local lore – Obscure Vermont

August 24, 2016March 31, 2020

The Hungry Gorge

The deadliest place in Vermont is simultaneously one of it’s least dead places. The head of the state’s public safety commission once dubbed the Huntington Gorge as “the deadliest place in the state”, and according to those who make it their business to track this sort of stuff, this is considered the most dangerous swimming hole in all of New England. But despite that macabre distinction, in the summer the chasm is absolutely crawling with bodies, energy, and canned beer, all which dive impetuously off of the dangerous cliffs.

It’s not hard to see the appeal to this spectacular rocky crevice carved deep into the Richmond hills. Vertical undulating cliffs rise intimidatingly around a twisting boulder deposited river that corkscrews through several waterfalls, ranging from 6 to 12 feet in height, underneath a ceiling of evergreen trees. But this stunning crevice successfully conceals real dangers, masking strong currents that can easily whisk an unsuspecting person away. With high levels of water rushing rapidly down a steep rise constricted in a narrow spot, it’s an easy place to be greeted by the grim reaper.

Some refer to the spot by its unofficial nickname; “The Hungry Gorge”, probably because of the place’s appetite for human beings. Since 1950, a great number of people have lost their lives here, but just how many people is up for debate apparently. A few books, newspaper articles and the Richmond town records list the number at 25, but other accounts say the number is probably high as 40. The victims’ ages so far range from between 15 and 30, and all lost their lives by drowning. This information may even be out of date by the time I actually get around to publishing this entry. The casualties even include heroic would be rescuers, including a state police officer who attempted to retrieve a body and drowned in the process. And the numbers continue to grow, despite numerous attempts to stem the death tolls.

The most tactile approach happened in 1976 when a band of locals got together and blasted away a dangerous underwater chute where several swimmers had gotten swept into and trapped by strong currents. But the gorge continues to take lives.

In 2005, a 19-year-old UVM student became another statistic when he slipped on some rocks and plummeted fatally into the gorge. Frazzled people wanted a solution. There were demands to make the gorge off limits entirely, with heavy trespassing fines as intimidation to visitors. Some even wanted to build a giant wall around the gorge. That same year, Gary Bressor would purchase the property for $20,000 to preserve it and keep it open to the public, so future generations can continue to enjoy the unique area – or as others would argue, so future generations can die here. It’s a matter of perspective I guess.

The purchase made other gorge goers happy, unequivocally saying that anyone can enjoy themselves here, you just need some common sense and some information – something I’d agree with. Bressor was one of those people as well, so he bought the land to stop the quarreling over what to do with it and formed the Huntington River Gorge LLC, who wish to protect and preserve the natural area. Because it’s now under private ownership, an official ban isn’t possible.

But why do so many seem to die here? Apart from entrapping geography, the answer may lie within its tourist population. Many people who drown here are out of towners, who aren’t aware of the gorge’s concealed dangers, seeing things through youthful impunity. The surprising and frustrating thing about Huntington Gorge is that some of the deaths here could have been easily avoided. According to my research, a few deaths were related to drug or alcohol use before diving in. And sometimes, well, accidents just happen.

The locals know when to avoid the gorge, especially when the river is swollen with high runoffs from snow melt or rainwater, and they know where the safe parts are to swim. Some people have lived near the gorge all their lives and have never set foot down there.

A drive up Dugway Road, the dirt thoroughfare that runs along the rim of the gorge, reveals a plentiful amount of parking ban notices and warning signs nailed to any available tree or fence post that would be visible through a windshield. At the top of the gorge sits an official dark green state historic marker chronologically listing deaths here over the years. But the dates end ominously in 1994 which was probably around the time the sign was erected, and an updated replacement hasn’t been commissioned yet – if it ever will. There is talk of even more signs are planned to be erected when the project gets official zoning approval. But, knowing how human nature works, those signs won’t be of much help unless the visitor actually chooses to heed their warnings. Despite the dangers, this swimming hole remains widely popular, partially because of it’s harrowing reputation, or maybe some just have a perverse interest in tragedy. Humans have always had a fascination with death after all. That’s partially the reason why I visited. Also because I run a blog on Vermont weirdness, and love being outdoors.

Regardless, it’s easy to fall for this site’s charm and majestic splendor. Even in the dead cold of winter when I first visited, it was impressive. Icy waters churned over the surfaces of halfway frozen waterfalls and the cacophony of solid vs. liquid echoed up over the gorge walls. But I stayed well away from the edges, because a very slick layer of ice had glazed over the rocks, and I definitely didn’t want my name emblazoned on a tragedy induced warning sign.

