Vermont State Flag

Vermont State Seal

Vermont Location

Vermont

Vermont is a relatively small U.S. state located in New England. Vermont was its own country for 14 years from 1777 until 1791. The state ranks 43rd in land area (9,250 square miles), and its population (608,827) ranks as the second smallest of the fifty states. As the only New England state not to have a coastline along the Atlantic Ocean, Vermont is noted mainly for the Green Mountains in the west and Lake Champlain in the northwest. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north.

Originally inhabited by Native American tribes (Iroquois, Algonquian and Abenaki), the territory that is now Vermont was claimed by France but became a British possession after France's defeat in the French and Indian War. For many years, rightful control of the area was disputed by the surrounding colonies. Settlers who held land titles granted by the Province of New Hampshire, through their Green Mountain Boys militia, eventually prevailed. Vermont became the 14th state to join the United States, following its 14-year period of independence during and after the Revolutionary War as the Vermont Republic.

Famous for its scenery, dairy products and maple syrup, Vermont has long been known for its liberal politics and staunchly independent political thinking. The state capital is Montpelier, while the largest city is Burlington.

Geography

Vermont is located in the New England region in the eastern United States and comprises 9615 square miles (24,902 km²), making it the 45th largest state. Of this, land comprises 9249 square miles (23,955 km²) and water comprises 366 square miles (948 km²), making it the 43rd largest in land area and the 47th in water area.

The west bank of the Connecticut River marks the eastern border of the state with New Hampshire (the river itself is part of New Hampshire). Lake Champlain, the major lake in Vermont, is the sixth-largest body of fresh water in the United States and separates Vermont from New York and Canada in the northwest portion of the state. The state's greatest length, from north to south, is 159 miles. Its greatest width, from east to west, is 89 miles (the narrowest width is at 37 miles). The state's geographic center is Washington, three miles east of Roxbury.

Vermont has 14 counties. Four counties border Quebec in Canada to the north, and two border Massachusetts in the south. In the west is New York and in the east is New Hampshire, each bordered by five counties each. Only two of Vermont's counties—Lamoille and Washington—are entirely surrounded by Vermont territory.

The Green Mountains, (In French: Verts monts) so named because their relatively low altitude allows for little timberline, form a north-south spine running the most of the length of the state, slightly west of its center. In the southwest portion of the state are the Taconic Mountains; the White Mountains are in the northeast. In the northwest off Lake Champlain is the fertile Champlain Valley. In the south of the valley is Bomoseen Lake.

Several mountains do have timberlines: Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in the state and Killington are two examples. About 77 percent of the state is covered by forest, the rest in meadow, uplands, lakes, ponds and swampy wetlands.

Vermont is known for its brief mud season in spring followed by a cool summer and a colorful autumn, and particularly for its cold winters. The northern part of the state, including the rural northeastern section (dubbed the "Northeast Kingdom") is known for exceptionally cold winters, often averaging more than 10° F (-12° C) colder than the southern areas of the state. Annual snowfall averages between 60 to 100 inches depending on elevation, giving Vermont some of New England's best cross-country skiing areas.

In the autumn, Vermont's hills experience an explosion of red, orange and gold foliage caused by the sugar maple. That this famous display occurs so abundantly in Vermont is not due so much to the presence of a particular variant of the tree; it rather results from a number of soil and climate conditions unique to the area.

The highest recorded temperature was 105° F (41° C), at Vermon on July 4, 1911; the lowest recorded temperature was -50° F (-46° C), at Bloomfield on December 30, 1933.

History

Little is known of the pre-Columbian history of Vermont. The western part of the state was originally home to a small population of Algonquian-speaking tribes, including the Mohican and Abenaki peoples. Between 8500 to 7000 BC, glacial activity created the Champlain Sea, and Native Americans inhabited and hunted in Vermont. From 7000 to 1000 BC was the Archaic Period. During the era Native Americans migrated year-round. From 1000 BC to 1600 AD was the Woodland Period, when villages and trade networks were established, and ceramic and bow and arrow technology was developed. Sometime between 1500 and 1600, the Iroquois drove many of the smaller native tribes out of Vermont, later using the area as a hunting ground and warring with the remaining Abenaki. The population in 1500 is estimated to be around 10,000 people.

