August 14
100 Years ago – 1924
People went swimming at the Glen Eden Swimming Pool, near the Rough and Ready Mills just off the National Highway.
75 years ago – 1949
Plans were being made for cement facilities at the site of the construction of the Philpott Dam, which would need more than 640,000 tons of cement. A front page article in the Aug. 14, 1949, Martinsville Bulletin described it: Thirty to 35 trucks would be required to haul the rock from Fort Trial quarry, and six or seven trucks would run the cement from Bassett over Route 57. The cement would arrive in bulk by train at Bassett and be transferred to a hopper, from which it would be dumped into trucks. After leaving Bassett, the cement would be carried to a mixing plant on the Henry county side of the river near the observation shed. After being fed into the mixing plant, it would be transferred into buckets handled by small cars on an elevated trestle. A device hanging from a 350-foot-high cable extending all the way across the gorge would pick up those cars, and then the cement would be dumped into the dam base.
“County Jailer Charles A. Hamilton will begin a week’s vacation tomorrow,” the Martinsville Bulletin announced on the front page. “He said he plans to spend it at his country home near Rangeley’s Store.”
1960
The writer of the Stroller column in the Bulletin recounted how much rain the area was getting – water was washing away the landscaping at the new Recreation Center; the whole lawn of Martinsville High School was covered in 2 to 3 inches of rain; and on Brown Street in front of the school shop, two vehicles were stalled in a flood that looked to be 3 or 4 feet deep. The writer noticed that water was running into the shop building, so drove out to the home of shop teacher Chester Lane, on Rives Road, to warn him. There, the writer found Chester “fighting a personal battle against water damage to an addition to his home and the embankment in front of it.”
50 years ago – 1974
A coating of soot from the boiler stacks of a nearby plant covered homes, yards and cars on Minor Street. The State Air Pollution Control Board investigated based on complaints from residents.
Area police reported a quiet day, but there was one noteworthy incident at River Hill Laundromat. Mrs. Hazel Cole called the police because she could not get the door of three washing machines open to get her clothes out. Martinsville Detectives Ira E. Ashbury Jr. and Kermit L. Kanode responded to the scene. Kanode got the clothes out by pulling on latches that Mrs. Cole had not noticed. “I used the training I received at home,” Kanode explained later.
25 years ago - 1999
Rives S. Brown Salespeople of the Month for July 1999 were announced: Cathy Spencer and Alice Elmore.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.