Crews from the Pelton Falls Highway Division repaint the handrail of the Commonwealth Demonstration Staircase every third April, under a maintenance order that appears to have renewed itself without interruption since 1938. The staircase itself — twenty-two granite steps, WPA-stamped, completed in 1936 to connect Cottage Street with the then-considerably-higher Prospect Street — now begins and ends at the same elevation, both streets having been regraded level at some point the town's records describe only as "subsequent." Visitors ascend eleven steps, cross a short landing, and descend eleven steps to the grade they started from, a round trip the bronze plaque still characterizes as "a permanent improvement." What the file needs is the regrading project itself: which department flattened Prospect Street, when, and whether anyone informed the crew that repaints the rail. The clerk who reportedly holds the Grade Equalization folder works Tuesdays.