Historic Sites In Vermont. I taught American history for more than twenty-five years before I started visiting these places, and Vermont packs an extraordinary amount of history into a small state. Revolutionary War fortifications, two presidents’ homes, the birthplace of American conservation thinking, and a steamboat hauled overland onto dry land all wait here.
Below are the 15 historic sites in Vermont I recommend most, ranked from a Revolutionary War hilltop up to the only national park site in the state. I have noted who manages each one and what you will find when you arrive.
Historic Sites In Vermont At A Glance
| Site | Type & Manager | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park | National Historical Park (NPS) | Woodstock |
| Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site | State Historic Site | Plymouth Notch |
| Bennington Battle Monument | State Historic Site | Bennington |
| Robert Frost Stone House | Historic house museum | Shaftsbury |
| Lake Champlain Maritime Museum | Museum (nonprofit) | Vergennes |
| North Country National Scenic Trail | National Scenic Trail (NPS) | Green Mountains |
| Brown Covered Bridge | Historic covered bridge | Shrewsbury |
| Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium | Museum (nonprofit) | St. Johnsbury |
| Hildene | Historic estate (nonprofit) | Manchester |
| Appalachian Trail | National Scenic Trail (NPS) | Green Mountains |
| Shelburne Farms | Historic farm (nonprofit) | Shelburne |
| Steamboat Ticonderoga | National Historic Landmark (Shelburne Museum) | Shelburne |
| St. Johnsbury Athenaeum | NHL library & art gallery | St. Johnsbury |
| Stellafane Observatory | National Historic Landmark | Springfield |
| Mount Independence | State Historic Site | Orwell |
15. Mount Independence
I start on a wooded peninsula above Lake Champlain at one of the best-preserved Revolutionary War sites in the country. In 1776, American forces built a sprawling fortification here, across the water from Fort Ticonderoga, to block a British advance from Canada. Thousands of soldiers manned it through a brutal winter before withdrawing in 1777. A state historic site protects the earthworks and ruins, with a museum and miles of trails. Because nothing was built over it afterward, the archeology here is exceptional.
14. Stellafane Observatory
On a hilltop above Springfield, Stellafane is the birthplace of the amateur telescope-making movement. In 1923, a group of local machinists who ground their own telescope mirrors founded a club here, and their pink clubhouse and historic observatory still stand. Stellafane is a National Historic Landmark and hosts one of the oldest astronomy conventions in the country each summer. It is run by a volunteer society, with public events through the year.
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13. St. Johnsbury Athenaeum
The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum is a public library and art gallery built in 1871 by Horace Fairbanks, of the scale-manufacturing family. Its art gallery, added in 1873, is the oldest art gallery in the country still in its original form, centered on Albert Bierstadt’s enormous painting Domes of the Yosemite. The building is a National Historic Landmark, and it remains a working library you can walk into for free.
12. Steamboat Ticonderoga
One of the more surprising historic sites in Vermont sits on dry land. The steamboat Ticonderoga, built in 1906, was the last walking-beam side-wheel passenger steamer in service, carrying travelers across Lake Champlain until 1953. In 1955, the Shelburne Museum moved the 220-foot vessel two miles overland from the lake in a remarkable feat of engineering, and it has been preserved on the museum grounds ever since. The “Ti” is a National Historic Landmark, and you can tour its elegant restored interior.
11. Shelburne Farms
On the shore of Lake Champlain, Shelburne Farms is a 1,400-acre working farm and education center on a landscape designed in the 1880s by Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm for the Webb family. The grand farm buildings, including the vast Farm Barn and the lakeside Inn, are landmarks of agricultural and architectural history. It is now a nonprofit dedicated to sustainability, and you can walk the trails, visit the animals, and sample the farm’s award-winning cheddar.
10. Appalachian National Scenic Trail
The Appalachian Trail runs about 150 miles through Vermont, sharing its route with the state’s own Long Trail for the southern stretch. The Long Trail, built between 1910 and 1930, was the first long-distance hiking trail in the country and inspired the AT itself. Through Vermont the path climbs the Green Mountains over peaks like Killington. The Appalachian Trail is a National Scenic Trail administered by the National Park Service with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and volunteers.
Historic Sites In New Hampshire
9. Hildene, the Lincoln Family Home
In Manchester, Hildene was the summer estate of Robert Todd Lincoln, the only one of Abraham Lincoln’s children to survive to adulthood. He built the 24-room Georgian Revival mansion in 1905, and his descendants lived there until 1975. The home holds family treasures, including one of Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hats, and a working 1908 pipe organ. The nonprofit estate includes formal gardens, a working farm, and trails. It is one of the finest historic homes in New England.
8. Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium
The Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury is a Victorian cabinet of curiosities housed in a barrel-vaulted 1891 Romanesque building. Founded by Franklin Fairbanks of the scale-manufacturing family, it holds a sprawling natural history collection of mounted animals, fossils, and oddities, plus Vermont’s only public planetarium. It is a nonprofit museum, and the building itself is a piece of nineteenth-century history.
7. Brown Covered Bridge
Vermont is famous for its covered bridges, and the Brown Covered Bridge near Shrewsbury is one of the prettiest. Built in 1880 by master bridgewright Nichols Powers, it spans the Cold River in a quiet rural setting and still carries traffic. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it represents a tradition that once dotted the state with more than 600 covered bridges. About 100 historic examples survive today, more per square mile than any other state.
6. North Country National Scenic Trail
The North Country National Scenic Trail is the longest in the national trails system, running roughly 4,800 miles from North Dakota to Vermont. In 2019, Congress extended the trail eastward into Vermont, and the route now crosses the western part of the state and the Green Mountains to end at Maine Junction, where it meets the Appalachian Trail in the Green Mountain National Forest. The trail is administered by the National Park Service, and the Vermont segment passes through Middlebury and the national forest.
Historic Sites In New York
5. Lake Champlain Maritime Museum
Near Vergennes, the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum tells the long story of the lake that has been a strategic waterway since the colonial era. Exhibits cover everything from Revolutionary War naval battles to the canal-boat trade. The museum’s signature project is a full-size sailing replica of the Revolutionary War gunboat Philadelphia, and ongoing archeology continues to recover shipwrecks from the lakebed. It is a nonprofit museum and a hands-on place for families.
4. Robert Frost Stone House
In Shaftsbury, the Robert Frost Stone House Museum preserves the home where the poet lived in the 1920s and wrote one of his most famous poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Frost spent much of his life in Vermont, and the state named him its poet laureate. The stone house, now operated by Bennington College, includes exhibits on his life and work and grounds you can walk. It is a quiet, fitting tribute to a great American voice.
Historic Sites In Maine
3. Bennington Battle Monument
The Bennington Battle Monument is a 306-foot stone obelisk, the tallest structure in Vermont, commemorating the Battle of Bennington of August 1777. In that fight, American militia under General John Stark defeated a British force that was trying to seize colonial supplies stored in Bennington, a victory that helped lead to the pivotal surrender at Saratoga. The battle itself was fought just over the line in New York, but the storehouse it targeted was here. An elevator carries visitors up the state-run monument for sweeping views.
10 Best Revolutionary War Sites
2. Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site
In the tiny hamlet of Plymouth Notch, the Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site preserves the boyhood home and birthplace of the 30th president, along with much of the surrounding village. It is one of the most intact presidential sites in the country: the general store, church, cheese factory, and homes look much as they did in 1923, when Coolidge was sworn in by his father by lamplight in the family parlor after President Harding died. Coolidge is buried in the village cemetery. The state-run site includes a museum and the working Plymouth Cheese factory he helped found.
1. Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park
My top pick is the only National Park Service site in Vermont, and it tells a story that belongs to the whole country. Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, in Woodstock, preserves the home and forest of George Perkins Marsh, whose 1864 book Man and Nature was one of the first works to warn that human activity was damaging the environment. It helped launch American conservation.
The property passed to railroad executive Frederick Billings, who put Marsh’s ideas into practice by reforesting the worn-out hillsides, and later to Laurance and Mary Rockefeller, who donated it to the nation in 1992. The park includes the mansion, formal gardens, and one of the oldest managed forests in the country, with miles of historic carriage roads to walk. It is managed by the National Park Service.
More Things To Do In Vermont
These 15 sites pair well with Vermont’s mountains, lakes, and villages. The Green Mountain National Forest runs the length of the state, Lake Champlain anchors the northwest, and the Woodstock and Manchester areas combine history with classic New England scenery. For a wider New England trip, our roundups of historic sites in New Hampshire and New York connect across the borders.
We do not make this up out of thin air. More Than Just Parks is a family operation. My sons Will and Jim have spent their adult lives exploring and filming America’s national parks and public lands destinations, working with the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the USDA, and the U.S. Forest Service on films about important places. In 2018, after a career teaching history, I joined them to help tell the stories behind these places.
