A few Fridays back, I decided to try and find two early 19th century soapstone quarries located near the village of Grafton, Vermont. One use of the stone is for atlatl weights, and I can find a lot of other uses for the material. And, getting some from an abandoned old historic quarry seemed like a fun thing to do.
To get there, I took I-91 North over the Vermont line, and then traveled to Putney, about a 40 minute drive. I love Putney, it is very tiny, and has one of the best open pit bbq joints I have ever eaten at, Curtis’ All American, which consists of two old blue school buses without wheels and a big open hardwood pit, a few picnic tables, and a grassy area. After driving through the main part of the village, I took the road that passes through Westminster Parish and then into Saxtons River. The river, apparently, was named after someone from colonial times who drowned in it.
Another road took me after about 10 minutes into the village of Cambridgeport, Vermont. At the sharp turn in the road that takes you into town, there is a stone shell of a defunct woolen mill. Sheep were introduced into this area in the 1800s for large-scale wool production, but that is long past, as is the soapstone trade.
Once, Cambridgeport, founded in the late 1700s had, like almost every little town and village in the state, a much denser population. Today, there are less than 600,000 people living there, and there is an emptiness to the state that I have not encountered anywhere else, including out in the Mohave Desert. It is a strange feeling, considering how many settlements are here, but there is also more than one ghost town here, too. In the middle part of the 19th century and forward, there was a huge migration of people traveling out west, and the hills all over Vermont show the mute testimony of many abandoned farms, the only thing remaining being the cellar holes and what seems like endless old stone walls that once enclosed pens and fields. There were once six schools here, all long gone. Little towns like Mechanicsville are gone too, and one town I talked to a local historian about (the name of the town escapes me) is known to her as the Bermuda Triangle Town; one day, everyone just left, leaving behind everything. Normally, buildings were burned to the ground, so the owners could recover the nails when they started a new farm in Ohio or places further west, but in this case, the population just walked away, and it isn’t shown ever on a modern map.
This is a part of Vermont that tourists simply don’t go to very often, and that is why I love that area so much. There is a kind of eeriness to it too, as if you can almost feel the ghosts of long gone farmers and merchants still traveling the narrow roads, unseen but felt. I did see one ghost a few times along a road coming in to work when I had a job near Grafton about 10 years ago, which is why I even know about the area. Around here is the Bennington Triangle, and they have their own monster who once roamed the empty woods and fields, and a number of people allegedly vanished in the 1950s near here. It does feel that way, a kind of emptiness you may or may not have experienced. And it feels very much like you are not all that welcomed in these out of the way places. Vermonters have a term for the rest of us, “Flatlanders,” and it is not a good thing to be called that unless in jest.
After traveling though Cambridgeport, which has about six houses and one empty commercial multiuse building and a dingy, dim old country store, I took another road about 7 miles to Grafton itself. I did take a bit of time to try and find the old millrace that used to supply power to some mills here, but like the buildings, the race has vanished.
Grafton is now famous for one item, Cheddar cheese (and it is very fine, if you come across some, get it, it is expensive but very worth it), but once, it thrived on all kinds of agriculture, as well as wool and soapstone. It was, in fact, the single largest source of soapstone in all of New England. There were a number of soapstone mills around here, notably one owned by the firm of Butterfield and Smith. You can still see Butterfield’s old mansion in Grafton, not far from a wonderful old, if narrow, covered bridge and the tiny historical society museum. Grafton is also odd in that it is nearly all owned by a foundation that bought the town in the 1970s and rebuilt it. I would not be surprised if the Stepford Wives lived here. If you want a Currier and Ives New England Town, Grafton is your kind of place. The hotel had some famous guests once, including Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling, who lived in Vermont, near Brattleboro, and wrote some of his greatest works here, stange to say.
I found an old map from the 1860s that showed clearly where the quarries were, and did a recon with Google Earth. The road I wanted was called Kidder Hill Road, and traveled up Bare Hill and then back down toward Cambridgeport. About half way between the two towns were the quarries. The Goodrich Quarries was the big one, and just next to it was the Smith Quarry. They are so large, I thought, I should have no trouble finding them if I follow the old wagon road. Other old, abandoned concerns next to these two quarries were the Butterfield and Smith building and the Steam Soapstone Mill.
Now, I was about to cross the old 37 foot kingpost covered bridge, built in about 1866 by long forgotten builders, but huge signs warned “dead end.” I decided I should ask in town, just to be sure. The woman in the museum was really cool, and she showed me the entire collection in about 10 minutes. She had never been up the quarries, but said she was told you keep walking until you fall in, which was not exactly comforting. The bridge was indeed safe to drive over, and Kidder Hill Road goes up a mile and a half or so, but you can’t park at the end of it, where it then turns into a narrow trail, which was once the wagon road from the quarries down to Grafton. There is one family living in a stone house just where the trail starts, and I asked if they would shoot me. Naw, don’t worry about it. The old lady that used to live there would shoot at you, but she, not only trigger happy, was once the unofficial poet laurite of the state, and the matriarch of a huge family. Here husband on their wedding day promised her a store-bought dress is she bore him 20 children. She only had 19, so we both assumed she never did get that dress.
So, no crazy old gun-wielding poets to worry about, I drove past what was the WC Putnam Forest. It was the strangest state forest I have seen, in that there was the big sign, but it was adjacent to the old single lane wagon road, with no place to stop, no maps, no trails, just a sign and dark, closed forest in all directions. I guess you have to pack in there, and if you need a ranger, forget it.
I finally found a tiny side road, parked there, and hiked about ¼ mile up the steep road, past the stone house, and then was pretty much in the woods. On both sides of the road you could see the old stone walls of the abandoned farms, and it was very quiet in there. I could see that almost no one went in there, as I saw no garbage at all the whole time I was searching for the quarries, aside from one beer can about a mile past the stone house.
I only carried a folding clip belt knife and a small bearded axe for harvesting a bit of stone in a canvas shoulder bag, and my cell phone, which was useless until you returned to I-91, as they are no cell towers anywhere around. I wasn’t particularly worried about defending myself, but you never know, too.
The road got progressively steeper as I tramped along, getting, I hoped, closer to the quarries, and wondering exactly why they called this Bare Hill, as it was far from barren, and almost a jungle of hardwoods, and somewhere in those trees, the sites of A Amsden and CE Ross's farms, and the Davis Homestead.
To be continued soon.
