Mount Snow Valley History

Delve into historic sites, cultural centers and museums offering stories and artifacts spanning hundreds of years. Here’s a bit of history from the towns of Dover, Wilmington and Whitingham to whet your appetite.

Dover

Mount Snow Dover was first settled by Captain Abner Perry in 1779. The earliest part of town was on the eastern side of Dover hill with scattered hilltop farms. On Dover Hill, the “little red schoolhouse” and other houses along that road date back to the 1790s and are now the oldest structures in town. Spurred by a need for lumber for farm buildings, Vermont’s early subsistence farmers built a sawmill in 1797 around which the town of East Dover grew.

Following the North Branch of the Deerfield River, West Dover village was similarly developed and stands as one of Vermont’s most splendid examples of homogenous historic districts. Consisting of just over 20 buildings dating from 1805 to 1885, the entire district was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The village showcases a number of well-preserved buildings. The visual center of town, the West Dover Inn (c. 1846), with its wide columned porches, remains an unspoiled example of vernacular Greek Revival architecture, and is the area’s oldest continuously operating hostelry. Next door, the West Dover congregational Church was built as a Meeting House “in the modern style” in 1858 with money raised by selling pews at auction. The adjacent Dover Town offices was the district #6 schoolhouse erected in 1857. Across the street, the Harris House (c. 1820), one of the oldest houses in the village, is now home to the Dover Historical Society.

The Handle Road in West Dover represents a most unique summer colony in Vermont. Bostonians and New Yorkers began buying up old farms in 1858 and devoted great energy to restoring them to their original condition. Several of these houses remain in the holding of these original summer families.

Separated geographically by “challenging” terrain, East and West Dover developed separate identities over the years. The development of Mt. Pisgah into the Mount Snow Ski Resort in 1954 has fueled the West Dover area’s growth as a world-class vacation destination, while East Dover has maintained its quieter rural appeal. Together with their fine inns, restaurants, natural attractions and bucolic scenery, they provide a definitive Vermont experience. Visit the Town’s website at www.doververmont.org.

Wilmington

In 1750, Benning Wentworth, Lt. Governor of Massachusetts, was given “The Grants” of New Hampshire and New Connecticut (Vermont). This land between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers was wild and unsettled. Wentworth was pressured by his political peers to sell off the land and pay them royalties, with the trees going to the British Navy.

Wilmington was the third parcel (“land grant”) sold by Wentworth not once but twice…in 1751 and again in 1761. There were contests between the arriving Connecticut settlers and the New York Albany County Sheriff, which led to the formation of “The Green Mountain Boys” when Sheriff Tenecht said of Ethan Allen, “I’ll chase those boys back into those damn Green Mountains.” A second surge of settlement took place in the 1830s with the introduction of water power saw mills on the river and the town began its move off Lisle Hill to the present historical district. By the late 1800s, a third surge of travelers was arriving by rail. That lasted until the late 1920s, when the railroad finally succumbed to the harsh weather and hard economic times. The current wealth of visitors began in the 1930s with the dedication of “The Molly Stark Trail” (Rt. 9) and car traffic replaced the train.

Walk in any direction from the stoplight in the village of Wilmington and you’ll come upon superb examples of 18th and 19th century construction. In as many as eight distinct architectural styles — from Late Colonial (1750-1788) to Colonial Revival (1880-1900), the architecture is so well preserved that the major part of the village has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Typical of the architectural gems are Crafts Inn, the massive wood-frame hotel on West Main Street and the adjacent Memorial Hall. These Late Shingle-Style structures, built in 1902, are the work of America’s foremost architect of the time, Stanford White. With its long, sweeping porches, a large central gambrel roof and heavy cedar shingles, Shingle-Style architecture was popular in Newport, Rhode Island, and other wealthy enclaves as the first homegrown architectural style. Crafts Inn (formerly Child’s Tavern) catered to summer tourists who flocked to Wilmington when the railroad finally reached town in 1891. Among the famous guests who left their names in the register were President Taft and Admiral Perry. (After his architectural triumph in Wilmington, Stanford White became even more celebrated when jealous husband, Harry Thaw, killed him in 1906. This led to a sensational society trial and the best-selling book and movie called “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.”)

The town library is a jewel of a red brick building in the Classical Revival style. Its most striking feature is the front entrance, a classic portal with Ionic columns and a heavy oak paneled door topped by a fanned window and guarded by a sculpted Union soldier on the front lawn. At the edge of the street stands a charming granite fountain, which, in times gone by, quenched passersby on the sidewalk side and horses on the street side. The stone carries the nostalgic legend, “How Dear to My Heart are the Scenes of My Childhood.” One of America’s most popular authors of the time lived just across the road. Clarence Budington Kelland, though not well remembered today, became the nation’s highest paid writer with his stories about Scattergood Baines (a crafty Vermonter based on a real-life Wilmington resident). Kelland wrote hundreds of books—adventures, westerns, mysteries—as well as stories for movie scripts and short stories that ran in the Saturday Evening Post and Colliers during the 20s, 30s and 40s.

The oldest village building is the 1760 Norton House, a well-preserved Colonial Cape Style structure on the west end of town. This timber-frame house was dragged to its present site by oxen in the 1830s, about the same time the entire village of Wilmington was moved to its present site from its original hilltop location one-half mile to the north.

A stroll through the Village of Wilmington provides a visual journey back in time, with many houses restored and some yet to be. A shoppers Mecca of privately owned specialty shops, restaurants and a pub, Wilmington has such an attraction of events, activities, demonstrations, shopping and dining that visitors are encouraged to use the parking areas on E. Main Street and walk to the Historic District (W. Main Street)

Whitingham

Granted to Nathan Whiting and twelve others. It was the birthplace of Brigham Young, Mormon leader and founder of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The village of Whitingham, on Sadawga Lake, was originally known as Sadawga Springs, and was a popular summer resort. The name may have come from the Mohawk word for "swift water"; local lore has it that Sadawga was the name of an old native who lived there after his people left and the white man moved in.

The village of Jacksonville was originally known as Point Pleasant. It was renamed in 1834, apparently to honor President Andrew Jackson.

Manmade Lake Whitingham, more often referred to as Harriman Reservoir, is formed by the Harriman Dam, named for Henry I. Harriman, the engineer under whom it was contructed in 1923 by the New England Power Company. The reservoir's construction was the reason for one of the more unique place names in Vermont.

If US Postal Service records are to be taken as the highest authority in such matters, there once existed in Readsboro of one of the oddest place names on record in Vermont: Surge Tank. Odder still is that this place would at one time be in Readsboro, then in Whitingham, then back in Readsboro after a while. The Post Office designated "Surge Tank, Vermont" was established to serve workers building the Harriman Dam in Whitingham; a site supervisor was Postmaster, and the Post Office itself would move between the two depending on the location of the construction field office.