Readers were very interactive and had a lot to say in March on The Valley Reporter’s social media. Between March 4 and 31, The Valley Reporter had 1,496,010 post views on Facebook, along with hundreds and hundreds of comments.
On Saturday, March 28, The Valley Reporter posted a picture from Erica Strom of a black Jeep in the green waters of the Mad River by Bridge Street in Waitsfield. That post got 278,671 views, while posts later that day of the No Kings Rally in Waitsfield had 140,945 views.
A post of a car that crashed into the ground floor of the Larrow House in Waitsfield Village on March 31 received 40,000 views in less than 24 hours. Both of those posts, car in river and car in building, generated a lot of comments, many questioning the town’s parking policies, whether there was a Bermuda Triangle effect in the village, and one person who wrote this:
“The Historic Waitsfield Vehicular Olympic Games.
This winter we had the long jump.
Last weekend was the swimming event.
Photo by Erica Stroem
And today was the shot put.”
Photo by Reese Laliberte
On March 20, The Valley Reporter shared a Roxbury Gap Stat post of a white VW station wagon sliding slowly sideways down the Roxbury Gap while emergency vehicles were above and below that stretch of the road. Because that post originated from another page, views were not recorded on the VR page. Roxbury Gap Stat reported that the post garnered 192,000 views.
Earlier this month, The Valley Reporter was out and about early one Sunday morning taking pictures of ice jamming up in Waitsfield by the Covered Bridge and in Moretown by Spillway Road and Bridge Road.
Those March 8 pictures were shared on Facebook and other social media and generated a lot of views, comments, and shares. Other local photographers, including John Williams, Warren and Andy Yager, Fayston began sharing pics as well.
The ice jam in Waitsfield led to flooding in the Bridge Street Marketplace parking lot and the river re-routed itself – running through the parking lot and back into the river. It did the same thing in Moretown, rerouted itself to a channel to the east of the river, and re-entered the river beyond the Bridge Road bridge.
The Valley Reporter tabulated some of the responses to the pictures and videos and here’s how that looked:
- The Valley Reporter’s original video of ice-jammed upstream of Covered Bridge 190,160 views
- The Valley Reporter video of a huge slab of ice starting to move 423,988 views
- Andy Yager drone video of Waitsfield Covered Bridge 61,588 views
- Andy Yager drone video of Bridge Road 35,247 views
- John Williams picture of a couple seated at a bistro table by the river with coffee 21,656 views
And while that was fun, the comments from people on all of the posts throughout the day and later into the week were great, with people offering historical perspectives, predictable solutions (dredge the river and or use dynamite to blow up the ice dam), and there were a few comments that deserved a response.
Several people wanted to know the time, date, and location of the images and videos. Times and dates of posting are visible on social media, but locations were not always given. Some posts said Waitsfield or Bridge Street or Moretown, etc. This led readers and commenters to ask where on the planet Waitsfield is, where the Mad River is, etc. One person said that there could be dozens of Waitsfields in the United States. That led to a Google search which revealed there were not dozens of towns with that name. In fact, Waitsfield, Vermont, chartered in 1792, is the single incorporated town with that name in the country.
The Mad River, however, is not so unique. There are six distinct Mad Rivers in the US.
Here are the primary Mad Rivers in the US:
- California: A 100-mile-long river in Trinity and Humboldt counties.
- Connecticut: Located in New Haven County.
- Maine/New Hampshire: A 1.4-mile-long mountain brook on the Maine-New Hampshire border, acting as a tributary to the Cold River.
- New Hampshire: A tributary of the Pemigewasset River in Grafton County.
- Ohio: A 60-mile-long river in southwestern Ohio.
- Vermont: A tributary of the Winooski River that flows through the Mad River Valley.
- Washington: A tributary of the Entiat River.
To read more comments and see the pics, visit https://www.facebook.com/TheValleyReporter/ and scroll down.