The first European to see Vermont is thought to be Jacques Cartier, in 1535. On July 30, 1609, French explorer Samuel de Champlain claimed the area of what is now Lake Champlain, giving to the mountains the appellation of les Verts Monts (the Green Mountains).

France claimed Vermont as part of New France, and erected Fort Sainte Anne on Isle La Motte in 1666 as part of their fortification of Lake Champlain. This was the first European settlement in Vermont and the site of the first Roman Catholic mass.

During the later half of the 17th century, non-French settlers began to explore Vermont and its surrounding area. In 1690, a group of Dutch-British settlers from Albany under Captain Jacobus de Warm established the De Warm Stockade at Chimney Point (eight miles west of Addison). This settlement and trading post was directly across the river from Crown Point, New York (Pointe à la Chevelure).

In 1731, the French arrived. Here they constructed a small temporary wooden stockade (Fort de Pieux) on what was Chimney Point until work on Fort St. Frédéric began in 1734. The fort, when completed, gave the French control of the New France/Vermont border region in the Lake Champlain Valley and was the only permanent fort in the area until the building of Fort Carillon more than 20 years later. The government encouraged French colonization, leading to the development of small French settlements in the valley. The British attempted to take the Fort St. Frédéric four times between 1755 and 1758; in 1759 a combined force of 12,000 British regular and provincial troops under Sir Jeffrey Amherst captured the fort. The French were driven out of the area and retreated to other forts along the Richelieu River. One year later a group of Mohawks burnt the settlement to the ground, leaving only chimneys and giving the area its name.

The first permanent British settlement was established in 1724 with the construction of Fort Dummer in Vermont's far southeast under the command of Lieutenant Timothy Dwight. This fort protected the nearby settlements of Dummerston and Brattleboro in the surrounding area. These settlements were made by the Province of Massachusetts Bay to protect its settlers on the western border along the Connecticut River. The second British settlement was the 1761 founding of Bennington in the southwest.

During the French and Indian War, some Vermont settlers, including Ethan Allen, joined the colonial militia assisting the British in attacks on the French. Fort Carillon on the New York-Vermont border, a French fort constructed in 1755, was the site of two British offensives under Lord Amherst's command: the unsuccessful British attack in 1758 and the retaking of the following year with no major resistance (most of the garrison had been removed to defend Quebec, Montreal, and the western forts). The British renamed the fort Fort Ticonderoga (which became the site of two later battles during the American Revolutionary War). Following France's loss in the French and Indian War, the 1763 Treaty of Paris gave control of the land to the British.

The end of the war brought new settlers to Vermont. A fort at Crown Point had been built, and the Crown Point Military Road stretched from the east to the west of the Vermont wilderness from Springfield to Chimney Point, making traveling from the neighboring British colonies easier than ever before. Three colonies laid claim to the area. The Province of Massachusetts Bay claimed the land on the basis of the 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Province of New York claimed Vermont based on land granted to the Duke of York (later King James II) in 1764. The Province of New Hampshire also claimed Vermont based upon a decree of George II in 1740. In 1741, George II ruled that Massachusetts's claims in Vermont and New Hampshire were invalid and fixed Massachusetts's northern boundary at its present location. This still left New Hampshire and New York with conflicting claims to the land.

The situation resulted in the New Hampshire Grants, a series of 135 land grants made between 1749 and 1764 by New Hampshire's colonial governor, Benning Wentworth. The grants sparked a dispute with the New York governor, who began granting charters of his own for New Yorker settlement in Vermont. In 1770, Ethan Allen—along with his brothers Ira and Levi, as well as Seth Warner—recruited an informal militia, the Green Mountain Boys, to protect the interests of the original New Hampshire settlers against the new migrants from New York. When a New York judge arrived in Westminster with New York settlers in March 1775, violence broke out as angry citizens took over the courthouse and called a sheriff's posse. This resulted in the deaths of Daniel Houghton and William French in the "Westminster Massacre."

