Greenwood as It Was

Millennia ago, the advance and final retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet shaped the landscape of Greenwood, exposing and eroding ancient bedrock and depositing untold tons of sand, silt, and gravel. It was a more sudden and violent geological process that shaped Greenwood's early history as a town. A volcanic eruption disrupted the weather in 1816—the year of Greenwood's incorporation—leading to the birth of a village and the death of a man by suicide and casting a shadow over the town's account books for decades.The Year Without a SummerOn the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, halfway around the world from Greenwood, rises a volcano named Tambora. Mount Tambora now measures 9,350 feet, but once stood above 14,000 feet. On April 10, 1815, the mountain exploded. The largest observed eruption in recorded history propelled perhaps 38 cubic miles of ejecta into the atmosphere over the course of several days. In January 1816 a months-old letter "from the island of Java" w…