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VERMONT
VERMONT comes closer than any New England state
to realising 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 more than forty thousand (only Burlington 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 are a mix of hippies and diehard conservatives
working together to preserve their environment
and lamenting the arrival 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, with French explorers working their way
down from Canada, and American colonists beginning
to spread north. Even as that rivalry died down,
another 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, the now-legendary
Ethan Allen, formed his Green Mountain Boys in
1770, proclaiming that "the gods of the hills
are not the gods of the valley." During the Revolutionary
War, this all-but-autonomous force captured Fort
Ticonderoga from the British and helped to win
the decisive Battle of Bennington. By 1777, Vermont
was an independent republic, with the first constitution
in the world explicitly forbidding slavery and
granting universal (male) suffrage, but once its
boundaries with New York were agreed on, 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
Trapp family), spring into life. For the rest
of the year, you might just as well explore any
of the state's minor roads that 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.
Southern Vermont
Of the two low-key towns at either end of Vermont's
southern corridor – a mere forty miles from east
to west and linked by Hwy-9 – Brattleboro has
the atmosphere of a college town, but no college,
while Bennington has the college but not the atmosphere.
The birthplace of Mormon prophet Brigham Young
is marked by a monument at Whitingham, halfway
between the two
West to Vermont
Much of the western side of New Hampshire, as
you approach the Connecticut River that forms
the entire border with Vermont, amounts to a less
developed – and therefore less touristy – version
of the Lakes Region. For a tranquil day or two
the area around Lake Sunapee can be very appealing.
To
view Vacation Rental Homes in VERMONT click here.
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