Having a blog has offered quite a crash course on social culture. One of the benefits is befriending cool people through it. My friend Timothy is one such person. We hit it off last fall and even went on a few adventures together. He grew up down the road from the gorge as a kid and agreed to show me around on a sultry summer day.

After a morning of metal detecting at a ghost town and being pestered by mosquitoes, a dip in the Huntington River sounded fantastic, and visiting with someone who was intimate with the place excited me. I wanted to know it’s secrets and it’s stories. But within minutes of arriving, I wanted to go home. The gorge was thick with people in sports jerseys and cheap beer. Timothy groaned and said he missed the days when the gorge something that really only the locals knew about. Today, it’s all overran with bros and frat boys he complained, who, at least on that particular day, were making quite the ruckus as a crew who set up camp on a rock below were challenging someone’s manhood as they waited to see if the guy would jump off the cliffs as a group of distantly perched girls laughed snootily at them. There’s nothing wrong with people flocking to a great spot on a hot summers afternoon, it just wasn’t my particular scene.

Subsequently, the growth of the college kid crowd pushed out a lot of the locals from the gorge said my friend. When he was younger in the 90s, he loved spending his summer days there as he developed a fascination with diving off of the cliffs. Doing this, he got to know several of the old timers who were very familiar with it and knew all of its secrets and idiosyncrasies, like the best places to jump, when to go, and places to avoid. During this time, he explored every nook he could and got very familiar with it. During one of his dives, he found a wheel from a car that was from the early 20th century. On his other expeditions, he told stories of caves he found, and how if you were patient enough after diving into a pool near the falls, minnows would swim into you, hundreds if you had the patience. There are even certain rocks that have seen so many people sunning themselves or used as a launching point to jump off of that they have grooves in their surfaces now. “I remember always trying to make it down there before ten in the morning when I was a kid – that was always before the crowds would come down – and you’d always see the usual people, all jumping off the ledges and trying to out-do one another in the flamboyance of their dives. But it was all in good fun, and some of those guys were really good. Others looked up to them. Everyone knew each other, it was sort of like a club”. Today, those characters may have more or less, vanished from its boulder strewn walls. To my surprise, one of the last vestiges of older crowds to still hang out here, are nudists. We saw a few on our trek down the ledges to the river.

But the gorge is so popular, its entangled its way inside the frothy forefront of local legends. Some put enough emphasis on the gorge in conversation as if it’s the only swimming hole in the area, sort of like how Vermonters refer to Lake Champlain as “the lake”, even though Vermont has numerous other bodies of water.

As we were cringing at the site of a 20 something-year-old girl try to park an orange VW Bus, which was continuously ending in a position where two of the four wheels would be lifted off the road, my friend postulated that he thinks some of the locals might be hanging out at the upper gorge again. The upper portion of the gorge was the original gathering spot for visitors, and the locals hung out at the lower portion away from the crowds, until bad press moved most of the frenzy down to the lower gorge. But here’s the thing; both parts of the gorge are just as dangerous as one another. The only difference is that one area has been stained by hysteria and numerous signs about death, and one hasn’t.

Not surprisingly, a location with such grim stories attached to it has also spawned a few ghost stories. The only one I heard was years ago, where an unsuspecting swimmer was resting on some rocks and got a creeping feeling that someone was watching them. When they gazed around, they noticed a fully clothed teenage boy staring at them, standing on top of a large boulder down river a bit. But they noticed he was sopping wet, and he was standing there still as a stone. Concerned, the swimmer went to stand up, thinking that the boy may have needed help, but when they turned back around, he was gone. It was an open area, so he couldn’t have managed to clamber back up the gorge walls without being detected. But somehow, he had completely vanished. Whether these grim cautionary stories are preternatural occurrences or a local method of driving people away is anyone’s guess.

But the Huntington Gorge’s grim veneer isn’t exclusive. All swimming holes have the potential to be monstrous places if the right circumstances are applied. And seemingly, it seems to be a certain shade of visitors who ruin these sort of places, as opposed to the places themselves. A bit north, the landmark Bolton Potholes are a good example.

Bolton town is an often interstate passed Chittenden County fringe town where it’s old designation as “the land of boulders and bears” is undiluted verisimilitude. It’s charted land acreage is mostly taken up by steep rises in elevation, which suck for farming, but are great for outdoor recreational pursuits like a ski area and part of the 250 mile Long Trail.

