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VERMONT
comes closer than any New England state to
fulfilling the quintessential image of
small-town Yankee America, with its white
churches and red barns, covered bridges
and clapboard houses, snowy woods and
maple syrup. No city manages a population
of forty thousand (only Burlington
even comes close) and the chief tourist
attraction is Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream
factory in Waterbury. Though rural, the
landscape is not all that agricultural, as
much is covered by mountainous forests
(the state’s name comes from the French
vert mont, or green mountain). The
people who choose to live here hold a lot
in common: hippies and diehard
conservatives, working together to
preserve their environment and lamenting
the advent of yet more ski resorts. One
striking feature of Vermont is the absence
of billboards, but the cutesy “country
stores” which seem to grace every other
crossroads can become tedious.
This was
the last area of New England to be
settled, early in the eighteenth century.
As French explorers worked their way down
from Canada, American colonists began to
spread north; but even as that rivalry
died down, a further antipathy developed
between settlers from New Hampshire and
those from New York. The wealthy New York
merchants who built fine homes along the
Connecticut River valley thought of
themselves as the “River Gods,” but the
hardy settlers of the lakes and mountains
to the west had little time for their
patrician ways. Their leader was the
now-legendary Ethan Allen, who
formed his Green Mountain Boys in
1770, proclaiming that “the gods of the
hills are not the gods of the valley.”
When the Revolutionary War superseded such
conflicts, this all-but-autonomous force
captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British
and helped to win the decisive Battle of
Bennington. For fourteen years from 1777,
Vermont was an independent republic, with
the first constitution in the world
explicitly to forbid slavery and grant
universal (male) suffrage, but once its
boundaries with New York were finally
agreed, it joined the Union in 1791.
Curiously, the two seminal figures of the
Mormon religion were both born in
Vermont shortly thereafter – Joseph Smith
in 1805, and his lieutenant and successor
Brigham Young in 1801.
With the
occasional exception, such as the
extraordinary assortment of Americana at
the Shelburne Museum near
Burlington, there are few specific goals
for tourists. Visitors come in great
numbers during two well-defined seasons:
to see the fall foliage in the
first two weeks of October, and to ski
in the depths of winter, when the resorts
of Killington, and Stowe
further north (home of The Sound of
Music’s Von Trapp family), spring into
life. For the rest of the year, you might
just as well explore any of the state’s
minor roads which take your fancy,
confident that some picturesque village
will be around the next corner. There are
far too many to list; we’ve had to leave
out such prime examples as Peru,
Grafton and Middlebury. Further
information can be picked up from the
official Welcome Center on each interstate
as it enters Vermont.
Click here to go to Vermont
State web site. |
