A Look Back, Oct. 17

50 Years Ago

■Look Park trustees are anticipating the purchase of 12 additional acres. The land is being offered to the trustees by John Maroney of 447 Bridge Road. The land is bounded by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad bed and Arch Street, adjacent to Look Park.

■Northampton Junior College has sold its first property since the college was forced to close in July. A seven-room apartment building on 30 to 42 Hampton Avenue was sold for $44,000 to Edward P. Goll, Inc., a contractor. The Gazette has also learned there may be a possible purchase of the former Rahar’s Inn property on Old South Street.

25 Years Ago

■Standing under the golden leaves of a maple tree on the Amherst Town Common, more than 300 people Thursday night mourned the killing of a gay man nearly a continent away. They held a candlelight vigil to honor 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, who was beaten, tied to a fencepost and left to die in Wyoming last weekend.

■A project to build new bathrooms and a changing facility is underway at Look Park, near where a new water play area will open next spring. The $300,000 project will give the park something missing since 1992, when its pool closed — a place to cool off in the water.

10 Years Ago

■A ban on outdoor activities prompted by the high risk in Amherst for Eastern Equine Encephalitis will be lifted starting Friday evening. The Board of Health this week determined that although a hard frost has not yet occurred, mosquitoes are unlikely to be active when temperatures fall below 50 degrees in the evening.

■The Valley Community Development Corp. is eyeing the site of a former lumberyard on Pleasant Street downtown for development of 60 units of affordable housing. The nonprofit recently received a $1.1 million loan from the Community Economic Development Assistance Corp. to help it acquire the Northampton Lumber property at 256 Pleasant St.