At the close of the nineteenth century, Vernon was a rural town of diversified farms with the small chartered city of Rockville, a booming textile-manufacturing center, at its heart. By the close of the twentieth century, the town had become a bedroom suburb within the expanded Hartford metropolitan region. During this time, the textile mills that had sustained Vernon's economy for over a century closed, farmland was subdivided for housing, and the automobile changed old patterns of working, shopping, and socializing. Vernon-Rockville in the Twentieth Century combines unique and previously unpublished images with detailed and compelling text in an informative history of Vernon and Rockville during the turbulent years of the twentieth century. Highlights include photographs of rural Vernon before suburban expansion, the devastation caused by the 1938 hurricane, Rockville before and after urban renewal, and the consolidation of the two separate rural and urban parts of the town into a more unified community with a very different economic base.
Vernon and Historic Rockville chronicles the transformation of a small Connecticut community in the mid-nineteenth century to a bustling manufacturing town until after World War II. Incorporated in 1808, Vernon was born on the eve of the Industrial Revolution in America. With industrialization came urbanization, immigration and in Rockville's case, mechanized experimentation. Innovations in textile manufacturing led to the development of 13 textile mills along the falls of the Hockanum River. Rockville became nationally recognized for its fine wool production. Photographs from the extensive collection of the Vernon Historical Society capture the evolution of social change and the growth of a diverse urban center from rural beginnings. Highlights include the development of community life as a result of the many textile mills located in the northern section of town.
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