RETRO VT GREEN MOUNTAIN TRIVIA How well do you know the history of the Green Mountains? Take the quiz.
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ou 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.
Photos courtesy Vermont Historical Society
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.
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).
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
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