A go-to summer relief for many area Vermonters, the potholes are where 3 impressive glacial waterfalls that pour into emerald-tinted holes are formed where Joiner Brook plunges about 45 feet down the Bolton slopes. It’s a cool area, but now days, the site also draws other sights in the form of large herds and obnoxious visitors, who litter, crowd the road and party there which bothers both long time visitors and denizens of the road that runs alongside of it. I used to go there as a teenager, but not so much anymore, opting for quieter locales.

Every action has a reaction, and now, there is talk of possibly closing it or restricting access to the public. Maybe. There is also a fight against that, wanting to keep these special places accessible for present and future Vermonters, which blew up on the Vermont subreddit page. Only time will tell, I guess. I’m more on the side of using common sense, and that it would be a shame to loose our state swimming holes – a deep-rooted tradition up here which is something that we tend to dig a lot. They’re free, all inclusive, and often outlandishly beautiful. The type of thing that summer memories up here are made of. But if you trash the place, well, your part of the problem.

If you visit, just be careful.

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November 1, 2014March 31, 2020

Exploring Sheldon Springs

Fall was a fading thing, gusty winds showered the car with dead leaves and rattled the burly body of my friend’s 96′ Volvo. Just having left our previous stop at Fort Montgomery, it was decided that we made the most of what was likely to be the last of the year’s great weather, and further our adventure.

We were en route to the small agricultural town of Sheldon, where he grew up, and we were on a search for the forgotten.

It’s fascinating and musing to think about how much Vermont’s small towns have changed in a century, hell – even in 20 years. Today, we were met by neglected paved back roads and sprawling corn fields that had only recently been cut, the small withering stumps of corn stocks sticking up like toothpicks in graying soil. Sticking out from the countryside are newer homes with 2 car garages and out of place condo complexes that look like they would be more fitting in Saint Albans or Burlington than in the middle of farm country.

What really brings me into a reverie though, is just how much of the past is tangible to us, and how close it is. Less than a foot beneath the soil we walk on to be exact. My friend takes up metal detecting in his spare time, a very cool hobby in my own humble opinion. Guided by his innate wisdom, we pulled onto Shawville Road, which lead us into the small village of Sheldon Springs.

A Boom Town

The name Sheldon Springs is of obvious origins, it was named after the springs found off the Missisquoi River, which were responsible for the growth of the community. In it’s interim, there were multiple springs hotels and a train depot, built to exploit the springs and their lure of tourism.

In the 1860s and 70s, a boom period sparked in Sheldon Springs as more eager tourists came to take “the waters”, and 11 hotels were all built around the Missisquoi, some of them featuring over 100 rooms and billed themselves as having luxurious accommodations equal to big city hotels.

Analyzed by a New York chemist, the springs contained chloride of sodium, carbonate of sodium, chloride of magnesia, carbonate of magnesia, chloride of lime, alumina, sulphate of lime, silica, carbonate of iron, carbonic sulphoric acid, carbonate of manganese and hydro-chloric acid.

Around 4 “tubing” operations were set up at the springs, and bottling plants soon followed, selling the Sheldon Springs waters. Professedly marketed boldly as a miracle remedy for cancer, scrofula, and other diseases of the blood, bottles could be shipped across the country, thanks to a train depot and proximity to the former Richford branch of the Central Vermont Railway (refurbished as the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail). But like most boom periods, people eventually lost interest. Sheldon Springs tendered it’s resignation in the early 20th century because of the collapsed tourism industry, but the name still remains printed on the usual green aluminum signs off Route 105.

Today, Sheldon Springs is pleasantly quiet, a weird dissimilarity to bustling Route 105 nearby. On our walk around the village, only 2 cars passed us, kicking up leaves. With his collection of 19th century maps of Franklin Country from the Beers atlas, he is able to locate what once was, and what is mostly impossible to find today. One of the old springs hotels is now an unremarkable gravel parking lot next to a small church. It was called Congress Hall, and was one of the hotels to have it’s own bottling plant. From old photos I was able to find online, it seemed like quite the ceremonious place. But like many wooden buildings of that time period, the hotel burned down circa 1909 in an act of arson, set by a disgruntled employee. From all my Vermont research, it seems that fires hate hotels the most…

It’s strange to think about how such a large building is now completely untraceable. As we walked through town, he pointed it out to me. “You can see that the parking lot is almost raised above the natural geography here – like it was a foundation at one point. You can sort of see where it drops off in the back, like there were cellar walls there at one point”.