On January 18, 1777, representatives of the New Hampshire Grants convened in Westminster and declared their land an independent republic. For the first six months of the republic's existence, the republic was called New Connecticut.

On June 2, a second convention of 72 delegates met at Westminster, known as the "Westminster Convention." At this meeting, the delegates adopted the name "Vermont" on the suggestion of Dr. Thomas Young of Philadelphia, a supporter of the delegates who wrote a letter advising them on how to achieve statehood. The delegates set the time for a meeting one month later. On July 4, the Constitution of Vermont was drafted at the Windsor Tavern owned by Elijah West during a violent thunderstorm, and was adopted by the delegates on July 8 after four days of debate. This was among the first written constitutions in North America and was indisputably the first to abolish the institution of slavery, provide for universal manhood suffrage and require suppost of public schools. The Windsor tavern has been preserved as the Old Constitution House, administered as a state historic site.

The Battle of Bennington, fought on August 16, 1777, was a seminal event in the history of the state of Vermont. The nascent republican government, created after years of political turmoil, faced challanges from New York, New Hampshire, Great Britain and the new United States, none of which recognized its sovereignty. The republic's ability to defeat a powerful military invader gave it a legitimacy among its scattered frontier society that would sustain it through fourteen years of fragile independence before it finally achieved statehood as the 14th state in the union in 1791.

During the summer of 1777 the invading British army of General Burgoyne slashed southward from Canada to the Hudson River, captured the strategic stonghold of Fort Ticonderoga, and drove the continentel army into a desparate southward retreat. Raiding parties of British soldiers and native warriors freely attacked, pillaged and burned the frontier communities of the Lake Champlain valley and threatened all settlements to the south. The Vermont frontier collapsed in the face of the British invasion. The New Hampshire legislature, fearing an invasion to the east, mobilized the state's militia under the command of General John Stark.

General Burgoyne received intellegence that large stores of horses, food and munitions were kept at Bennington, then the largest community in the Grants. He dispatched 2,600 men, nearly a third of his army, to sieze the colonial storehouse there, unaware that General Stark's New Hampshire troops were then traversing the Green Mountains to join up at Bennington with the Vermont continentel regiments commanded by Colonel Seth Warner, together with the local Vermont and western Massachusetts militia. The combined American forces, under Stark's command, attacked the British column at Hoosik, New York, just across the border from Bennington. The American troops were defending their homes, families and property. General Stark reportedly challanged his men to fight to the death, telling them that: "There are your enemies. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!" In a desperate, all-day battle fought in intense summer heat, the army of yankee farmers killed or captured virtually the entire British detachment. General Burgoyne never recovered from this loss and eventually surrendered the remainder of his 6000-man force at Saratoga, New York on October 17.

The Battles of Bennington and Saratoga are recognized as the turning point in the Revolutionary War because they were the first major defeat of a British army and convinced the French that the Americans were worthy of military aid. Stark became widely known as the "Hero of Bennington" and the anniversary of the battle is still celebrated in Vermont as a legal holiday known as "Bennington Battle Day." Under the portico of the Vermont Statehouse, next to an heroic granite statue of Ethan Allen, there is a brass cannon that was captured from the British troops at the Battle of Bennington.

Vermont continued to govern itself as a sovereign entity based in the eastern town of Windsor for 14 years. Thomas Chittenden, who came to Vermont from Connecticut in 1774, acted as President of Vermont from 1778 to 1789 and from 1790 to 1791. In 1791, Vermont joined the Union as the 14th member–the first state to enter the union after the original 13 colonies, and a counterweight to Kentucky, which was admitted to the Union shortly afterward.

Vermont had a unicameral legislature until 1836.

