The Highway to Hanover
Trains, planes, and automobiles have all teen part of the journey.
1771
In his Narratives Eleazar Wheelock explains that he picked Hanover as the site for his new school because of its "central" location and "convenient" river transportation.
1772
Governor John Wentworth orders a road cut between Wolfeboro (where he has a vacation home) and Hanover so he can travel to Commencement on horseback.
1773
John Ledyard 1776 takes advantage of Hanover's convenient river location. He builds a dugout canoe, drops out, and paddles away.
1847
Daniel Webster ceremoniously opens the rail line between Lebanon, New Hampshire, and Boston.
1907
Chase Keith Pevear '10, reputed to be the richest student on campus, shows up with a motorcycle.
1915
Six hundred Dartmouth students in search of the cheapest fare to the Amherst football game charter a train at the livestock rate. Discovering that the I.C.C. won't sanction classifying students (even Dartmoutfi students) as animals, the football fans arrange for each car to carry a crated pig. Government regulations permit the swine to have an unlimited number of attendants.
1933
The Hanover Committee on Air Transportation predicts that "safe and efficient operation" of the region's proposed air service is assured because airline vice president Amelia Earhart will be in charge.
1938
The train to New York takes 6.5 hours. Sixty years later the same trip takes 7.5 hours.
1948
"The Dartmouth College Highway" (aka Rt. 10) between Hanover and the Bay State is in such bad shape that College officials ask New Hampshire's governor to change the road's name.
1962
Plans are unveiled for a modern, limited-access highway on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River. The College, unsuccessfully, opposes an interchange in Norwich, noting that the volume of traffic coming off the highway will be too much for Ledyard Bridge and will cause "irreparable damage" to the community.
1974
This magazine runs an article documenting changes wrought by the new interstate highway. The road "makes it easier for more alumni to come back...but the asphalt strips lead larcenists, grand and petty, to the doorsteps of the College." Crooks from "down country" are responsible for the theft of eight ancient atlases from Baker Library, antiques from Dick's House, and the systematic pilfering of bicycles and stereos.
1998
Ledyard Bridge and Wheelock Street are widened to handle multiple lanes of traffic. Original critics of the Norwich interchange are proven right.
Hanover, N. H. in the Future.
This thirties-era prediction didn't envision Hanover's auto domination.
