street what i believe to be the most important street in richmond in not only connects the two sides of richmond to one another but it's also the economic center of the town with most of the businesses in the center of richmond situated on it bridge street also connects to and provides easy access to the round church the most important structure and historical landmark in the entire town the history of richmond includes multiple fires and floods in certain cases destroying entire businesses bridges and blocks of residences throughout all these hardships the town of richmond and the residents have survived and even thrived throughout its long history i think it isn't too much of a stretch to say that bridge street is the heart of richmond both yesteryear and today richmond has had a long and prosperous history dating back to october of seventeen ninety four when the vermont legislature passed an act that took parts of jericho ball and huntington and williston to become richmond throughout that history bridge street has been there to provide a lifeline for the town and to bring prosperity to the town whether the center piece by the round church or by the railroad the buildings on bridge street have changed a lot over the many years of bridge street's existence from the school to the movies across the street where cumberland farms is there was a meat market then as you come down the street they was rich from cash to market for the bicycle shop is there was a little quick stall he sold candy bars and sold a  as you continue down the street here this over here was the move sealed rain rain down for the town center is now that used to be the elementary school and the high school and that's where i went to high school that was that was a church at one time and it was set at the for a number of years mile shorter and the only thing it we had per sports was baseball i played baseball  most of the boys my age group their father's own farms and they had to get home to do the chores my father had the store when i was going up my school so didn't work in there but i still well you know my when my dad was in the store refrigeration back then was al from the service they started you could get a nice cream cone because they had a small freezer one of the first ones that and i can always remember a few changes and bridge street have also experienced their fair share of hardships over their long history the town has commonly experienced a devastating fires and floods which took brought upon hard times for the residents of richmond but richmond always rebuild stronger than before insisted the fires which have greatly affected bridge street and the business district excel include the eight hundred seventy fire the fire in eight hundred ninety one and the most destructive fire in one thousand nine hundred eighty which took how much of the business district the proximity was there when you see river has caused devastating flood often as a product of a large storm system like irene was another notable flood was the famous flood of one nine hundred twenty seven both these floods cut off access to the other side of the new floodwaters were about three inches below the house where coming out my grandfather was starting to build a little shelter on top of the hill for people living there house two houses across the road one of them was chicken house with two hundred fifty chickens and for some reason it was never explained away all those people came towards our house rather than the time that they were trapped there which was about three days and the house a survivor over where i have a foundation across from our house survived and stood for a while but no one ever lived if the area around the railroad is the center of business on bridge street there around church is the center of community it wasn't always that way before the railroad came the center of business was located by the round church friend thomas gives us more information families and so it was a church and a meeting house for a while and then the congregation was in universals build their own churches and the other three denominate didn't have enough members keep it going so for the next hundred sixty years it was the meeting house for the for the town town meeting will take place here in a special meeting and then in the early seventies  uninhabitable so they moved town meeting up to middle school and then a historical society was formed in which is forty years old this year and they raise the funds to for tourists from mid may until mid october while of the it was built around church was built here because they were looking around for land and it took a couple years but eventually several individuals donated the land here and this at the time was the center of richmond and there was more commerce here than you been a in addition to need a church in claremont who hampshire that was around and so they thought he might have been influenced by that other sort of legends are that your played a very important role in the life of the town in the beginning it was the center of the town provides a place for meetings since then i think it's it's kind of a symbol of richmond  look on many documents people's brochures they use the church because it's so unique and also place now since the historical society we bought two homes in as we paid off their mortgage we demolished children that created the sliding hill so i think some people get it as this is the voice where this is lighting i think it's is a feeling of community when you look at the church which is you know one of the things that makes richmond a great place to live is that it's a community perhaps the most important aspect of bridge street is how it unites people the connection it forms with people that keeps them anchored to richmond gary brasseries family has lived on bridge sheet for many generations and gives us a good idea of what it's like to across the street at the time and he had another house that's kind of between a house and the garage that he was living in and so he's building a second house not a lot for his his in laws and  when the flood came it kind of destroyed the house he was living in and moved it out of the street kind of tipped it over a little bit and he did he took that want to par and my so my great grandparents lived in this house really only during the flood and maybe a little bit after but then they didn't really the whole neighborhood kind of got destroyed in the flood and they didn't want to be here so they moved out and my my grandfather finished the house and he was in the meantime he had bought a house on church street a duplex it's like the third house on the you count the ranch house