The northernmost land action of the American Civil War took place in Vermont on October 19, 1864. In this incident, one of the most unusual in American history, Bennett H. Young led Confederate forces. Young had been captured in John Hunt Morgan's 1863 raid in Ohio, but escaped to Canada in the fall of that year. Morgan went to the south, where he proposed Canada-based raids on the Union as a means of building the Confederate treasury and forcing the Union army to protect their northern border as a diversion. Young was commissioned as a Lieutenant and returned to Canada, where he recruited other escaped rebels to participate in the October 19, 1864 raid on St. Albans, Vermont, a quiet town 15 miles from the Canadian border.

Young and two others checked into a local hotel on October 10, saying that they had come from St. John's in Canada for a "sporting vacation." Every day, two or three more young men arrived. By October 19, there was 21 men. Just before 3:00 p.m., the group simultaneously staged an armed robbery of the three banks in the town. They announced that they were Confederate soldiers and stole a total of $208,000. As the banks were being robbed, eight or nine of the Confederates held the townspeople prisoner on the village green as their horses were stolen. One townsperson was killed and another wounded. Young ordered his troops to burn the town down, but the four-ounce bottles of Greek fire they had brought failed to work.

Vermont also sent over 30,000 men into the service of the Union Army, of which some one out of three did not return, a higher proportion of men sent and lost than any other state. The most famous Vermont unit was the hard-fighting First Vermont Brigade. This unit remains the hardest-fighting brigade in the history of the United States military.

The first election in which women were allowed to vote was on December 18, 1880, when women were granted limited suffrage and were allowed to vote in school board elections.

Large-scale flooding occurred in early November 1927. During this incident, 85 people died, 84 of them in Vermont. Another flood occurred in 1973, when the flood caused the death of two people and the loss of millions of dollars in property damage.

Law and Government

Politics

Vermonters are known for their political independence and liberal views. The Vermont government maintains a proactive stance with regards to the environment, social services and prevention of urbanization. For example, facing severe pressures from out-of-state real estate developers, the state passed the Land Use and Development Law (Act 250) in 1970. The law, which was the first like it in the nation, created nine District Environmental Commissions consisting of private citizens who have the power to approve/disapprove land development and subdivision plans that would have a significant impact on the state's environment and many small communities. Another case involves the recent controversy over the adoption of civil unions, an institution which grants same-sex couples nearly all the rights and privileges of marriage. In Baker v. Vermont (1999) the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that, under the Constitution of Vermont, the state must either allow same-sex marriage or provide a separate but equal status for them. The state legislature chose the second option by creating the institution of civil union; the bill was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Howard Dean.

Vermont is the home state of the only two current (2005) members of the United States Congress who do not associate themselves with a political party: Representative Bernie Sanders and Senator Jim Jeffords.

Attempts by out-of-state candidates (so called "flatlanders") to win a seat in Vermont have often been thwarted by locals. In 1998, a 79-year-old local man named Fred Tuttle won national attention by defeating a Massachusetts multimillionaire in the Republican Primary for Senate. With a campaign budget of $201, Tuttle garnered 55 percent of the primary vote. He was heavily defeated by Democratic incumbent Patrick Leahy in November.

Republicans dominated Vermont politics from the party's founding in 1854 until the 1980s. Vermont was one of two states (with Maine) to vote for Republican Alf Landon over President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. In the early 1960s many progressive Vermont Republicans and newcomers to the state helped bolster the State's then-small Democratic Party. Until 1992, Vermont had only supported a Democrat for president once since the Civil War—in Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide victory. In 1992, it supported Democrat Bill Clinton for president and has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since then. Vermont gave John Kerry his fourth largest margin of victory in 2004. He won the state's popular vote by 20 percentage points over incumbent George W. Bush, taking almost 59 percent of the vote. Essex County in the state's northeastern section was the only county to vote for Bush.

The Vermont Progressive Party is a small, left-wing political party created in the early 1980s and has held a handful of seats in the Vermont legislature for two decades and is affiliated with Vermont's lone congressman, Bernie Sanders; it has had official recognition as a political party by the state government since 1999.

Vermont is the birthplace of former presidents Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur. The age of consent in Vermont is 16. Vermont abolished the death penalty in 1964. The last state execution was carried out in 1954.

