1961

POPULATION:  14,257

HOUSES:  3,467

• Construction is completed on the Little League baseball field at Memorial Pond Park (Central Field, now Joe Morgan Field).  A full size baseball diamond is also built at Turco Field
• Town garage for housing DPW equipment is constructed on Washington Street.
• Walpole Conservation Commission is established.

 BUSINESS

• Hollywood Lanes opens at the corners of Route 1 and 27 (current Walmart location)
• Fernandes Supermarket opens on Main Street (current 1A Marketplace)
• The second building in the Edgewood Plaza opens on Main Street, home to several stores, and adjacent to newly opened "Dixon's 5 and 10 Cent Store" (current Conrad's Restaurant location)

Fernandes Supermarket construction completed in 1961

The second of three new buildings in "Edgewood Plaza" on Main Street

SCHOOLS

• East Junior High School opens on Washington Street
• Historical Note:  The school is purposely built on the east side of town instead of a more central location, in anticipation of a second junior high school being built on the west side of town in accordance with the town's Master Plan developed in the mid-1950s
• First principal is long time Walpole school administrator Leonard Downs 

• Walpole High School
• A record 62% of Walpole High School graduates plan to attend college
• School adds foreign language laboratory
• Francis Foley hired as math teacher