and he lived there while he was finishing it and he wanted to move back here but my grandmother didn't want to move back at least for quite a while but during the war he managed to convince her and they sold  so i say my kids are fifth generation but generation by probably a few months really because my great grandparents didn't hear that back in the seventies well when i grew up here our house in the garage our properties ended right at the garage so we had like a sort of an acre and i've been really lucky over the years to add to that and i think it's like nine different thought it was really i'm not ever going to leave richmond so i don't know why looking outside of richmond and when i grew up this farm that we own the bottom land of now was just such a great place to hade the fields here and i remember one day coming home for lunch because at that time school was at the town center and lunch lunch was long enough that i could actually walk home eat lunch and last back  school lunches now think fifteen minutes or so and i remember coming home and made barney was haying right where our little soccer field is with his horses and you know he said a jump on so you know i got to ride around the whole ten and we would go back really all the neighborhood kids you know you could be fifteen kids on the hay wagon this running back to the barn and it was so great so i was from that i've always wanted to own whatever i could the farm so i got does all but the preston in the bushies are really good turning down offers to split it up so there's still quite a bit of the final four years ago my son  college and he and a couple of his friends came to us and said they wanted to try to run a vegetable farm so i took one of the bays of the garage they were living up in that house on the corner and i did it over into a farm store and since it's been pretty successful we definitely don't get rich off at least the way we're doing it but we have a c s a which stands for communities where agriculture and the way it works is that they keep track of of everything and sell this he or she has a shot of that this week we're having a farm camp which is run by another son of mine lincoln and so get back to the farms were so much fun for the farm for three years and i think because they jumped into it really hard and fast as soon as they graduated they're all d it's grown a lot when i was a kid for several years like when i was fourteen i think there was fourteen hundred people and fifteen people so we're now almost three times the population but it still a very important aspect of bridge street has always been its strong ties with business many businesses have chosen to take root on bridge street for many reasons my komo owner of the richmond market and beverage gives us some insight the store up on the corner and route two was built many many years ago it's been a it's been a store for a long long time i don't really know the complete history of it but it had been run by different owners along the way and i purchased it in two thousand  in early two thousand and five we had an accident there when we were rebuilding and part of the building fell over so it was closed for about six months and then i ran that for a few a few months after and then we decided to build a bigger store and that was in two thousand and nine and ten that we built the larger store and result relocated we also purchased a beverage store that was located on bridge street and we relocated that down in our new space what's changed here on bridge bridge street is i would say we went through a bridge reconstruction so that was a big that was a big deal you know we were all sort of without a bridge for a while and i think traffic pattern has changed on bridge street a lot since we built a store further down bri corner i would say that traffic on a bridge street has increased quite a quite a bit our customer account at the new store versus the old store is about three times higher so i'm going assume that that's probably a lot of that out of traffic coming down bridge street the importance of having a business in richmond was i grew up in burlington and i had been looking for a store for about a year or so and we visited a lot of stores all around vermont and we just decided that richmond had the right feel and had the right sense of community and i really wanted to own a store that was community based and not transient traffic based meaning i didn't really want to service people just driving by on route on route two and i never see again i really wanted to be part of the community and i just felt that richmond had that so that's why we made our choice for richmond the importance of having a community store in a community i feel it's really hard to have a community without a community store i mean in order to have a real strong combe community and not have it just be a place where people sleep is you have to have some services and that she you know you have to have a stores and you have to have different things and i think that's sort of what ties the community together it having the store here keeps people closer they don't they don't out of richmond to go off and to other places so it just keeps that the community tight knit and it's a meeting place it's a it's a place where people gather and and see each other and i just think it's it's very difficult to have a have a  community without having and without having a store major events that affected us you know the bridge i think you know for richmond that was a major event that had that had a little bit of effect on us the ir ene flood affected us a little bit probably some negative some positive i mean poor people really came in and stocked up on on extra items that probably helped negative because you know we had some neighbors right here close to us that really lost everything and probably that changed their shopping habits a little bit but overall we haven't we've been lucky in richmond we haven't had a i haven't noticed anything that's really you know up affected us in any sort of negative or a really positive way we've been sort of sheltered so it's been good hopefully this is shown you the huge importance of bridge street and the life of the town of richmond it connects people and businesses has an unbelievable history it supports the economic and communal center of the town simultaneously is a fantastic place to own a home maybe even one that supports multiple generations of your family as experience hardship and always been rebuilt stronger than ever bridge street is an amazing street and it will be for many more years to come bring the same prosperity it has brought to generations and generations of people