Sixty years ago, the entire town was moved 8km to the west due to the expansion of the Hume Weir.

Old Tallangatta, was razed and drowned, including the 52-bedroom Tallangatta Hotel, built in 1888, plus banks, hairdressers, grocers, a shire hall, the cinema and dress shops.

More than 100 houses were moved to new Tallangatta, while 37 new brick houses and most business and civic buildings were rebuilt in a neat, geometric 1950s style. These included  the two pubs, court house, police station, Memorial Hall and three churches.

It is this frozen in time factor that led the National Trust of Victoria to announce Tallangatta as its second ever notable town.

The first, named 50 years ago, was gold rush era Maldon, near Castlemaine.

The honour coincides with the 60th anniversary of the official opening of the "new" Tallangatta - to be marked on Saturday with the opening of a new library and community centre.

Ray Crispin will lead a walking tour and there will be an exhibition at the Memorial Hall. 

Paul Roser, acting chief executive of the National Trust of Victoria, which is also turning 60, said the recognition of the mid-century planning and design of Tallangatta "shows how ideas about heritage have evolved along with the National Trust".

"While Maldon reflects our 19th-century history, Tallangatta tells the story of a 19th-century country town that was moved not only physically, but culturally, into a new era of modernity."

Mr Crispin, 73, was 13 and lived with his father, Jack, and stepmother Dorrie when their early 1900s weatherboard was jacked up and moved by truck to the new town, in October 1955.

For the town's children, "it was pretty exciting times - it was all a bit of an adventure".

Even Ray's school was moved, and for the first time his house would have a bathroom and an indoor sewered toilet. Ray and a friend earned two pounds a week after school crawling under the houses and digging stump holes.  "We were like little slaves." 

But then, a week after their house move, Ray's  father died of a heart attack in their new bathroom. Mr Crispin knew at least five other  men who also died, believed to be from the stress of the massive relocation.

Mr Crispin, who owns a petrol station and runs a private museum, said the notable town tag could lure more tourists to "the town that moved".

Even he is still amazed at what was achieved.

"To relocate a whole town, and rebuild a whole new shopping centre, shift all the houses to a new site, it was a one-off type of thing and it'll never happen again - the sheer cost would be astronomical,” Mr Crispin said.