Grist Mill, and we are also involved in the CLG (Certified Local Government - National Historic Trust) to create a new historic district of our Victorian neighborhoods.
Needless to say we are proud of our accomplishments and our group. One of the most important projects, however, was the Clock Tower Project. After more than twelve months of hard work and devotion the Our Town group relit and rang the Clock Tower, a symbol of Bellows Falls for over a century. The Clock Tower had not been working for several decades and had become less than a positive symbol. Through local donations and grants we had the Seth Thomas works repaired and restored and totally redesigned the lighting of the Tower and the clock faces.
On December 31, 1997, New Years Eve, we once again heard the mighty peal of the Clock Tower. We planned a party, fireworks, music and guest speakers.
Of all our accomplishments, the thing we are most proud of is the new feeling of hope and pride that is coming into the village. For a long time Bellows Falls has been pigeon-holed as a community down on its luck with no way back, but with the leadership of Our Town and the ever- present love of the citizens for their community, our village is standing taller, looking sharper, and feeling better about itself. We are coming back as the true jewel of the Connecticut River Valley and as an authentic remnant of the ‘real’ Vermont.
We feel that Our Town is an example of the independence, fortitude and pride that has represented true Vermonters, native born and transplanted.
The enthusiasm has not wavered within our group. New members are joining all the time and new projects are planned for this year and many years to come. We are people who love our community and will continue to work for its betterment. And with all our projects we have never asked the town government for any financial help of any kind. The major fund-raisers of the group include 14 new postcards - the first done of Bellows Falls since the 1950s; hand-crafted wooden doortoppers in three different series, Village Series (public buildings), Neighborhood Series (Victorian Mansions) and By-Gone Series(prominent buildings and architecture that no longer stands). The Front Porch Theater Group recently produced a cookbook of local recipes called, Applause, Applause, we have our own T Shirt and just recently chose our official logo that will soon be attached to new products.....including our Calendar 2000 of art work by local artists of village scenes.
In the works this spring is a Front Porch Theater production of "Blithe Spirit", and plans for a Victorian Village July 4th that will include house and garden tours, lawn croquet, costumed guides, free refreshments on the front porches of Bellows Falls, Front Porch performances, family games and picnic, band concert, crafts fair, horse and wagon rides and much, much more.
If you have any questions about Our Town, its history, and its future please feel free to contact me at any time.
Catherine Bergmann
President, Our Town
6 Atkinson Street,
Bellows Falls, VT 05101
802-463-3092
ourtown@sover.net