But what was more interesting to me, was what Congress Hall left behind. I guess the saying “one’s man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is pretty accurate in these circumstances. Back in 19th century Vermont, we didn’t have the so called Green culture inserted in our state’s virtues like we do today. Instead, if you needed to get rid of something, you just threw it out. Most commonly on your farm, or down into a ditch or a river, and left it there. Congress Hall also thought this convenient method was the most efficient way of getting rid of one’s problems, and dumped all their garbage down a steep bank near the Missisquoi River. Today, this garbage once thrown out, is now desirable and waiting for a respectable act of disinterment. Remnants of 19th century relics remain hidden beneath layers of soil, trees, erosion and dead leaves. The most significant feature here though, are Sheldon Springs mineral water bottles. There is literally a mound of hundreds – somewhere, in the woods and slopes of Sheldon Springs, and if what my friend tells me is accurate, an intact bottle can bring a good sum of money on eBay.

Walking a few feet down the road, we came to a Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail crossing. In an open field area directly paralleling the tracks, he pointed out that the former rail depot used to stand somewhere in the vacinity. Today, that’s completely unrecognizable, unless if you have an old Beers atlas of course. He’s metal detected around there, and told me he’s found quite a few old coins around the area, from former passengers dropping them from their pockets. Some he discovered were freshly minted at the time they were dropped, and sat there ever since as the years went on.

Across the road sat an unremarkable old ranch house lined with brawny old Maples that exploded in bright oranges and reds, beginning to shed their jackets upon the lawn. It used to be the home of his childhood friend, and he had metal detected on their lawn as well. About 4-7 inches below the surface he dug up more interesting artifacts. Coins, buttons, old tools, and other various things from a time long ago.

He recalled one time on a patch of farmland a few miles from there, he was digging and came across an old pipe, which he guessed probably ran to the river at one point, but now ran to nowhere. Through a rusted hole in the pipe he hit, was an old wrench which was quite large. He was able to determine that it was from circa 1930s. From what he speculates, the laborer that built the pipe literally dropped his wrench during construction, and it stayed there all these years until he unearthed it.

Haunted Rope Swings and Swimming Holes

Taking a short drive from the hotel ruins turned parking lot, we drove out of the village on an old steel truss bridge that crossed a temporarily placid pool held back by the dam, before the water tumbled over and down the falls. We pulled over and he pointed out areas he used to play as a kid. Climbing down the steep banks, there was an original brick pump house constructed almost directly into the rock face of the upper gorge, dated 1911. Kids in town used to make the seemingly dangerous climb on top of the building demonstrating their bravado, and maybe they still do. Though I now have a better knowledge of tempting or choosing my fate, I did stuff like that in my youth as well.

There were still some large foundations of the former hotels and mills nearby the gorge. He also pointed out that nearby, there used to be a “sketchy rope swing” that local kids would climb too and jump off of, plummeting down into the cold Missisquoi River below. A great Vermont summer tradition that is still popular today.

The rope swing was no longer there, vanishing after recent work to the truss bridge (which was much needed), but he could point out the branch it once was tied too. The rope was described as fraying and awkward, and the branch’s ability to support the weight of countless reckless youth was also questionable, but it held, and the kids used it. There was a weird detail though. Some kids around town thought there was something amiss about that old rope swing.

The rope swing has a spook story attached to it. Allegedly, kids had seen it swinging by itself, moved by unknown forces on still windless summer days, with no logical explanation to it’s movement. Maybe a tragic story from over 20 years ago could link to the peculiar attributes. As my friend informs me, two kids drowned there in the 80s, which may be that connection to it’s seemingly phantom movements. Regardless of empirical evidence or folklore that could clarify the phenomena, it’s certainly interesting, and possibly Vermont’s only haunted rope swing. Or, at least that’s been documented in a blog such as this one.

Boarding houses and School houses

Heading back into town, we passed Boarding House Road, which deadpans it’s namesake. He pointed out a restored 3 story building that used to once be a boarding house in town, giving lodging to laborers and workers that once worked at the Missisquoi Pulp Mill, another life blood of the community. The pulp mill was built in 1894 and still remains as an important employer of the village today.

