6 minute read
RETRO VT | GREEN MOUNTAIN TRIVIA
GREEN MOUNTAIN TRIVIA
How well do you know the history of the Green Mountains? Take the quiz.
You ski or ride them all winter. You hike them in the summer. But how well do you know the history of Vermont’s Green Mountains? While they may appear pristine, the forests and the summits have been the sites of hotels, roads and other proposed developments. See how many of these true/false statements you get right.
1. The Green Mountains are relatively new mountains.
The Green Mountains were formed 400 to 500 million years ago and are part of the Appalachian range which runs from Newfoundland south to central Alabama. Compare that with the Rockies, which were formed 35 to 80 million years ago. In fact, Vermont is also home to the oldest reef in the world, at least one built by a community of organisms. The Chazy Reef, in the Champlain Islands, was formed by sea creatures in the Southern Hemisphere over 500 million years ago. The shifting tectonic plates that helped shape the Greens also moved the reef north to where it is now at Vermont’s Isle La Motte in Lake Champlain. FALSE
2. There were once summit hotels atop several of the Green Mountains.
In the late 1800s, hotels were built at or near the summits of some of Vermont’s most prominent peaks, including Mount Mansfield, Killington and Camel’s Hump. Guests arrived by carriage or horse.
In 1857, William Henry Harrison Bingham built The Summit House near the Nose of Mount Mansfield as a hotel to attract summer visitors. It opened with 70 rooms, but no bar, though guests would often bring their own libations. Summer guests — who included Ralph Waldo Emerson and other luminaries — would either hike up or would be driven up the Toll Road by carriage or car. Many would use the hotel as a base for exploring Mount Mansfield and the surrounding mountains. That hotel was closed in 1957 and later destroyed.
In 1879, a carriage road was built to the summit of Killington and a year later a hotel opened at the peak. The hotel expanded and plans called for an electric railway up the mountain. But by 1907, that hotel closed.
In 1859, a small inn or hotel went up on Camel’s Hump, about 0.3 miles below the summit. Sam Ridley built The Green Mountain House and travelers would go as far up the mountain as they could by carriage before switching to horseback to reach the hotel. It was destroyed by fire in 1875. TRUE.
3. There is currently a monastery operating on one of Vermont mountains.
The only Carthusian monastery in the U.S. (and one of just 25 worldwide) sits on the flanks of Mount Equinox, the highest peak in the Taconic Range, near Manchester. In the 1930s, inventor Dr. Joseph Davidson set out to buy much of the land on the mountain. He built himself a stunning home and in 1940 created the paved 5.2-mile toll road to the 3,848-foot summit.
Dr. Davidson had, at one time, envisioned a ski resort atop the mountain but in the 1960s, he donated land to the Carthusian monks to build a monastery, set far from the road. The monastery is now the permanent home to monks who spend their days in silence and prayer, eat no meat and only bread and water on Fridays, and live secluded from the world. Flags representing the national origins of the monks fly at the entrance to Skyline Drive. In 2012, an old inn was torn down near the summit to create the St. Bruno Scenic Viewing Center. TRUE.
4. The Long Trail is the oldest long-distance hiking
trail in the United States. In 1908, an assistant principal at Vermont Academy in Saxton’s River began taking students on long hikes in the southern Greens. Legend has it he became frustrated that there were so few hiking trails. At the time, there were about 40 trails that led to the mountain summits but none
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the luminaries who checked into The Summit House on Mount Mansfield in the late 1800s (above). Had he lived longer, he might have also hiked The Long Trail (below).
that connected them. That school principal, James P. Taylor, gathered about two dozen people in Burlington in 1910 to found the Green Mountain Club and lay out a plan for a “long trail.”
In October 1910, Craig Burt, the owner of the Stowe Lumber Company, and a lawyer named Clarence Cowles began scouting the first section, which would run from Mount Mansfield south to Nebraska Notch where Taylor Lodge was built. A Taylor Lodge lean-to still greets hikers there.
The first Long Trail Guide was published in 1917. The guide recommended men wear “ordinary height shoes with hobnails, felt hat, ‘generous sized’ silk bandana, inch-wide leather belt with cup attached, wool underwear, wool shirt and stout wool trousers.” For women, bloomers and high-laced boots with “Hungarian nails,” were suggested. Volunteers began to build the trail in sections.
By 1930, the 270 miles of trail and 44 sleeping shelters were completed. The route now connects many of the major ski areas in the state, from Jay Peak to Stratton. The trail went on to inspire Benton McKaye’s vision for the Appalachian Trail. TRUE.
5. A highway was once proposed that would run along the spine of the Green Mountains.
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized a $50,000, tenmonth study to consider the feasibility of building a scenic highway along the spine of the Green Mountains. The Green Mountain Parkway would run 260 miles, the length of the state and be modeled after the Blue Ridge Parkway. Building it would provide work for the nearly 16,000 unemployed Vermonters during the Depression.
But to make it a reality, the state would have had to pay $500,000 to secure land rights and create a national park. In December 1935, a special session of the Vermont legislature approved the project. On the following town meeting day, Vermonters were asked to vote on an effective date of April 1, 1936 or April 1, 1941. They voted to push the project off to 1941 by an 11,421 margin—42,318 to 30,897. In 1937 the legislature repealed the act and the Parkway was nixed for good. TRUE.
One of the early shelters built along the Long Trail, the Bolton Cabin still stands today and can be reserved through the Green Mountain Club. The proposed Gren Mountain Parkway would have run right through Killington, below. 6. Vermont’s ski areas own most of the land they operate on.
Vermont was one of the first states to lease public land to ski areas. In the 1950s and ‘60s Perry Merrill, then commissioner of what is now Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation, saw such leases as means to support the maintenance of Vermont’s parks and encourage tourism.
The state currently leases land to Jay Peak Resort, Burke Mountain Ski Area, Smugglers’ Notch Ski Area, Stowe Mountain Resort, Killington Ski Area, Okemo Mountain Resort, and Bromley Mountain Ski Area. Annual revenue is about $2.5 million and helps make up a third of the department’s operating budget.
The leases prohibit the development of residential units on state land and there’s a stringent review process for any development. In addition, the Green Mountain National Forest issues permits that allow Sugarbush, Middlebury Snow Bowl, Bromley, Stratton, and Mount Snow to operate on federal land. The GMNF was also the first National Forest to sanction glading for backcountry skiing, which it did in Brandon Gap and Rochester.
One important piece of the Green Mountains belongs to the University of Vermont: the 400-acre ridgeline on the summit of Mount Mansfield is one of three mountains in the state where the alpine tundra survived the Ice Age, and the university has long held the land for scientific studies. FALSE. n