A major political issue for some years has been taxation and education funding. The town of Killington is currently trying to leave Vermont and join New Hampshire due to what the locals say is an unfair tax burden.

State government

State Constitution

Provision is made for the following governing institutions under the Constitution of the State of Vermont:

Executive branch

Vermonters independently elect a state Governor and Lieutenant Governor every two years (as opposed to every four years, which is the most common term length for a governor of a U.S. state). The current governor of Vermont is Jim Douglas, who assumed office in 2003.

Unlike other states, Vermont does not have a term limit for the governor.

Legislative branch

The Vermont's state legislature is the Vermont General Assembly, a bicameral body composed of the Vermont House of Representatives (the lower house) and the Vermont Senate (the upper house). The Senate is composed of 30 state senators, while the House of Representatives has 150 members. Like the governor, members of the General Assembly serve two-year terms.

Judicial branch

The Vermont Supreme Court is the state supreme court, made up of five justices who served six year terms. Superior courts in the state are made up of eight judges serving a term of six years. Appointments to the state supreme court, superior court, and district courts are made by the governor and approved by the General Assembly. Judges on lower courts are elected on a partisan ballot.

Federal representation

In the U.S. Senate, (2005) Vermont is represented by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, and Senator James Jeffords, an independent. Jeffords was a former Republican but left the party in 2001 as a result of political disagreements and now caucuses with the Democrats. Unusually, like its neighbor New Hampshire, Vermont tends to elect more independents than other states; in the U.S. House of Representatives, Vermont's single at-large congressional district is represented by Bernard Sanders, an independent representative and socialist who served as the mayor of Burlington.

Culture

Vermont has many festivals, including the Vermont Maple Festival, the Enosburg Falls Dairy Festival, the Marlboro Music Festival, and the Mozart Festival. The Vermont Symphony Orchestra is supported by the state and performs throughout the area. The Poetry Society of Vermont publishes a literary magazine called The Green Mountain Troubadore which encourages submissions from members of various ages. Every year they hold various contests - one being for high school age young people. The Brattleboro-based Vermont Theatre Company presents an annual summer Shakespeare festival. Brattleboro also hosts the summertime Strolling of the Heifers parade which celebrates Vermont's unique dairy culture. In the Northeast Kingdom, The Bread and Puppet Theatre holds weekly shows in Glover in a natural outdoor amphitheater.

No major professional sports teams are based in Vermont. The largest professional franchise is the Vermont Expos, a single-A minor league baseball team based in Burlington.

Vermont remains the only state without a McDonalds present in its state capitol.

Demographics

Economy

Over the past two centuries, Vermont has seen both population explosions and population busts. First settled by farmers, loggers and hunters, Vermont lost much of its population as farmers moved West into the Great Plains in search of abundant, easily tilled land. Logging similarly fell off as over-cutting and the exploitation of other forests made Vermont's forest less attractive. Although these population shifts devastated Vermont's economy, the early loss of population had the beneficial effect of allowing Vermont's land and forest to recover from the excesses of human beings. The accompanying lack of industry has allowed Vermont to avoid many of the ill-effects of 20th century industrial busts, effects that still plague neighboring states. Today, much of Vermont's forest consists of second-growth.

Of the remaining industries, dairy farming is the primary source of agricultural income.

A unique part of Vermont's economy is the manufacture and sale of novelty goods and foods for cottage industries and niche markets. Examples of these are such exports as Cabot Cheese, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Burton Snowboards, King Arthur Flour, and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream (headquartered in South Burlington).

Captive insurance plays an increasingly large role in Vermont's economy. With this form of alternative insurance, large corporations or industry associations form standalone insurance companies to insure their own risks, thereby substantially reducing their insurance premiums and gaining a significant measure of control over types of risks to be covered. There are also significant tax advantages to be gained from the formation and operation of captive insurance companies. According to the Insurance Information Institute, Vermont in 2004 was the world's third-largest domicile for captive insurance companies, following Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Numerous summer camps, furniture-making and skiing also make up a large component of Vermont's income. Trout fishing, lake fishing and even ice fishing draw the outdoorsman to the state as does the excellent hiking on the Long Trail. Several noteworthy horse shows are annual events. Golf courses are springing up with spas to service the weary client. One major fashion outlet mall isn't really a mall but the old town of Manchester gentrified.

