Twenty years ago — 1998

The Pomfret Town Board has designated itself as lead agency for the $5.5 million Soulstice Rural Retreat and Conference Center at Fredonia-Stockton and Osborne roads. The town board has also been asked to issue a special use permit for the 24,000-square-foot project which includes a nine-hole championship caliber golf course, meeting and banquet facilities, a health complex, lodging rooms and 8 to 10 residential building lots of two acres each. All of the investors in the project are from Chautauqua County.

Thirty years ago — 1988

Opening today in time to make Christmas shopping more convenient for area residents, is a collection of six new stores called “The Atrium.” The mini-mall of stores, collected in the converted Jupiter building on Central Avenue in Dunkirk, features a newsstand, restaurant, a maternity and child’s wear shop, a carpet store, a women’s accessory store and a second branch of the Tower Gift Shop in Fredonia. Trying to keep people in Dunkirk to do their shopping is the hoped for benefit of the complex.

Forty years ago — 1978

Acting on a provision made by the state Board of Regents, the Dunkirk Board of Education voted to allow credit for high school students who attend religious instruction classes on nights and weekends. Under the optional program, students can now received up to one half unit credit per year for successful completion of a religious education program. In essence, a Dunkirk High School student can now get credit for attending religious instruction classes at Cardinal Mindszenty High School.

Fifty years ago — 1968

The First Methodist and First Presbyterian churches of Silver Creek will decide on Sunday, Dec. 8, whether or not to merge into one congregation. The Joint Committee on Church Union, established last March, decided this week to put the proposal to a vote at separate meetings. The purpose of the proposal is to provide a more effective and far-reaching ministry, both to the members and to the community.