Our Town - Belvidere, Vermont
Our main sugarbush is located in Belvidere Vermont, a small rural town with a lot of history. Vermont Public Radio recently featured a fascinating audio episode on the history of our town.
In this new monthly series VPR honors one of Vermont’s 252 towns. They pick the town by spinning a wheel and our town of Belvidere happened to pop up this month.
Belvidere was chartered in 1791 to an Irish lawyer from New York by the name of John Kelly. It is believed that he named Belvidere after a beautiful lake in Ireland. The word itself comes from the Italian for “beautiful view.”
Today Belvidere has around 350 residents, but in 1900 it had over twice this amount and was a bustling mill and logging town. There were 5 schools at this time, like the one pictured which was a short distance from our current sugarhouse location (photo from The Vermont Schoolhouse Project). The town contains two notable covered bridges: the Morgan Covered Bridge built in 1887, and the Mill Covered Bridge built around 1890 — both spanning the North Branch Lamoille River.
If you are interested in the history of New England towns over the last 200 years then check out this show, we're sure you will enjoy it.