Norwich, Vermont, and Hanover, New Hampshire, lie on opposite sides of the Connecticut River.
Many Norwich residents were employed at Dartmouth College and the Mary Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover.
Growth in enrollment in Hanover High School necessitated new construction, which would have been easier to finance with contributions from Norwich.
[2][3][4] Several Dartmouth College faculty members on the Hanover and Norwich school boards (John G. Kemeny, later president of Dartmouth, in Hanover and Donald Kreider[5] and William Ballard in Norwich) sought to solve these problems by creating the Dresden School District.
The dispute ended in 1784 when Vermont, under pressure from George Washington, rescinded its 1781 annexation of Dresden.