Before Your Time is a podcast about Vermont history. Every episode, we go inside the stacks at the Vermont Historical Society to look at an object from their permanent collection that tells us something unique about our state. Then, we take a closer look at the people, the events, and the ideas that surround each artifact.
[N]inety years ago, a rainstorm that swept across the eastern United States caused massive flooding in Vermont. The waters destroyed farmland across the state. Thousands of animals drowned. Eighty-four people lost their lives, including the state’s lieutenant governor.
To this day, the 1927 flood is considered the biggest natural disaster in Vermont’s history.
But the flood was an even bigger turning point. The rebuilding process set in place some of the infrastructure that we still use today. And right before the Great Depression and the New Deal years of the 1930s, it focused the federal government’s attention – and some of its money – on a state that had never really asked for it.
In the first episode of our new monthly podcast, Sarah Dopp uses a family heirloom to tell her ancestors’ flood story. Historian Nick Clifford talks about how federal disaster relief challenged the state’s independent ethos. And living history performer Jim Cooke channels Calvin Coolidge in a speech that still inspires Vermonters today.
Subscribe to Before Your Time on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. See more artifacts and read a full transcript of this episode at beforeyourtime.org.
Produced in partnership with the Vermont Historical Society and the Vermont Humanities Council. Music by Michael Chapman and the Woodpiles, Eric & Magill, Zachary Cale, Gillicuddy, We Is Shore Dedicated, and Blue Dot Sessions.