The boarding house was abandoned when he was a kid, and he and his friends recalled exploring it, and getting creeped out by it’s unsound condition and ghostly appearance inside. Today, it has been restored as a private residence, and doesn’t look at all like a menacing or dangerous place. From the outside. Other vestiges of the mill remain around town, in the form of almost identical looking houses built along the main street that once housed the mill workers. As a matter of fact, he grew up in one of those houses, and they have since became Sheldon landmarks.

Nearby, past the mill, he pointed out another parking lot, this one more recent, storing rows of 18 wheelers. He recalled that used to be an abandoned schoolhouse when he grew up, and what a place it was. It was 3 stories and in a bad state of dilapidation. There used to be a sizable auditorium out back, and him and his friends would go inside and hang out on the rotting stage and rows of decaying seats, before going off to explore the dark hallways and dusty classrooms. He told me that there were definitely creepy feelings inside, especially in certain parts of the school. At times, they didn’t like going into certain areas and avoided them. The schoolhouse was sadly torn down by now, which was a disappointment to me after I had excited asked him if he could show me where it was. But even staring at the parking lot, the story remained robust.

A Walk In The Woods

But the next place we ventured too was enigmatic, it had no history we knew of, or a real road that lead us to it. It was in the middle of the woods, far from anything. It had the appearance of a southern shotgun house, but the inside proved to be a little more spacious than I had thought. It was a simplistic country house, done in traditional horsehair plaster and subtle wainscoting accents, sort of everything you’d expect to find in an abandoned Vermont farmhouse. Parts of the ceiling and floors had started to cave in at various rates and were covered in layers of plaster dust and disintegrating miscellaneous. All of the furniture had long been removed, leaving no relics behind apart from a few rusted cans in a pantry and the more modern Natural Ice cans. The house once had a front porch, but that has long wasted away from the front. The side of the house was also interesting, because it looked like two identical houses had been pushed together to make one house, judging by mismatching siding. But on the other side of the house, it was all uniform greenish siding. Back then, Vermonters had ingenuity, and if a job needed to be done, they did it in any available method to them. This might have just been a way to finish siding the house.

There was an abandoned garage nearby, which felt sort of strange to see in the middle of the woods with no driveway or path leading up to it’s double doors. I suppose my mind has been strongly trained to make assumptions. Inside, there was a collecting of disused tires buried in leaf fall.

Around the house, and underneath my boots, were a collection of a familiar Sheldon relic, bottles. Plenty of old glass bottles were laying around the house, many of them weathered beyond legibility. Just to the right of me was a steep bank that tumbled down into a stream below. Wooden retaining structures had been built in certain places down the streamfall. My friend informed me that those were an old way of guiding and controlling water current. He also told me that somewhere down that steep bank was a pile of bottles that was almost baffling in size, knee deep and stretched several feet across the slippery banks. But the freshly fallen leaves completely obscured it from view, and he didn’t quite recall where it was. I decided not to climb down the bank and look for it, the ground was slick, and figured that there was more of a chance of getting hurt than finding treasure.

Before we left, he had one last thing to show me. Following a barely visible set of tire tracks, which I thought was so bizarre to find in the middle of the woods, we came to the shell of an old 58′ Plymouth. The tracks started at the house, traveled about 100 yards, and ended directly at the car, in the middle of a sizable forest far away from any back road or farm. Due to my love of old cars, abandoned and functioning, I was very pleased to photograph it. It had been sitting there for quite some time though. The frame was in the late stages of decay and corrosion, and the inside was completely gutted, no relics were left behind.

This trip was one of my most memorable. Though it wasn’t a tremendous abandonment, my experience just walking around the quiet and increasingly mysterious town of Sheldon on a very enjoyable Fall afternoon really sparked layers of curiosity in my mind that will now be forever associated with the community. And I want to uncover more.

There was so much information that I left out of this blog post. As it is, I already wrote far more than I expected to. I’m in the process of planning another trip up to Franklin County, and actually trying my hand at metal detecting. If all goes well, I hope to write about it, and finish this great story.

DSC_0252_pe — This massive old fuel tank was found in the woods near Sheldon Springs. This picture doesn’t do the size any justice. Standing next to it, the side vents came up to my head. My friend told me that he remembers once when he was a kid, that his brother crawled into the tank. I could smell the coal and the oil residue that assaulted my nose and I couldn’t imagine myself ever crawling inside the dark of that tank. Now that would be impossible. Someone came out and overturned the tank, covering the entrance. And because it’s so heavy, I doubt anyone will want to put the effort into tipping it back over…

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