Vergennes

"...and the smallest city, Vergennes, boasts that it is the smallest city in the United States." Charles Edward Crane


What's the point of driving from town to town in my Toyota, juggling camera, map and sketchbook? I'm not an historian or economist gathering data, but I'm not just sightseeing either. I think this project is my way of trying to get a grasp on where I live (like realizing that there's much more to learn about a spouse ten years into a marriage--and I did move to Vermont because I fell in love with the place). My way of understanding is to look, draw, paint, gather images. Love, art and road trips are passionate processes with indefinite conclusions.

So, I slow down as I drive into Vergennes on Route 22A, and take in the small factory on the left (looks really old-- empty now or put to a new use?) and the first ornate downtown building on the right. I park, take my sketchbook and stroll down quiet Sunday Main Street.


The downtown of "the smallest city in the U.S." (only in Vermont would that be a bragging right) is in wonderful shape: ornate 19th century facades fastidiously painted in a spectrum of colors, and most buildings occupied with trades and services that make a town useful to locals. Even the laundromat is elegant.

And as often happens in Vermont, I sense ghosts here. This tiny city's heyday was in the 1800's, and today I'm looking at the beautifully maintained remnants of another century's energy, creativity and wealth.

Many towns have a "Mechanic Street", and it never disappoints. I find Vergenne's own version and follow it downhill a few blocks to Falls Park on Otter Creek. And as usual a bet made on rambling pays off, this time with a jaw-dropping view of three powerful waterfalls tumbling from the town past a jumble of old factories. Now I understand why Main Street is so fancy, the library so large, and homes so ornate in Vergennes!

Here's the phantom Vergennes that I feel still alive behind the empty factory facades: This first city in Vermont, established on Otter Creek in 1788, was a vital transportation hub serving stage coaches, river boats and then trains from up and down the East Coast. The falls provided energy for a self-sufficient economy: tanneries, grain mills, creameries and sawmills transformed and traded the bounty from miles of surrounding valley farms, and in return gave rural people the chance for stores-bought goods and cultural life.

I drive back up to Main Street and take a closer look at a pretty little Italianate building perched on a patch of grass at the top of the falls. According to the historical marker, it was built by the owner of the town's machine shop to house a pumping system he invented.


So here is a last ghost: the Vermonter who came off his father's farm with the skills and ambition to harness his city, state and the world itself to a new industrial dynamo. The Vermont town had always been enclosed in a strong circle of self-sufficiency, but it couldn't hold against that force. I'll have to keep driving and looking to try to figure out what vanished when that circle broke, and what remains.

Vergennes facts and figures

Ferrisburgh

The old homestead in Ferrisburgh had served as one of the "underground railway" stations where fugitive slaves were harbored in secret whenever, in escaping, they turned up on their way to Canada...Charles Edward Crane


Ferrisburgh on first pass-through seems to be one of those quick "drive-by" towns. But like the "fly-over" parts of our country, on closer and slower inspection this is a place with a thousand stories. Take, for example, what I learned about the large white building with the cupola on busy Route 7.

A quick glance on your left as you drive by wouldn't tell you much, but this typical New England structure has been through more dramatic shifts of the sacred and secular than the Pantheon in Paris: for seventy years a church, then for six more decades a Grange Hall (a somewhat radical function, as the Grange was a powerful national organization in the 1800's that promoted farmers' social and economic interests). As agriculture waned in more recent years, the building once again changed roles. On the day in 2004 that the municipal committee signed a contract to convert the venerable Grange Hall to Town Hall, an arsonist torched it to the ground. Three years later Ferrisburgh's central edifice rose again, a replica of the original 1800's Congregational Church rebuilt right down to the windowsill trim (though minus the steeple) by a town devoted to its own history.


This spring I need to drive back down Route 7 to Ferrisburgh and visit Rokeby Museum, once the home of the remarkable Robinson family, and like the town hall a place haunted by political and social history. The four generations of Robinsons were skilled millers and farmers, famous authors (Rowland Robinson's novels about the imaginary hill town of "Danvis" made him the Faulkner of Vermont), devoted naturalists and conservationists, Quaker abolitionists who offered Rokeby as a refuge to slaves fleeing north on the Underground Railway, and last but not least, innovative artists (take a look at Rachel Robinson's beautiful postcard prints of New York City, which were the first of their kind.) What is it about New England that fosters whole families of unique individuals?

I also didn't get to take a look at the lake section of Ferrisburgh, although I may have accidentally driven through it on my way to Vergennes. The geography gets a bit confused here as the town of Ferrisburgh spreads out to "the hollow" up north and then runs in fits and starts down Route 7 to Basin Harbor Resort. (Like the nearby specialty food company Dakin Farms, the Resort was founded in the 1800's by a local farm family trying to make some much-needed cash offering a slice of Vermont to flatlander tourists.) Button Bay, Bay State Park, and Little Otter Creek are low-cost recreational alternatives for water-loving Ferrisburghers. And there's always horseback riding on back roads for fun.

