HALIFAX — This summer, the Halifax Historical Museum will have an exhibit of photos from the 1890s through the 1930s, when Halifax was a popular resort destination with travelers from Boston and New York City.
The museum, which is located in the center of the village of West Halifax, next to the fire station, is open from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday until Labor Day.
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With coming of the railroad and trolley lines, Vermont became more accessible to city dwellers looking for a vacation in the country. One could travel by train to Shelburne Falls, Mass., take a trolley to nearby Colrain, and then hire a horse and buggy for the final leg of the journey.
In the 1890s, three members of the Niles family, one of the founding families of Halifax, acquired the Fish farm and built a luxury resort there, complete with a golf course, a tennis court, and a 22-bedroom hotel. They named it The Maplehurst.
Its luxuriously appointed bedrooms featured such amenities as large windows opening onto balconies, enabling the guests to roll their beds onto the balconies for sleeping outside. The house boasted a verandah extending across the entire facade, where guests could occupy rocking chairs. They could also go inside to relax in the elegant formal parlor, complete with piano.
A couple of miles down the road from Maplehurst stood a farm called The Deer Park, purchased in 1897 by a wealthy man from Illinois, L.C. Houghton, whose boyhood home had been in Halifax.
Because of hunting and deforestation, deer had been virtually exterminated in Halifax by about the 1820s, so Houghton, with two cows and a bull, attempted to re-establish the herd. He also built trout ponds and a large house where guests could stay for hunting and fishing. The first house at the Deer Park was built in 1904, but was destroyed by fire. The second house was destroyed in the 1940s.
Halifax was home to yet another resort, named Laura Pines, which flourished from the early 1920s through the late 1930s.
Laura Pines, now known as the Shearer Hill Farm Bed and Breakfast, had four cabins in the front field, grass tennis courts in the back of the main house, a miniature golf course, and a spring-fed pond. Guests ate their meals in the main house. Laundry was washed by hand and then dried on the lawn.
Slowly, over time, Laura Pines ceased operation after Donald Cael, the son of the owner, assumed management of the place. From late 1940s through the end of the 1950s, the fields became covered with more than 3,000 cars and were a popular place for people searching for old car parts. After Cael's death in 1968, the property was sold and the proceeds have since been used to help Halifax students attend college.
Today, the Pusey family and their many children and grandchildren have restored the unique family atmosphere of Laura Pines to the Shearer Hill Bed and Breakfast, which is open year-round.