Highway 91 Talk with Barry Dietz

Learn about the advent of the Interstate highway system at a lecture by Barry Deitz, a North Carolina transplant who has researched the question of what happens when a highway is built through your town.

Though Deitz has been a radio talk show host, host of a movie review show, and acted in theater, he prefers to be called simply a storyteller. His clear emphatic voice, with the southern accent, is made for telling long stories.

Deitz  lives in Bernardston, and moved here several years ago.  Where he grew up, it’s all built up all along I-95, and our 91 veers through cow pastures, farm fields and tobacco barns.

His talk will on the building of the Interstates beginning in 1956, specifically when the road came through Deerfield, Greenfield and Bernardston.

Famed headmaster Frank Boyden is famous for his phone call that supposedly changed the route of the highway so that Old Deerfield could be preserved. Many beautiful sections of our towns were destroyed to make way for the road, since each mile required around 30 acres of land to be taken. Hundreds of houses were moved, and rivers were re-routed to make way for progress.  (content thanks to Max Hartshorne of Deerfield Attractions)

This Deerfield Reads program made possible with funds provided by a grant from the Deerfield Cultural council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, Friends of Tilton Library and Greenfield Cooperative Bank.