Ferrisburgh facts and figures

Middlebury

William Hazlitt Upson dwells in Middlebury. Though professedly a sufferer from ergophobia, Mr. Upson works. He has turned out thirty-seven stories about Alexander Botts, super-salesman of Earthworm tractors...Charles Edward Crane


I'm attracted like a magnet to the more downscale parts of a town, the backstreets lined with faded factories, moldering mills and dusty hardware stores, worn remnants of past decades (or even past centuries). So instead of touring the genteel campus of Middlebury College, I wandered down to Otter Creek to check out what had become of the water-powered industrial buildings of yesteryear.


I found the Vermont State Frog Hollow Craft Center settled in the shell of a old mill, and chatted with some enterprising artists with homes, studios and galleries in downtown buildings. I learned from them that one long brick row on Main Street is named for 19th century philanthropist and art collector Philip Battell. He came from a prominent family of politicians and wealthy eccentrics--his brother Joseph is credited with preserving hundreds of acres of forest (including Camel's Hump) and the Morgan horse breed. One of a long line of idiosyncratic Vermont authors, Joseph wrote the novel "Ellen--or the Whisperings of an Old Pine", a dialogue between a sixteen year-old girl and a wise tree about such matters as the wave theory of sound propagation. The skiable Mt. Ellen at Sugarbush is that imaginary character's namesake.

I strolled down to the park, where this gazebo brought back memories of a summer visit to Vermont fifteen years ago when our family wandered into an evening community concert held here on the green. The small scale of the entertainment, the setting and the town itself felt comfortable and welcoming. (Our vague dream of a permanent family move from Washington, DC to Vermont evolved into a definite plan during this short vacation.)

Looking from the bridge on Merchant's Row towards the old industrial area on Otter Creek, I'm thinking what I've thought so often in Vermont towns: the "selling and buying" areas are intact, but the "making" sections are mostly gone. Some of the buildings that created energy and goods for the community are still standing but their original functions have long vanished. Like so many towns diminished by the disappearance of the industries that drove their creation and growth, Middlebury is now looking to the arts for a new economic engine. Artists, after all, are still in the business of making things.

Middlebury facts and figures

Bristol

An alternate, but nearly all-gravel route from Middlebury to Burlington is by way of the charming Bristol village, past the Lord's Prayer cut on a rock...Charles Edward Crane


I took a sharp right at Route 17 and headed up Stark Mountain, a winding, ear-popping climb past the Appalachian Trail to the summit's microwave tower at Buels Gore (getting out of the car there for a chilly look at the valley far below) and then a fast roll down the back side of Sugarbush into the town of Bristol.


Bristol feels to me like a humble, hidden Green Mountain Shangri-La tucked away at the end of a circuitous climbing path. The downtown rewards the adventurer willing to bypass the speed of the valley roads with an excellent breakfast (herb and spinach egg scramble) at Snap's Restaurant, and some interesting poking around in Main Street shops (though oddball Folkhearts with it's red facade is alas no longer there.)

Shopping in a small town is a pleasure rather than a chore: park your car, grab your market bag, and stroll from store to library to farmer's market, exchanging greetings with neighbors along the way. The news and opinions in a five minute conversation on a town street are like lines moving through a painting, connecting part to part and creating a strong whole.

And there's a place on Main Street in Bristol to sit in the sun and gossip, complain, analyze and laugh with friends on a warm autumn afternoon.


Bristol facts and figures

Moretown

Vermont is so streamlined and beponded that it has (if you count both banks of every stream) uncountable miles of shore line. The tourist in Vermont passes by and over brooks and rivers at every turn...Charles Edward Crane



My first road trip begins on a sunny October day with an amble south down Route 100B. It's easy to miss Moretown, the center of which on first viewing is just a stately town hall and a pronounced bend in the road.

But on closer inspection (afforded by a quick turn about and a second drive back around the bend) the village of Moretown reveals an intimate charm: two dignified churches, a clapboard library, the general store, and a very charming gazebo.


The main fact of Moretown is the narrow, boulder-strewn Mad River, seen as just a glimpse from the car as it crisscrosses the highway but central to the development and history of the town. During the 1800's the Mad River provided the productive energy for lumber and grist mills, power plants and creameries. Then one rainy November day in 1927 the river flooded and brought to Moretown and the rest of the valley sudden death and destruction.

But today the Mad River is placid, and I just want to stop the car and climb a big rock on the bank, and take a long look into quiet water.

Moretown Facts and figures