At a time when we’re inundated 24×7 with digital marketing and messaging, it’s fun to flip the calendar back 60+ years to some equivalent pre-digital promotions for regattas at the Sherwood Inn and Lake Champlain ferries (including the Essex-Charlotte ferry.) Today’s post highlights a few quotidian artifacts that offer a bridge into an earlier time.
The Essex Regatta, a still legendary Sherwood Inn event in the 1950s and 1960s, is the heralded summer celebration featured in the first two promotional posters.
Open to a wide range of water sporting contestants and spectators, I’ve been the fortunate audience to several area residents who’ve been gracious rniugh to share recollections with me.
I imagine that the ferry posters may have been used during the summer months to alert motorists that ferry boats has been reopened for the season.
Although this vintage artifact from the Essex-Charlotte ferry crossing has been a personal favorite given the omnipresent sounds and sights of the ferry boat during our years at Rosslyn, the second ferry poster is deliciously vintage. From font to graphic design (and even colors) this poster seems likely to have been used during the 2969s and 1960s.
But even more intriguing than the colors and graphic design, it is the idea that “scenic line” might’ve been considered a reasonable way to distinguish one ferry crossing from another. After all, this certainly describes *ALL* of the fairy crossings!
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