Hopedale: Commune to Company Town
This summary of Edward Spann’s book on Hopedale was done byNorene Roberts. In addition to being a summary of the book, it’s an excellent summary of Hopedale history.
Error – page 4, 1890s. The total acreage of the town park and Parklands is nowhere near 1,000 acres, or 1/3 of the total area of the town. This mistake has been repeated elsewhere.
Seems odd that while the entry for 1980 mentions “the parent company,” there is no mention of the takeover of Draper in 1967 by Rockwell Corp. (Later, North American Rockwell.) This isn’t an oversight by Norene Roberts. The closest the book comes to mentioning this is the sentence, “In the 1960s the company divested itself of most of its town properties and was acquired by an outside owner, virtually severing its special links to the town.”