Walking the Plank

The muddy month of March once marked the annual arrival of 200 wooden boards to help pedestrians navigate a thawing Green. As TheDartmouth declared in a 1948 headline: "Duckboards Deter Dampness; Delay Dartmouth Drownings." Still, getting to class with dry feet was no easy task, as these 1952 photos demonstrate. Later that decade the 70-year-old duckboards tradition ended with the installation of drainage pipes underneath raised gravel pathways. The boards, meanwhile, went out in a blaze of glory by sen ing as fuel for. several Homecoming bonfires.