A Look Back, March 27

50 Years Ago

■The Northampton Historical Commission wants to avoid generating a “Disneyland” type of atmosphere of false nostalgia in its proposal to create a national historic district in the downtown area, commission chair C. Keith Wilbur said yesterday. The commission is seeking to place a portion of the downtown area on the federal National Register of Historic Places.

■“Parade of Progress” is the theme of a three-day trade and business exposition planned for Hampshire County in late April in the former McCallum’s Department Store. Sponsored by the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, the trade show is designed to “generate sales and stimulate dollars,” according to the executive director of the chamber, Paul Walker.

25 Years Ago

■Hall monitors have been hired for Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School and Northampton High School to make it tougher for students to smoke on school property. The Smith Vocational monitor is the first at the school, but the NHS monitor replaces one that was moved to the former Florence Grammar School.

■The Betty Allen Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution will celebrate three young people by giving them its annual Good Citizens Award on Tuesday. The winners are Kendra A. Kaczenski, a senior at the Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, Robert P. Massey, a senior at Hopkins Academy, and Caitlyn Shea, a senior at Northampton High School.

10 Years Ago

■The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association has received a $300,000 grant to expand its online regional dinosaur heritage project. The money from the National Endowment for the Humanities will be used to expand the association’s “Impressions from a Lost World” project — about the Connecticut River Valley’s famous fossilized dinosaur tracks.

■This has been a hard winter for many, not only because of historically cold temperatures, but also because they’ve seen electric bills shoot through the roof. The heart of the problem is the generation rate or supply rate, that represents local utilities’ pass-through cost for the power they distribute to customers.