Glastenbury, Vermont
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Glastenbury is a town located in Bennington County, Vermont. The town was unincorporated by an act of the state legistlature in 1937, and is now essentially a ghost town. The total on-paper population of the town as of 2000 is six.
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Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 115.2 km² (44.5 mi²). 115.2 km² (44.5 mi²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water.
History
Glastenbury was first chartered in 1761 by New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth, but settlers did not begin trickling into this rocky, forbidding mountainous area for some years after. At the time of Vermont’s first census as a new state in 1791, only six families inhabited it. These first settlers found life on Glastenbury Mountain difficult, as would residents ever after, and by 1800 they had been replace by eight entirely different families. Of these eight, only three would stay on until the next census ten years later, and only one of these would remain in later decades.
Despite the many hardships that greeted Glastenbury settlers, newcomers continued to arrive in small numbers, and the population grew slowly to 76 in 1810. But the years following 1810 were hard ones for all of Vermont, and by 1840 there were only 53 left in Glastenbury. After the civil war, Glastenbury finally began to experience more rapid growth. Business interests in nearby Bennington were anxious to take advantage of the vast timber resources there, and by 1972 had finally begun construction on a railroad which ran up the mountain. The line ran along Bolles Brook and terminated at the place where the brook forked. It was an improbable achievement, with some parts of the line climbing as much as 250 feet in altitude per mile.
Meanwhile, the population had grown to 199 in 1870, and to 241 in 1880. This includes only the enumerated population; there were many more transient workers who were drawn to the mountain to work in the then booming logging business. Two additional sawmills were built in the 1870’s, one at the original settlement, called Fayville, and one at the new settlement at the railroad terminus, which became known as South Glastenbury. Dozens of kilns were built at South Glastenbury for converting the lumber to charcoal; at this time Glastenbury was one of the three foremost sites in Vermont for producing the charcoal which was feeding iron production in nearby Shaftsbury and Troy, New York.
By the late 1880’s, however, the mountain had been cleared of nearly all of its mature trees, and the town’s economy dipped dramatically. In 1889 the railroad operation ceased. It was revived briefly as an electric passenger trolley, and a brief and initially promising effort was made to convert South Glastenbury to a tourist attraction. A small fortune was spent to convert the area into a mountain resort area which opened in the summer of 1898. Unfortunately, a freshet wiped out the railroad tracks that winter, marking the beginning of the end of Glastenbury as a functioning town. Population dwindled in the early twentieth century, down to only seven in 1937, when the legislature unincorporated the town.
Folklore
Though Glastenbury never exceeded a population of 300, and has not existed as an officially organized town for more than sixty years, it remains well known even outside Vermont, due in large part to its legendary status. It is regarded a place of mystery, and stories of strange happenings abound. One legend claims that Native Americans avoided the mountain, believing it to be cursed. Another old tale involves a strange beast that is said to have attacked and toppled stage coach crossing over the mountain.
Between 1945 and 1950 several people went missing on or around Glastenbury Mountain, and one local newspaper writer went so far as to speculate that there might be some sort of “Lost Horizon” on the mountain that people inadvertently step into. In more recent times, first hand accounts of UFO and Bigfoot sightings have been recorded in the vicinity. Joseph Trainor, editor of the e-zine UFO Roundup, has called Glastenbury “The Paranormal Capital of Vermont.”
External Links
http://www.virtualvermont.com/towns/glastenbury.html