Picture Vernon: Big Balloons Over Windermere

VERNON, CT — The latest installment of the Picture Vernon series takes us back to The Great War.

In 1917, Francis and William Maxwell opened a balloon school in the skies over the Hockanum Mill property in the Windermere section of Vernon and Ellington. Soldiers were trained there to work the observation balloons used in World War I.

Several test flights were successful in the area.

The school closed at the end of the war, according to the Vernon Historical Society.