In the winter, the mountains in Vermont have enough snow to make skiing a viable industry.

The towns of Rutland and Barre are the traditional centers of marble quarrying and marble shaping in the USA. For many years Vermont was also the headquarters of the smallest union in the USA, the Stonecutters Association, of about 500 members.

In recent years, Vermont has been deluged with plans to build condos and houses on what was relatively inexpensive, untouched land. Vermont's government has responded with a series of laws controlling development and with some pioneering initiatives to prevent the loss of Vermont's dairy industry.

In 2001, Vermont produced 1,040,000 liters of maple syrup, about a quarter of the U.S. production.

Important Cities and Towns

Major cities and towns:

Wealth of locations by per capita income:

Education

The public school system in Vermont is regulated by the Vermont State Board of Education, which consists of nine voting members and one non-voting member, appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the State Senate. One voting member is a high school student; the non-voting member is another Vermont high school student who is a junior member and will move into the voting student member position the following year.

Colleges and Universities

Crime

Vermont is one of twelve states that have no death penalty statute. After 1930 there were four executions; the last was in 1954. Capital punishment was effectively abolished in practice in 1964, with the statutes being completely removed in 1987. Current state law, however, allows children as young as ten years to be tried as adults, the lowest age limit currently specified by any of the 50 states.

Crime per capita is generally very low.

The Vermont prison system is administered by Vermont Department of Corrections. There are nine prisons in Vermont:

Caledonia Community Work Camp
Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility
Dale Women's Facility
Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility
Northern State Correctional Facility
Northwest State Correctional Facility
Southeast State Correctional Facility
Southern State Correctional Facility
St. Johnsbury Regional Correctional Facility

State designations and symbols

The state song and state symbols are designated by act of the state legislature and confirmed by the governor.

Vermont's state song is "These Green Mountains," written by composed by Diane Martin and arranged by Rita Buglass Gluck. This song was officially designated as the state song on May 22, 2000, when Governor Howard Dean signed No. 99 of the Acts of 2000 into law. This song replaced "Hail to Vermont!," which was written by Josephine Hovey-Perry and made the state song in 1938.

The state bird is the hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus). This was adopted as No. 1 of the Acts of 1941, effective June 1, 1941. The bird was only designated after debate in the legislature; though the hermit thrush is found in all of 14 counties and has a distinctive sweet call, it left the state during the winter for its yearly southward migration. Many legislators actually favored the blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) or the crow. The red clover (Trifolium pratense) was designated as the state flower by No. 159 of the Acts of 1894, effective February 1, 1895. The red clover is often seen in the countryside of Vermont but was originally naturalized from Europe.

Vermont has two official state fish, both adopted by Joint Resolution R-91 of the Acts of 1978 and effective on May 3, 1978: the cold-water fish, brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) and the warm-water fish, the walleye pike (Stizosedion vitreum vitreum).

The state tree is the sugar maple (Acer saccharum), adopted by the Acts of 1949, effective March 10, 1949. The sugar maple is the source of maple syrup, Vermont's most famous export. (The sugar maple is also the state tree of Wisconsin). The state mammal is the Morgan horse, designated as such by No. 42 of the acts of 1961, effective March 23, 1961. The Morgan horse is a horse breed originally from Vermont.

The state insect is the honeybee (Apis mellifera), designated by No. 124 of the Acts of 1978, effective July 1, 1978. The honeybee is also the state insect of ten other states—Arkansas, Kansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The state amphibian, adopted by No. 126 of the Acts of 1997, is the Northern Leopard Frog (Rana pipiens).

Vermont has also designated an official state mineral (talc), pie (apple pie), soil ("Tunbridge Soil Series"), beverage (milk), and gem (grossular garnet), and fossil (the beluga skeleton at the University of Vermont's Perkins Geology Museum.)