Each year in Holyoke, Highland Hardware and Bike Shop and Mansir Printing collaborate on printing a calendar illustrated with a selection of the historic images from the collection of Harry Craven, the owner of Highland Hardware. Profits are donated to a local charity.
"We try to do donate to a charity that has some connection to kids," says Craven. This year all funds collected will be donated to the Trustees of Reservations to support a mural project at their Dinosaur Footprints property.
As reported last month in the Advocate ("The Art of William Sillin," Dec. 10, 2009), local artist William Sillin was hired to design the mural, which is shown on the cover of the calendar, and develop a strategy for employing the help of volunteer assistants to cover the wall, which is approximately 80 feet long and 15 feet high.
Dinosaur Footprints is located along the Connecticut River just off Rte. 5 in Holyoke. The property features a large sedimentary rock slab with the impressions of many different types of trace fossils—at least four kinds of dinosaurs, plants, ripple marks and raindrops—all more than 190 million years old.
"Brought first to public attention in the 1860s by Amherst College professor Edward Hitchcock and then rediscovered during the construction of Route 5 in 1935, the tracks are arguably the most accessible in the state," says Dinosaur Footprints Superintendent Josh Knox. Visitors can walk on the slabs and step directly in the footprints of the prehistoric creatures.
The Trustees of Reservations is an independent Massachusetts-based non-profit devoted to celebrating and protecting historic and beautiful locations across the state.
Calendars are on sale now at the store at 917 Hampden Street, Holyoke for a minimum $5 donation, and at The Trustees of Reservations regional office at 193 High Street, Holyoke.
